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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11683 ***
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES
+
+By WILL LILLIBRIDGE
+
+Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.
+
+With Frontispiece in Colors
+By The Kinneys
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. PRESENTIMENT
+
+   II. FULFILMENT
+
+  III. DISCOVERY
+
+   IV. RECONSTRUCTION
+
+    V. THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+   VI. THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+  VII. A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+ VIII. THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+   IX. THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+    X. THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+   XI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XII. WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+ XIII. THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+  XIV. FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+   XV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XVI. THE RECKONING
+
+ XVII. SACRIFICE
+
+XVIII. REWARD
+
+  XIX. IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+PRESENTIMENT
+
+The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In
+addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
+limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
+throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
+effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
+the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
+country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
+man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
+rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
+his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
+rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
+sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
+wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
+the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
+repressed breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
+then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand gripping the
+butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, the other,
+big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a pendulum at his side.
+
+Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in civilisation,
+humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it here, solitary, exotic,
+no observer would have laughed. Fear, mortal dogging fear, impersonate,
+supreme, was in every look, every action. Somewhere back of that curved
+line where met the earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have
+been adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused. The
+sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop by drop from
+the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but apparently he never
+noticed it. Now and then he attempted to moisten his lips; but his
+tongue was dry as powder, and they closed again, parched as before.
+
+No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the way he was
+going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his only landmark; yet
+as hour after hour went by and the sun sank lower and lower he never
+halted, never seemed in doubt as to his destination. The country was
+growing more rolling now, almost hilly, and he approached each rise
+cautiously, vigilantly. Once, almost at his feet a covey of frightened
+prairie chickens sprang a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped
+like a stone in his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall
+grass; then, reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
+on.
+
+It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from absolute
+physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at last rebelled,
+and not even fear could suffice longer to stimulate him. The grass was
+wet with dew, and prone on his knees he moistened his lips therefrom as
+drinks many another of the fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back,
+not sleeping, but very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the
+return of strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat
+the sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and thicker,
+dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day had appeared the
+fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost brightened; until at last,
+like a curious face, the full moon, peeping above the horizon, lit up
+the surface of prairie.
+
+At last--and ere this the moon was well in the sky--the man arose,
+stretched his stiffened muscles profanely--before he had not spoken a
+syllable--listened a moment almost involuntarily, sent a swift,
+searching glance all about; then moved ahead, straight south, at the old
+relentless pace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls vacillated
+between vexation and solicitude.
+
+"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or not," he
+announced in ultimatum.
+
+Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid, folded his
+arms across his chest with an air of finality.
+
+"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the warning.
+I know your intentions are good, but you people are afraid of your own
+shadows. I know as well as you do that there are Indians in this part of
+the world, some odd thousands of them between here and the Hills, but
+they were here when I came and when you came, and we knew they were
+here. You expect to hear from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,'
+don't you?"
+
+The other made a motion of annoyance.
+
+"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he returned
+swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you were alone,
+Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine without another word;
+but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord she's down in Sioux City
+where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should be, and for her sake--"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned back.
+
+"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for little
+niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his
+son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy
+as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This isn't ancient history, man,
+but took place this very day. It's Indian massacre, and at our own
+throats. The boys are down below the falls getting ready to go right
+now. By night there won't be another white man or woman within
+twenty-five miles of you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here
+arguing. If you will stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and
+the girl. I'll take care of them myself and bring them back when the
+government sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
+reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should jump it
+there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come on."
+
+Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the tone of
+vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had appeared upon the
+scene.
+
+"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed. "Take my
+advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we leave you
+behind."
+
+"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked unemotionally.
+
+"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared. "Danger, with
+Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail! Is it possible you two
+don't realise things as they are?"
+
+"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the Tetons are
+hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us would rebel if we
+were hustled away into a corner like naughty little boys, as they are;
+but actual danger--" The woman threw a comprehensive, almost amused
+glance at the big man, her husband. "We've been here almost two years
+now; long before you and the others came. Half the hunters who pass this
+way stop here. It wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a
+whole antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
+those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would be in
+Sioux City."
+
+"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the other. "I
+don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own eyes."
+
+"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland glanced
+at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost superciliously.
+"Indians are like white people. They have their loves and hates the same
+as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran once before when everyone was
+going, and when we got back not a thing had been touched; but the weeds
+had choked our corn and the rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good
+to the Indians, and they appreciate it."
+
+A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came forward
+swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to the other.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and it's pure
+madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a big-eyed, solemn-faced
+mite of humanity, had come up now and stood staring the stranger
+silently from the side of her mother's skirts. "I hope for the best, but
+before God I never expect to see any of you again."
+
+"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right--when you return," commented
+Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and without a backward
+glance started at a rapid jog trot for the tiny settlement on the river
+two miles away.
+
+Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the departing
+frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes accentuated by the
+tightened lids.
+
+"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there ever
+was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual disturbance
+somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down at the settlement
+leaving--they'd go if they heard a coyote whistle; but Brown tells me
+there've been three different trappers from Big Stone gone through south
+in the last week, and when they leave it means something. If you say the
+word we'll leave everything and go yet."
+
+"If we do we'll never come back."
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not. We went
+before because the others went. If we left now it would be different.
+We'd be tortured day and night if we really feared--what happens now and
+then to some. We came here with our eyes wide open. We can't start again
+in civilisation. We're too old, and there's the past--"
+
+"You still blame me?"
+
+"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned toward
+the rough log shanty unemotionally.
+
+"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's hungry."
+
+A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.
+
+"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its feet, one
+hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the dishes on the rough
+pine dining table clattering with the suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who
+are you, man, and what's the trouble? Speak up--"
+
+The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced about the
+interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.
+
+His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but protruded.
+
+"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.
+
+"But who are you?"
+
+"Water!" fiercely, insistently.
+
+Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner, and
+without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made for it,
+grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after measure,
+the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping onto the sanded
+floor.
+
+"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"
+
+After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir; but at his
+side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering around the fortress of
+her skirts as when before she had argued with Frontiersman Brown, stood
+the little wide-eyed girl, type of the repressed frontier child.
+
+Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working unconsciously.
+
+"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
+Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you; you
+live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop to save
+anything."
+
+Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of perspiration.
+
+"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk so I can
+understand you."
+
+"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of the massacre
+along the Minnesota River?"
+
+"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"
+
+"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a trapper."
+Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive questioner
+doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell you along the
+way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw their signal smokes this
+very morning. They're murdering everyone--men, women, and children. It's
+Little Crow who started it, and God knows how many settlers they've
+killed. They chased me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave
+out yesterday; and since then--But come. It's suicide to chatter like
+this." He turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
+minute."
+
+Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a word; but at
+last the woman shook her head slowly.
+
+Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.
+
+"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.
+
+Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin folding over
+his soft flannel shirt.
+
+"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of amusement.
+
+"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed almost to
+roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."
+
+"There is no settlement."
+
+"What?"
+
+Rowland repeated his statement impassively.
+
+"They've--gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick again.
+
+"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of scorn.
+
+For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite tan and
+dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller whitened. The same
+expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all but insane, that had been
+with him alone out on the prairie returned, augmented. Heedless of
+appearances, all but unconscious of the presence of spectators, he
+glanced about the single room like a beaten rabbit with the hounds close
+on its trail. No avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope of
+protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his forehead, at
+the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he mopped it away with
+the back of a fat, grimy hand.
+
+In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated another
+vacant beside the board.
+
+"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be hungry as
+a coyote."
+
+"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless mood
+returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He started
+shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you think I lie.
+We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught like a beaver in a
+trap." Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did they go!"
+
+Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.
+
+"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City; part west
+toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the inevitable
+contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak. "You'd better take a
+lunch along. It's something of a journey to either place."
+
+Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous hospitality
+of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint Indian basket of
+coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely touched, from the table. A
+loaf of bread followed: a bottle of water from the wooden pail in the
+corner. "You're welcome, friend," she proffered.
+
+Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his eyes.
+
+"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm sorry--" He
+lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the doorway. "Good-bye."
+
+Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected dinner.
+
+"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think we'll run at
+sight of them," he commented.
+
+Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through which
+Mueller had gone, did not answer.
+
+"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.
+
+Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few mouthfuls,
+pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak, and, rising, the man
+made his way across the room to put an arm with rough affection around
+his wife's waist.
+
+"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.
+
+The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable after her
+former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd gone too; but
+now,"--her arms crept around his neck, closed,--"but now--now it's too
+late!"
+
+For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but involuntarily
+his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the woman could not have
+turned. He had been looking absently out the door, south over the
+rolling country leading to the deserted settlement.
+
+In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was
+still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the
+trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a
+spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank
+and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland
+watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the
+movement of a coyote or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was
+the only visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life
+responds to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late,"
+with the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the first
+time, to his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of fear, but
+near akin, as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and the red man its
+child. In a hazy way came the question whether after all it were not
+foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that invisible, intangible
+something before which, almost in panic, the others had fled. To be
+sure, precedent was with him, logic; but--of a sudden--but a minute had
+passed--his arms tightened; involuntarily he held his breath. Hans
+Mueller had been moving on and on; another half minute and he would have
+been behind the base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf
+at one's feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
+tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm of
+other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score--in front, behind, all
+about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had come,
+autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked his eyes; then,
+as came swift understanding, instinctively he shielded the woman in his
+arms from the sight, from the knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears
+from over the prairie: not a single call for help. That black swarm
+simply arose, there was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic
+through the curling heat waves; then one and all, the original dark
+figure, the score of others, disappeared--as suddenly as though the
+earth from which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
+spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
+green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.
+
+Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as pale as had
+been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against the lintel of the
+door.
+
+"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he echoed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it
+was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown
+of earth that filled the spaces between--like the longitudinal stripes
+of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough
+grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares
+of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork
+of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified
+by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature
+waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it, stretching
+northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod corn: the ears already
+formed, the ground whitened from the lavishly scattered pollen of the
+frayed tassels. In the dooryard itself was a dug well with a mound of
+weed-covered clay by its side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over
+its mouth. It was deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the
+surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a
+rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
+meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it
+was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the
+spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away the
+long, sultry afternoons.
+
+Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The single horse
+Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured, was breaking sod far
+to the west on the bank of the Jim River. Not a live thing other than
+human moved about the place. With them into this land of silence had
+come a mongrel collie. For a solitary month he had stood guard; then one
+night, somewhere in the distance, in the east where flowed the Big
+Sioux, had sounded the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately
+nearer and more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
+collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild they
+never knew, nor ever filled his place.
+
+Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that afternoon of
+late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he had seen; elaborately
+careful likewise to carry out the family programme as usual.
+
+"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.
+
+Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent corroboration.
+
+"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to all fours
+and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.
+
+"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the doorway as
+only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun and the dust;
+climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly about his neck, down
+the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the pillow and the patchwork quilt
+with a deftness born of experience.
+
+"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.
+
+"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.
+
+"Sing! I can't sing, kid."
+
+"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"
+
+"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."
+
+"Please, papa; pretty please!"
+
+The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do, braced himself
+in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he knew of the song again
+and again--his voice rough and unmusical as that of a crow, echoing and
+re-echoing in the narrow space--bent over at last, touched his bearded
+lips softly to the winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an
+irresistible catch in his breath, silently to the surface, sent one
+swift glance sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
+cabin.
+
+Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer shotgun,
+and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy beside the door.
+
+"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he overhauled
+the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not deceived. This done,
+notwithstanding the fact that the sun still beat scorchingly hot
+thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit his pipe, drew his
+weather-stained sombrero low over his face, through half-closed eyes
+inspected the lower lands all about, impassively silent awaited the
+coming of the inevitable. Of a sudden there was a touch on his shoulder,
+and, involuntarily starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret
+Rowland.
+
+The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.
+
+"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
+something."
+
+In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more brightly as
+Rowland drew hard.
+
+"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"
+
+The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded reluctant
+corroboration.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"You--saw them?"
+
+Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as well, after
+all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of the rise before
+them. "They waylaid Mueller there."
+
+"And you--"
+
+"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all he--Margaret!"
+
+"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous suggestion!"
+
+"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the quiver of her
+body against his, the involuntary catch of her breath. "Forgive me,
+Margaret."
+
+"You're not to blame. Perhaps--Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"
+
+Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above the
+scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very breath of
+prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or
+a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant
+drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf
+contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In
+sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of
+the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had
+done Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
+"Water! Water! Give us drink!"
+
+Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the woman; like
+children awed by the sudden realisation of their helplessness, their
+hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute understanding. Usually at this time
+of day with nothing to do they slept; but neither thought of sleep now.
+As passed the slow time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour
+of supper; but likewise hunger passed them by. Something very like
+fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at
+motionless impassive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that
+nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod corn
+again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded in
+preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out, out--.
+
+"Sam!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You saw, too?"
+
+An answering pressure of the hand.
+
+"The eyes of him, only the eyes--out there at the edge of the corn!"
+
+"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his breath
+tightened. "They're all about: a score at least--I don't know how many.
+The tall grass there to the east is alive--"
+
+"Sam! They're there again--the eyes! Oh, I'm afraid--Sam--baby!"
+
+"Hush! Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our only chance.
+Let them make the first move." Again the hand pressure so tight that,
+although she made no sound, the blood left the woman's fingers. "Tell me
+you forgive me, Margaret; before anything happens. I'm a criminal to
+have stayed here,--I see it now, a criminal!"
+
+"Don't!"
+
+"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."
+
+"I love you, Sam."
+
+Again in the expanse of grass to the east there was motion; not in a
+single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was visible, not a
+sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here and there it stirred,
+and became motionless, and stirred again.
+
+"And--Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take either of us
+alive. The last one--I can't say it. You understand."
+
+"Yes, I understand. The last load--But maybe--"
+
+"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this way
+if--Margaret, in God's name--"
+
+"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely beneath the
+grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see her again; must,
+must--"
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+"I must, I say!"
+
+"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless we show
+the way. Think--as you love her."
+
+"But if anything should happen to us--She'll starve!"
+
+"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come--now; and Landor
+knows."
+
+"Oh, Sam, Sam!"
+
+There was silence. No human being could give answer to that mother wail.
+
+Again time passed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that were a hell
+of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun sank from sight. In
+the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed red as from a distant
+conflagration. For and eternity previous it seemed to the silent
+watchers there had been no move; now again at last the grass stirred; a
+corn plant rustled where there was no breeze; out into the small open
+plat surrounding the house sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across
+the clearing, headed for the protecting grass, halted at the edge
+irresolute--scurried back again at something it saw.
+
+"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained, unnatural.
+"They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."
+
+"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural tone!
+
+"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man dies."
+
+"Sam Rowland--my husband!"
+
+"Margaret--my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes, regardless of
+everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how can you forgive me, can
+God forgive me!" Tight in his arms he kissed her again and again;
+passionately, in abandon. "I've always loved you, Margaret; always,
+always!"
+
+"And I you, man; and I you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on the field
+mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water hole, so it came.
+Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse call of a catbird where no
+bird was, and again, and again. In front of the maize patch, always in
+front, a dark form, a mere shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out
+clear against the light of sky. To right and left appeared others, as
+motionless as boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler
+Rowland been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No
+Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand.
+Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited
+passive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight
+before him, God alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again
+in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures
+against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch
+of the cabin roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in
+front. Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge
+pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in front.
+Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the rear, reached the
+edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the maize patch, out of the
+grass, seemingly out of space itself, came a new cry--the trilling call
+of the prairie owl. It was the signal. Like twin drops of rain from a
+cloudless sky fell the two figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter
+a sound, could offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere,
+everywhere, swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them
+forth in legion. In the multitude of hands he was as a child. Within the
+space of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything had
+happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the clearing
+before the door not a human being was visible, not a live thing; only on
+the thatched roof, silent as before, patient as fate, awaited two other
+shadows, darker but by contrast with the weather-coloured grass.
+
+Minutes passed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the silence.
+Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a thing of which
+insanity is made.
+
+"Sam!" called a voice softly.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Sam!" repeated more loudly.
+
+Again no answer of voice or of action.
+
+In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly fearful.
+
+"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped outside.
+
+A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The earth was
+not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie owl. As dropped
+the figures from above there broke forth the Sioux war-cry: long drawn
+out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely
+than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a
+score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth.
+Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they
+swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in
+their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they
+seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage abandon, of drunken
+exhilaration in the cunning that had won the game without a shot from
+the white man's gun, without the injury of a single warrior. They were
+in haste, and yet they were not in haste. They looted the cabin like
+fire and then fought among themselves for the plunder. They applied the
+torch to the shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then
+capered fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until, tinder
+dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all, purposely reserved
+as a climax, they gave their attention to the pair of half-naked, bound
+and gagged figures in their midst. Then it was the scene became an orgy
+indeed. The havoc preceding had but whetted their appetite for the
+finale. Savagery personified, cruelty unqualified, deadly hate,
+primitive lust--every black passion lurking in the recesses of the human
+mind stalked brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister,
+unashamed. But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand
+similar scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
+the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a nation's
+expansion, as its progression.
+
+It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle of
+prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
+unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
+irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their
+journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the
+print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows,
+forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth,
+they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little
+river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement,
+the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to
+other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man
+who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they
+moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
+almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat
+of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer
+rain, the rustle of their passing bodies against the dense vegetation a
+soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.
+Night and distance swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined
+grainfield, the smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the
+glaring white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the
+background of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for
+this, and one other thing--a single sound, repeated again and again,
+dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.
+
+"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its depths
+that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm afraid!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as
+necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To
+the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight
+feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped
+between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the
+square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close
+together and pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by
+numerous portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers
+near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated, mingled and
+intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as diverse a gathering of
+humans as ever graced a single structure even in this land of myriad
+types. Virtually the entire population of frontier Yankton was there.
+Likewise the settlers from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the
+far-away country of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground
+of the Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the
+peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild west of
+the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the Blackfeet, the
+Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the alarm of rapine and of
+massacre had spread afar. Very late to arrive, doggedly holding their
+own until rumour became reality unmistakable, was the colony from the
+Jim River valley to the east; but even they had finally surrendered, the
+dogging grip of fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their
+throats, had fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the
+Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as you
+please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux Falls.
+Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for with the actual
+retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow mile, thanking the
+Providence which had permitted them to arrive unmolested, a
+sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old smoothbore cannon
+before the big south gate and craved admittance. Out to them went
+Colonel William Landor, colonel by courtesy, scion of many generations
+of Landors, rancher at present, cattle king of the future. The
+conversation that followed there with the east reddening in the morning
+sun was very brief, very swift to the point.
+
+"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing them
+collectively, compellingly.
+
+"My name is McPherson."
+
+"Mine is Horton."
+
+"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."
+
+"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered McPherson who
+took the lead.
+
+"From where?"
+
+"Sioux Falls."
+
+"Any news?"
+
+Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now a day
+old.
+
+"And the rest of your settlement--where are they?"
+
+McPherson told him.
+
+"They all went, you say?"
+
+For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he
+qualified.
+
+"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company
+collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That you--men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl
+alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously.
+"You come here with that story and ask me to let you inside?"
+
+McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently, his
+shoulders squared.
+
+"We're here," he announced laconically.
+
+"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids. "Moreover,
+strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned forward involuntarily;
+his breath came quick. "It gives me the opportunity, sir, to tell you to
+your face that you're a damned coward." In spite of an obvious effort at
+repression, the great veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A
+damned coward, sir!"
+
+"What! You call me--"
+
+"Men! Gentlemen!"
+
+"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was
+himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood
+shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done
+with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When
+I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a
+time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the
+Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had
+been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight,
+every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here.
+If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade--not if
+the Santees scalped you before my eyes."
+
+For a second there was silence, inaction.
+
+"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried--"
+
+"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there
+are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned
+to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,--I'm afraid it is;
+but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me?
+Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"
+
+"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of
+speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're
+all with you--that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't
+cats, so we can't croak but once--and that might as well be now as ten
+years from now."
+
+"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the
+motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first
+twenty to return, go."
+
+From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.
+
+"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.
+
+No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.
+
+For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an inverted V;
+then silent as they, equally swiftly, he followed.
+
+Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle back. Not in
+ignorance of possibilities in store did they come. They had no delusions
+concerning the red brother, these frontiersmen. Nor in the hot
+adventurous blood of youth did they respond. One and all were
+middle-aged men; many had families. All save Landor were strangers to
+the man they went to seek. Yet at a moment's call they responded; as
+they took it for granted others would respond were they in need. Had
+they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it
+they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal
+brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated
+abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious,
+smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all
+to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant
+quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled,
+parchment-faced veteran, who alone had followed the Missouri to its
+source and, stranger to relate, had alone returned with his scalp. Then
+came Landor himself, the wiry little mustang he rode all but blanketed
+under the big army saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as
+though an event of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson,
+drew up in place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat
+appreciatively, but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one
+but many riders; a half dozen, a score,--enough to make up the
+allotment, and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly
+accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho, the
+mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of apparel,
+from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or saddleless,
+across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel of a long rifle, at
+the hip of every rider hung a holster, from every belt peeped the hilt
+of a great knife. Long ere this word of the unusual had passed about,
+and now, on the rise of ground at the back of the stockade, a goodly
+group had gathered. Silent as the prairies, as the morning itself, they
+watched the scene below, awaited the _dénouement._ Not without influence
+was the taciturn example of the red man in this land from which he was
+slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to the east the red face of
+the morning sun was just peeping when Landor separated himself from the
+waiting group, led the way to the big gate and paused. "Twenty only,
+men," he repeated. "All ready."
+
+First through the opening went Crosby.
+
+"One."
+
+Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.
+
+"Two."
+
+From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came Scotchman
+McPherson; but though he passed fair before the leader's eyes and not a
+yard away, no number was spoken; no hint of recognition, of cognisance,
+crossed the latter's face. Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited
+the next in line, then voiced the one word: "Three."
+
+On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts silent--halting
+at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and twenty men who counted
+but as a score, started into motion, halted again; as by common consent
+every head save one of a sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the
+watching group back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All
+but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out
+where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
+tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the column one
+rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear. Implacable as
+Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that
+would bring with it renewed activity.
+
+And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its
+place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From his position by the
+gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind him, impassive again as
+figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line. At first a mere walk,
+the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot. By this time the
+confines of the tiny frontier town were passed. Before them on the one
+hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown
+from its coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
+glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad
+dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie. Straight
+into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the
+first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of
+civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier,
+which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off
+the passing miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.
+
+Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
+settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was the
+prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before; yet
+with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead, straight as a line drawn
+taut from point to point. Nothing stopped their advance, nothing made
+them turn aside. Seemingly destitute of animal life, the country fairly
+teemed at their approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the
+blue-faced anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks.
+Troops of antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away
+from the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the safety
+of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight. Every marshy
+spot, every prairie pond, had its setting of ducks. The teal, the
+mallard, the widgeon, the shoveller, the canvasback--all mingled in the
+loud-voiced throng that arose before the leader's approach, then, like
+smoke, vanished with almost unbelievable swiftness into the hazy
+distance. Prairie dog towns, populous as cities of man a minute before
+their approach, went lifeless, desolate, as they passed through. In the
+infrequent draws and creek beds between the low, rolling hills,
+great-eyed cotton tails scampered to cover or, like the antelope, just
+out of harm's way, watched the passage of this strange being, man.
+Wonder of wonders that display of life would have been to another
+generation; but of it these grim-faced riders were apparently
+unconscious, oblivious. Their eyes were not for things near at hand, but
+for the distance, for the possibility that lurked just beyond that
+far-away rise which formed their horizon, when they had reached that for
+the next beyond, and the next.
+
+Hour by hour the morning wore away. Hotter and hotter rose the sun above
+them. Instead of drops of dew, tiny particles of sun-dried grass flew
+away from beneath the leaders' feet, mingled with the dust of prairie,
+became a cloud shutting the leaders from the sight of those in the rear.
+From being a mere breath, the south wind augmented, became positive,
+insistent. Hot with the latent heat of many days, it sang in their ears
+as they went, bit all but scorching, at their unprotected hands and
+throats. Under its touch the horses' necks, dark before with sweat,
+became normal again: between their legs, under the, edges of the great
+saddles where it had churned into foam, dried into white powder, like
+frostwork amid the hair. Gradually with the change, their breathing
+became audible, louder and louder, until in unison it mingled with the
+dull impact of their feet on the heavy sod like the exhaust of many
+engines. No horseman who values the life of the beast between his legs,
+fails to heed that warning. Landor did not, but at the first dawdling
+prairie creek that offered water and, with its struggling fringe of
+willows, a suggestion of shade, he gave the word to halt, and for four
+mortal, blistering hours while, man and beast alike, the others slept,
+kept watch over them from the nearest rise. Relentless to others this
+man might be, but not even his dearest enemy could accuse him of sparing
+himself.
+
+It was three by the clock when again they took up the trail. It was 3.45
+when they swam what is now the Vermilion River, the last water-course of
+any size on their way. The dew was again beginning to gather when, well
+to the south, they approached the bordering hills that concealed the
+site of Sioux Falls settlement. Then for the first time since they
+began that last relay Landor gave an order.
+
+"It'll be a miracle if we don't find Sioux there in the bottom, men," he
+prophesied. "Perhaps there are a whole band, perhaps it'll only be
+stragglers; but no matter how many or how few there may be, charge them.
+If they run you know what to do--this is no holiday outing. If they
+stand, charge them all the harder." He faced his horse to the north and
+gave the word to go. "It's our only chance," he completed.
+
+What followed belongs to history. Over that last intervening rise they
+went like demons. The first to gain the crown, to look down into the
+valley beyond, was Landor. As he did so, grim Anglo-Saxon as he was, his
+whole attitude underwent a transformation. Back to the others he turned
+his face, and, plain as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage,
+and the lust of battle.
+
+"They're there; a hundred, if a single red!" he shouted. "Come on!" and
+the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse's flanks, dug until
+the blood spurted.
+
+But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction of the
+time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground. Outnumbering
+those who charged many times, it was not in savage nature to face that
+unformed oncoming motley of howling, bloodthirsty maniacs. Slowly at
+first began the retreat; then as, with great swiftness, the others
+shortened the distance intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a
+stampede. Every brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the
+dismantled ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling
+like their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for the
+thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in their
+ears, cutting at the vegetation about them. Into its friendly cover they
+plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the surface of a lake, and were
+swallowed from sight. That is, all but one. That one, unhorsed by
+accident, was left to face that oncoming flood. . . . But why linger.
+Like the charge itself, his fate is history. These men were but human,
+and thick about them were the ashes from the roof-trees of their
+friends.
+
+Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind, musical with the
+drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs from the low land
+adjoining the river, melancholy with the call of the catbird, with the
+infrequent note of the whip-poor-will, was upon the land of the Mandans
+when the score and one, their dripping ponies once more dry, took up the
+last relay of their journey. Night had caught them there in the deserted
+settlement, and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait. Now, far to
+the east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the face
+of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves through the heated
+air, slowly rising, lit up the level country softly as by early
+twilight. Lingeringly, almost reluctantly, Landor got into his saddle.
+Just to his left, impassive as the night, well to the front of the
+company as he had been that mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman
+McPherson. Not once since that early morning scene at Fort Yankton had
+he spoken a word, not once had he been addressed, had another man shown
+consciousness of his presence. A pariah, he had so far kept them
+company; a pariah, he now awaited the end. A moment, fair in his seat,
+Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for hours came
+to pass. Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein beside the other man.
+
+"McPherson," he said, "this morning I called you coward. That you are
+not such you have proven, you are proving now. For this reason I ask
+your pardon. For this reason as well, I give you warning. What we will
+find--where we are going, I do not doubt, now. I do not believe you
+doubt. For it I hold you responsible. You had best turn back before
+belief becomes certainty." Unnaturally precise, cold as November
+raindrops came the words, the sentences. Deadly in meaning was the pause
+that followed. "I repeat, you had best turn back."
+
+For a long half minute, face to face there in the moonlight, Landor
+waited; but no answer came. Just perceptibly he shifted in his place.
+
+"I may forget, give my promise of the morning the lie. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+Another half minute, ghastly in its significance, passed; then without a
+word Landor turned. "You have heard, men," he said, "and may God be my
+judge."
+
+The full moon was well in the sky, showing clear every detail in that
+scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter, patter sounded
+their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more loud they grew, muffled
+yet penetrating in the silence of night, always augmenting in volume.
+Out of the shadows figures came dimly into view, taking form against the
+background of constellations. The straining of leather, the music of
+steel in bit and buckle, the soft swish of the sun-dried grass
+proclaimed them very near; then across the trampled corn patch, into the
+open where had stood the shanty, where now was a thin grey layer of
+ashes, came the riders, and drew rein; their weary mounts crowding each
+other in fear at something they saw. Like a storm cloud they came; like
+the roll of thunder following was the oath which sprang to the lips of
+every rider save one. Good men they were, God-fearing men; yet they
+swore like pirates, like humans when ordinary speech is not adequate. In
+the pause but one man acted, and none intervened to prevent what he did.
+Out into the open, away from the others, rode Scotchman McPherson;
+halted, his hand on the holster at his hip. For a second, and a second
+only, he sat so, the white moonlight drawing clear every line of his
+grizzled face, his stocky figure. Then deliberately his hand lifted,
+before him there appeared a sudden blaze of fire, upon the silence there
+broke a single revolver report, from beneath his lifeless bulk the
+horse he rode broke free, gave one bound, by instinct halted, trembling
+in every muscle; then over all, the quick and the dead, returned
+silence: silence absolute as that of the grave.
+
+How long those twenty men sat there, gazing at that mute, motionless
+figure on the ground not one could have told. Death was no stranger to
+them. For years it had lurked behind every chance shrub they passed, in
+the depths of every ravine, in the darkness of night, from every tangle
+of rank prairie grass in broad daylight. To it from long familiarity
+they had become callous; but death such as this, deliberate,
+cold-blooded, self-inflicted--it awed them while it fascinated, held
+them silent, passive.
+
+"In God's name!" Again it was Landor who roused them, Landor with his
+hand on the holster at his hip, Landor who sat staring as one who doubts
+his own sight. "Am I sane, men? Look, there to your right!"
+
+They looked. They rubbed their eyes and looked again.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned," voiced Crosby; and no man had ever heard him
+express surprise before. To the north, from the edge of the tall
+surrounding grass, moving slowly, yet without a trace of hesitation or
+of fear, coming straight toward them across the trampled earth, were two
+tiny human figures, hand in hand. No wonder they who saw stared; no
+wonder they doubted their eyes. One, the figure to the right, was plump
+and uncertain of step and all in white; white which in the moonlight
+and against the black earth seemed ghostly. The other was slim and
+certain of movement and dark--dark as a copper brown Indian boy, naked
+as when he came on earth. On they came, the brown figure leading, the
+white following trustfully, until they were quite up to the watchers,
+halted, still hand in hand.
+
+"How," said a voice, a piping childish voice.
+
+Like rustics at a spectacle the men stared, turned mystified faces each
+to each, and stared anew. All save one. Off from his horse sprang
+Landor, caught the bundle of white in his arms.
+
+"Baby Rowland! Baby Bess! And you,"--he was staring the other from head
+to toe, the distance was short,--"who are you?"
+
+"Uncle Billy," interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of femininity
+nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa and mamma! I want them."
+
+Closer and closer the big bachelor arms clasped their burden; unashamed,
+there with the others watching him, he kissed her.
+
+"Never mind now, Kiddie. Tell me how you came here, and who this is with
+you."
+
+About the great neck crept two arms, clinging tightly.
+
+"He just came, Uncle Billy. I was calling for papa. Papa put me to sleep
+and forgot me. The boy heard me and took me out. I was afraid at first,
+but--but he's a nice boy, only he won't talk and--and--" The narrative
+halted, the tousled head buried itself joyously. "Oh, I'm so glad you
+came, Uncle Billy!"
+
+In silence Landor's eyes made the circle of interested watching faces,
+returned to the winsome brown face so near his own.
+
+"Aren't you hungry, Kid?" he ventured.
+
+On his shoulder the dark poll shook a negative.
+
+"No. We had corn to eat. The boy roasted it. He made a big fire. He's a
+nice boy, only--only he won't say anything."
+
+Again Landor's eyes made the circle, halted at the intrepid brown waif
+who, that first word of greeting spoken, had silently stared him back.
+
+"You're sure you don't know anything more, baby? You didn't hear
+anything until the boy came?"
+
+"No, Uncle Billy. I was asleep. When I woke up it was dark, and I was
+hungry and--and--" At last it had come: the spattering, turbulent tear
+storm. Her small body shook, her arms clasped tighter and tighter. "Oh,
+Uncle Billy, I want my papa and mamma. I tried to find them, and I
+couldn't. Please find them for me, Uncle Billy, Please! Please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well past midnight. The big full moon, high now in the sky, cast
+their shadows almost about their feet when, their labour complete, the
+party took up the homeward trail. But there were twenty no longer. At
+their head as before rode Landor, in his arms not a rifle but a blanket;
+a blanket from which as they journeyed on came now and anon a sound
+that was alien indeed: the sobs of a baby girl who wept as she slept.
+Back of him, likewise as when they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby;
+but he, too, was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in
+front of him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat,
+was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake
+indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him,
+every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there,
+what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know,
+could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew
+only the bizarre, with whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now,
+weary to death with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable
+reaction from the excitement of the past hours, they moved away, to the
+south, to the west. In front of them, glittering in the moonlight,
+seemingly infinite, stretched the waves of the rolling prairie, bare as
+the sea in a calm. Behind them, growing lesser and lesser minute by
+minute, merging into the infinite white, were three black dots like tiny
+boats on the horizon's edge. On they went, a half mile, a mile, looked
+behind; and, with an awe no familiarity could prevent, faced ahead anew.
+Back of them now as well as before, uniformly endless, uniformly
+magnificent, stretched that giant ocean: silent, serene, as mother
+nature, as nature's master, God himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+RECONSTRUCTION
+
+The day of the Indian terror had passed. No longer did the name of
+Little Crow carry stampede in its wake. The battles of Big Mound, of
+White Stone Hill, and of the Bad Lands had been fought, had become mere
+history; dim already to the newcomer as Lexington or Bull Run. Still in
+the memory, to be sure, was the half-invited massacre of Custer at the
+Little Big Horn; but the savage genius of Sitting Bull, of Crazy Horse,
+and of Gall, who had made the last great encounter bloodily unique in
+the conflict of the red man and the white, was never to be duplicated.
+Rightly or wrongly deprived of what they had once called their own,
+driven back, back on the crest of the ever-increasing wave of
+settlement, facing the alternative of annihilation or of submergence in
+that flood, the Sioux had halted like a wild thing at bay, with their
+backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot of earth on the face of
+the globe, the Black Hills country, and as a cornered animal ever
+fights, had battled ferociously for a lost supremacy. But, robbers
+themselves, holding the land on the insecure title of might alone,
+fighting to the end, they had at last succumbed to the inevitable: the
+all-conquering invasion of the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a
+name stood out: "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," "Little Crow,"
+"Sitting Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall,"
+"John Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic
+suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had long since
+passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to desperation, might
+incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an incorrigible by a
+harrowing reference to one or to another; yet to the incoming swarms of
+land-hungry settlers they were mere supplanted play actors, fit heroes
+for fiction, for romance perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small
+herds safe in the pasture of a reservation, preserved as a relic of a
+species doomed to extinction.
+
+A thing at which to marvel was the growth of the eastern border of
+Dakota Territory in this, the time of the great boom. History can
+scarcely find its parallel. In the space of a decade the census leaped
+from two-score thousand to nearly a half million. New towns sprang up
+like fungi in a night. Railroads reached out like the tentacles of an
+octopus, where a generation before the buffalo had tramped its tortuous
+trail. Prosperous farms came into being in the meadows where the
+antelope had pastured. Artesian wells, waterworks, electric lights,
+street railways, colleges, all the adjuncts of a higher civilisation,
+blossomed forth under the magic wand of Eastern capital. Doomed to
+reaction, as an advancing pendulum is doomed to retrace its cycle, was
+this premature evolution; but temporarily, as a springtime freshet
+bears onward the driftwood in its path, it carried its predecessor, the
+unconventional, fighting, wild-loving adventurer, before. On it went, on
+and on until at last, fairly blocking its path, was the big, muddy,
+dawdling Missouri. Then for the first time it halted; halted in a pause
+that was to last for a generation. But it had fulfilled its mission.
+High and dry on the western side of the barrier, imbued as when they had
+settled to the east, with the restless spirit of the frontier,
+unsubdued, unchanged, it cast its burden. There, as they had done
+before, the newcomers immediately took root, and, after the passage of a
+year, were all but unconscious of the migration. Over their heads was
+the same blue prairie sky. Around them, treeless, trackless, was the
+same rolling, illimitable prairie land. In but one essential were
+conditions changed; yet that one was epoch-making. Heretofore,
+surrounded by a common, an alien danger, compelled at a second's warning
+to band together for life itself, all men were brothers. Now, with the
+passing of the red peril, with eradication of necessity for any manner
+of restraint, an abandon of licence, of recklessness, born of the wild
+life, of overflowing animal vitality insufficiently employed, swept the
+land like a contagion. Unique in the history of man's development was
+this the era of the cowboy, as fantastic now as the era of the red
+peril, its predecessor; yet vital, bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously
+human, as no other period has ever been, as in all probability none
+will ever be again. Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed,
+chivalrous, fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate,
+wilful and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented,
+seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as
+certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied their own
+Hell and, impartial, chose from each to weave the web of their lives.
+
+Of this period, life of this life, was Colonel William Landor; colonel
+no longer, plain Bill, from the river to the Hills, husband these ten
+years now, but not father, Cattle King of an uncontested range. Of this
+life likewise, bred in it, saturated in it, was a dark young woman, his
+adopted daughter, two years past her majority, Elizabeth Rowland Landor
+by name. Of it most vitally of all, born of it, rooted in it through
+unknown centuries of ancestral domicile, was a copper-brown young man,
+destitute as a boy of twelve of a trace of beard, black as a prairie
+crow of hair and eyes, deep-lunged like a race-track thoroughbred, wiry
+as a mustang, garbed as a white man, but bearing the liquid name of a
+Teton Sioux, "Ma-wa-cha-sa, the lost pappoose," yet known wherever the
+Santee Massacre and the tale of his appearance was known, as "How"
+Landor. Of this period, last of all, was the great B.B.--Buffalo
+Butte--ranch, giant among the giants, whose brand was familiar as his
+own name to every cowboy west of the Missouri, whose hospitable ranch
+house, twenty-odd miles from the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote
+Centre, which in turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles
+from nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into
+this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the reverse
+side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one lunger," who, with
+gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie sun and prairie air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay Creek ranch
+had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the day previous they
+had suddenly blown in from the north; a great cloud of yellow dust,
+lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty panting of winded bronchos, a
+single demoniacal dare-man whoop heralding their coming, a groaning of
+straining leather, a jingle of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented
+stillness even in this silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was,
+Pete Sweeney, "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was
+who first entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who,
+ere ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only man
+who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute ownership. Pete
+it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared away, assisted in
+laying out that same misguided citizen, in decent fellowship, beneath
+the cottonwood bar, and thrust an adequate green roll in the stiffening
+hand for funeral expenses.
+
+"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I don't visit
+you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to make it square, and
+this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all. D'ye understand?" and from
+Manning, the greybearded storekeeper, to Rank Judge, the one-legged
+saddler, there was no one to say him nay, none to contest his right of
+authority.
+
+By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre. Under
+ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even aggressively, upheld by
+its representative, Marshal Jim Burton. Likewise there was no lack of
+pilgrims, who by devious and circuitous routes sought his residence on
+this occasion, with tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one
+and all departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
+not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an even more
+indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one regretted the
+mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who imparted the information,
+no one deplored the lost opportunity for distinction so much as she; but
+nevertheless the fact remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was
+thrown upon its own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as
+best it might.
+
+Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the beginning
+of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned, and that more than
+intermittently, all but continuously, the red liquor had flowed; to the
+alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins and his straw-haired Norwegian
+rival across the street--Gus Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were
+who fancied that ere this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity
+for absorption had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable
+intention of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
+themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town,
+all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where
+they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in
+peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master,
+had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of
+law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
+corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye
+and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of solid sustenance,
+was, to all visible indications, as fresh and aggressive as at the
+beginning.
+
+Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor down the
+single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its face. One and
+all had succumbed long before to the god of gunpowder. Not a stray dog,
+and Coyote Centre was plethoric of canines, raised its voice nor showed
+even a retreating tail near the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire
+for deepest obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden
+annihilation to the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a
+cyclone were imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They
+were a tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
+experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object lesson
+of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at last patience
+was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of the town hall a tiny
+group of men were gathered, a group who spoke scarcely above a whisper,
+who kept a sharp lookout all surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch
+of an eyelash to disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient.
+In the single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
+plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy bearded, had
+the floor.
+
+"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included indiscriminately. "You
+come here with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of
+you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand
+and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of
+the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including
+disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
+Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned
+cowards, I say."
+
+In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud Smith, the
+weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat hurt him.
+
+"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and agin p'raps
+you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new marshal, but as
+fer's I've been able to discover there's no one hereabouts hankerin' fer
+the job." He spat at a crack in the cottonwood floor meditatively,
+struck true, and seemed mildly pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin'
+comfortably rapidly as it is, without adding any marshals to the
+collection. I've known Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private
+advice is to let him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the
+river to supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
+feelin' as he's feelin' now."
+
+"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky Missourian,
+who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the first time he isn't
+looking."
+
+For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
+meditatively.
+
+"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he commented at
+last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of Pete not lookin'. I
+ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the feller who tackles that
+job to say his prayers before he starts. He won't have much time
+afterwards." With a swifter movement than he had yet made, the speaker
+slid from his place to the floor, involuntarily cast a glance into the
+street without. "I ain't perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and
+I ain't lookin' fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it
+ain't at all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound
+to peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better scatter
+and let it blow over."
+
+"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if you want
+to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying here as long as I
+see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."
+
+"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning with his
+deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well, maybe I've got
+something to say about that." He came out from behind the counter, faced
+the lanky figure before him, with deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty
+stiff-backed boy in the daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the
+dark--" He halted and his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if
+you're so anxious for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you
+take the job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth
+curled again.
+
+Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went white.
+Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered dog, and until
+it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.
+
+"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I might ask you
+the same question. I ain't no property interest here being destroyed
+like you have. Why don't you do the trick yourself, dad?"
+
+For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the old man
+stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to square his
+shoulders; but they remained round as before.
+
+"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand--minus the index and middle
+fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled with rheumatism.
+"Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny storeroom and back
+again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why don't I?" repeated for
+the third time. "Do you imagine for the fraction of a second, Walt
+Wagner, that if I was back twenty years and sound like you are, I'd be
+asking another man why he didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly,
+he stood there before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent,
+distorted senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
+and ask that question of me?"
+
+In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked nervously. His face
+went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud Smith it was, Bud Smith,
+five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie wind had made like a lobster
+display in a cafe window, who had halted at the door, but who now came
+back, he it was who spoke.
+
+"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested slowly, "you
+might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by intimatin' that I had cold
+feet. We'll listen to that, too, any time you see fit to explain,
+pardner."
+
+"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become normal
+again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his elbows back
+against the glass showcase, glancing the while down at the small man,
+almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your benefit, I was merely
+observing that you filled the bill of what dad here said a bit ago we
+all were." He smiled tantalisingly; again showing the vacancy in his
+dental arch. "You remember what that was, don't you?"
+
+"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit. To be dead
+sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."
+
+Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his place behind
+the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he moved. In it
+likewise there was an interruption from without; the subdued clatter of
+a horse's feet on the packed earth of the street, the straining of
+leather, as the man, its rider, alighted, a moment later the click of
+the door latch as the same man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered
+and halted abruptly at what he saw. But those within did not notice.
+Silent as the night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete
+Sweeney, they were staring at those two actors there before them.
+
+"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller of my own
+age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to hear you say it.
+I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt Wagner."
+
+Again within the room there was silence, and again from without there
+approached an interruption. From up the street, from out the door of Red
+Jenkins's joint it came; the patter, patter of many feet, leading it the
+heavy clump of mighty cowhide boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the
+jingle of spurs on those same boots at every step, the deep breathing of
+a cowman intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
+doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and nearer.
+Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had noticed. The
+arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In the depths of his
+pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly, nervously. His face had
+gone whiter than before. Once he had opened his lips to speak, revealing
+the blackness of the vacant tooth; but he had closed them again
+silently. Now at last he cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a
+long breath. Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew.
+What if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
+at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street swung
+open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it, blocking it,
+appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman, while upon their ears,
+like the menacing bellow of an enraged bull, burst a voice--the
+challenging, bullying voice of Pete Sweeney, inebriate.
+
+"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was no answer
+repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"
+
+For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction while
+every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker; at first
+almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the interruption
+came over them, with sensations as divergent as their various individual
+minds. There was no need to tell them who looked at that towering,
+intruding figure that tragedy lurked in the air, that death on the
+slightest provocation, at the twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in
+those big twin Colts lying menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic
+escaped was a pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with
+Pete Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god--bull
+mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
+hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad from the
+soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to the bulging
+holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt around his waist,
+to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red silk handkerchief about his
+throat, to the dark unshaven face, to the drink-reddened nose, to the
+mere slits of eyes, to the upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of
+wiry hair; bad in detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.
+
+"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence he came a
+step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart. "What've you got to say
+for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker meeting. Speak up. What're you all
+doin' here?"
+
+Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red Bud Smith.
+
+"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained evenly.
+
+"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes. "You lie by
+the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of skunks." From man to
+man he passed the look, halted at last at the figure of the lanky
+Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to pot me, and I'm lookin' to
+see the colour of his hair. Who was it, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as before Smith
+spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do. You can own the whole
+county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend to your knittin'. Dad here
+wants to close up, now."
+
+"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon as you
+name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted, dropped like
+claws on the figure of the little land man. "You know who it is I'm
+lookin' for. Tell me his name."
+
+"You don't know me very well, Pete."
+
+"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was inspecting
+the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its paws. "In other
+words, you mean you know, but won't tell me." Lingeringly, baitingly,
+almost exultingly, he was dragging the _dénouement_ on and on. "That's
+what you mean to imply, is it?"
+
+"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's body
+twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even tone.
+There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime, knowing as he
+knew that but one man present could interfere to prevent, that that man
+wouldn't, he spoke those four words: "You've guessed it, Pete." And but
+minutes before Manning had called this man coward!
+
+For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain
+failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal;
+then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension,
+came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible,
+unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took
+place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it
+was done. They only knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had
+reached the single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at
+the same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that the
+odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting slowly
+toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a curtain that once
+raised made them shudder, made their blood run cold, for it revealed
+there, stretched on the floor, huddled as it had dropped, lifeless,
+motionless, the figure of the man who had refused, the weazened face of
+Land Man Bud Smith! All this they realised in that first second; then
+something that was almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man
+who had done this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the
+only means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two great
+revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now. As swiftly
+as that horrible thing had been done he had gone sober. Yet no man who
+saw him that instant feared him one whit less. Not a man present,
+believer or scoffer, but breathed a silent prayer. And there was reason.
+If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete, had possessed a real friend on earth, he
+possessed that one no more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but
+friends--there had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant
+of oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend; murdered
+him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his tracks. Not another
+had done this thing but he himself, he, Cowman Pete. Small wonder that
+they who watched this man prayed, that surreptitious glances sought for
+an avenue of escape where there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner
+went whiter and whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon
+the floor, there would be a reckoning,--and what that reckoning would be
+God alone could tell!
+
+And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary movement, he
+had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the
+breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at
+that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably,
+with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have
+forgotten the others' presence, seemed at their mercy; and to the mind
+of Walt Wagner there came a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand
+came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his
+hip; advanced and halted and advanced again, reached almost--almost--.
+
+"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a snarl: the
+snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your breeches or by
+God--"
+
+No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as though
+drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.
+
+"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had known was
+but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's son of you. Step
+lively."
+
+They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them
+there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a
+trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge,
+stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat
+market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the
+tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall,
+smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed,
+at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up
+they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons
+to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another
+time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that
+mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other
+menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous. It
+was ghastly in its confession of impotence, in its mute acquiescence to
+another's will.
+
+The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete
+did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling
+from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids
+narrowing, moment by moment. A long half minute he waited, gloating on
+their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption. A
+step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless. A
+hand tried the knob of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on
+the panel.
+
+Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but the
+narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the unshaven jaws
+tightened.
+
+Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.
+
+This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's hand moved to
+the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands," snarled a voice.
+
+Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted in air.
+
+"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another followed, until
+there were not two but twelve.
+
+"Make a move, damn you,"--one of the revolvers had returned to its
+holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,--"and I'll drop you, every
+cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I swing the next
+second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand
+returned to the holster. "Come in, you idiot," he challenged into the
+darkness without, "come in and take your medicine with the rest."
+
+Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open doorway,
+peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw nothing; then of a
+sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily, noiselessly on moccasined
+feet, entered a brand new actor, advanced half across the room, while
+his eyes adjusted themselves to the light, halted curiously. Back of him
+that instant the door again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty
+bolt grating in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded
+the snarl the others knew so well.
+
+"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin' here?"
+
+Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer turned. From
+his height of six feet one, an inch below that of Pete himself, he
+returned the other's look fixedly, without answer. He wore a soft
+flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown corduroy trousers, supported by
+a belt. Unconsciously, as though he were alone, he hitched the corduroys
+up over his narrow hips, in the motion of one who has been riding. That
+was all.
+
+Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable disfigurement.
+Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.
+
+"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his voice was
+almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to you. What the
+devil are you here for?"
+
+No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or a muscle.
+
+Ten seconds passed, fifteen.
+
+"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with an
+effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of a rusty
+spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the habit of doin'
+that either, pard." He halted and his great chest heaved with the effort
+of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned a bit forward. "Tell me what
+you want here, and tell me quick, or by the eternal I'll fill you so
+full of holes your own mother wouldn't recognise you."
+
+One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed
+upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the
+flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."
+
+At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant in the
+career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded room. No need to
+tell seven of them at least that it was a moment of life or death. If
+something, something which seemed inevitable, happened, if one of those
+curling, itching fingers on the triggers tightened, if but once that
+took place, their lives were not worth the wording of a curse. If once
+again that black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there
+would be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
+cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and man by
+man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The jaws of Bob
+Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from beneath their
+sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling
+pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips
+as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved,
+but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted
+from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like
+an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
+uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
+before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a
+somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the
+line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world.
+Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he--but for his clothes, his
+most intimate friend would not have recognised him at that moment. In
+him, blind, racking terror was personified. To have saved his soul he
+could not keep still, and his heavy walking shoes grated as they
+shuffled on the rough floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood
+in his mouth and trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes,
+like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
+constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.
+If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
+hundred times over and over that second.
+
+Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
+no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
+that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
+kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
+thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
+doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
+blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
+was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
+soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
+unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
+Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
+fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
+took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
+from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
+Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
+mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
+Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
+he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
+that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
+but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
+better--
+
+But we anticipate.
+
+"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.
+
+But he heard nothing:--yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe, catlike figure
+straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw this same figure look
+at him fully, squarely; as though for the first time really conscious of
+his presence. He saw two unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek
+bones, out of a copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them;
+hold them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
+owner of those eyes move--he did not hear, there was no sound, not even
+a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw--and move toward him. He
+saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to pass a prostrate body on
+the floor; always silent, but always coming, always drawing nearer. He
+saw this thing, he, Pete Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was
+terror. He knew what it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had
+sworn to do; the muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but
+he made no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
+unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this man. As
+his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
+preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the message
+that would make the muscles tense; but he could not. Those two eyes were
+holding him and he could not. All this he knew; and all the while that
+other was coming nearer and nearer. He began to have a horror of that
+coming that he could not halt. The great unshaven jaw of him worked;
+worked spasmodically, involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a
+sudden felt cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands.
+Something he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
+others like those six in the background, began to grip him; something
+that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden weak--weak as he
+had never felt before. And still those eyes were upon him, still that
+dark face came closer and closer. Once more his brain sent the message
+to kill, once more he battled against the inevitable; and that message
+was the last. There was no more response than if he were clay, than if
+his muscles were the muscles of another man. In that instant, without
+the voicing of a word, the deed was done. That instant came the black
+chaotic abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence,
+his arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now, so
+near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace himself,
+tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming, which he read on the
+page of that other face. But he was too late. Watching, almost doubting
+their own eyes, the six saw the end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden
+clench, shoot out like a brown light. They heard an impact, and a second
+later the thud of a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter
+lift, stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
+for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck true.
+That was all.
+
+For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence, inaction. Then
+for the first time the victor turned, facing the spectators.
+Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an instant almost
+curiously,--but he did not smile. Twelve arms, that had forgotten to
+lower, were still in the air--but he did not smile. Instead he sought
+out the stranger in knickerbockers and blouse.
+
+"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to the B.B.
+ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this he?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+Well out upon the prairie, clear of the limits of the tiny town, two men
+were headed due west, into the night, apparently into the infinite.
+There was no moon, but here, with nothing to cast a shadow, it was not
+dark. The month was late October, and a suggestion of frost was in the
+air: on the grass blades of the low places, was actually present. As was
+all but usual at that day, the direction they were going bore no trace
+of a road; but the man astride the vicious-looking roan cayuse who led
+the way, the same copper-brown man with the corduroys of Bob Manning's
+store, showed no hesitation. Like a hound, he seemed to discern
+landmarks where none were visible to the eye. He rode without saddle or
+blanket, or spur, or quirt; yet, though he had not spoken a word from
+the moment they had started, the roan with the tiny ears had not broken
+its steady, swinging, seemingly interminable lope, had scarcely appeared
+conscious of his presence. Almost as unit seemed this beast and human.
+It was as though the man were born in his place, as though, like a
+sailor on a tiny boat, accustomed through a lifetime to a rolling,
+uncertain equilibrium, the adjustment thereto had become involuntary as
+a heart beat, instinctive as breathing. A splendid picture he made there
+in the starlight and the solitude; but of it the man who followed was
+oblivious. Of one thing alone he was conscious, and that was that he was
+very tired; weary from the effect of an unusual exercise, doubly
+exhausted in the reaction from excitement passed. With an effort he
+urged his own horse alongside the leader, drew rein meaningly.
+
+"Let's hold up a bit," he protested. "I've come twenty-five miles to-day
+already, and I'm about beat." He slapped the breast pocket of his coat a
+bit obviously, and as his companion slowed to a walk, produced a
+silver-mounted, seal-covered flask and proffered it at arm's length.
+"The cork unscrews to the left," he explained suggestively.
+
+The dark figure of the guide made no motion of acceptance, did not even
+glance around.
+
+"Thanks, but I never drink," he declined.
+
+"Not even to be sociable,"--the hand was still extended,--"not when I
+ask you as--a friend?"
+
+"I am a Sioux," simply. "I have found that liquor is not good for an
+Indian."
+
+For a second the white man hesitated; then with something akin to a
+flush on his face, he returned the flask to his pocket untasted.
+
+Again, without turning, the other observed the motion.
+
+"Pardon me, but I did not mean to prevent you."
+
+He spoke stiffly, almost diffidently, as on unused to speech with
+strangers, unused to speech at all; but without a trace of embarrassment
+or of affectation.
+
+"I do not judge others. I merely know my people--and myself."
+
+Again the stranger hesitated, and again his face betrayed him. He had
+scratched an aborigine, and to his surprise was finding indications of a
+man.
+
+"I guess I can get along without it," shortly. "I--" he caught himself
+just in time from framing a self-extenuation. "I didn't have time--back
+there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for what you did. I wish to
+do so now." He was looking at the other squarely, as the smart civilian
+observes the derelict who has saved his life in a runaway. Already,
+there under the stars, it was difficult to credit to the full that
+fantastic scene of an hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real
+man, of condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a
+nasty mess, and I appreciate it."
+
+No answer. No polite lie, no derogation of self or of what had been
+done. Just silence, attentive, but yet silence.
+
+For the third time the white man hesitated, and for the third time his
+face shaded red; consciously and against his will. Even the starlight
+could not alter the obtrusive fact that he had cut a sorry figure in the
+late drama, and his pride was sore. Extenuation, dissimulation even,
+would have been a distinct solace. Looking at the matter now, the
+excitement past, palliation for what he had done was easy, almost
+logical. He had not alone conformed. He had but done, without
+consideration, as the others with him had done. But even if it were not
+so, back in the land from which he had come, a spade was not always so
+called. His colour went normal at the recollection. The habitual, the
+condescending pressed anew to the fore.
+
+He inspected the silent figure at his side ingenuously, almost
+quizzically; as in his schoolboy days he had inspected his plodding
+master of physics before propounding a query no mortal could answer.
+
+"I know I waved the white flag back there as hard as any of them," he
+proffered easily. "I'm not trying to clear myself; but between you and
+me, don't you think that Pete was merely bluffing, there at the end when
+you came?" The speaker shifted sideways on the saddle, until his weight
+rested on one leg, until he faced the other fair. "The fellow was drunk,
+irresponsibly drunk, at first, when the little chap stirred him up; but
+afterwards, when he was sober.... On the square, what do you think he
+would have done if--if you hadn't happened in?"
+
+For so long that Craig fancied he had not given attention to the
+question, the guide did not respond, did not stir in his seat; then
+slowly, deliberately, he turned half about, turned and for the first
+time in the journey met the other's eyes. Even then he did not speak;
+but so long as he lived, times uncounted in his after life, Clayton
+Craig remembered that look; remembered it and was silent, remembered it
+with a tingling of hot blood and a mental imprecation--for as indelibly
+as a red-hot iron seals a brand on a maverick, that look left its
+impress. No voice could have spoken as that simple action spoke, no
+tongue thrust could have been so pointed. With no intent of discourtesy,
+no premeditated malice was it given; and therein lay the fine sting, the
+venom. It was unconscious as a breath, unconscious as nature's joy in
+springtime; yet in the light of after events, it stood out like a signal
+fire against the blackness of night, as the beginning of an enmity more
+deadly than death itself, that lasted into the grave and beyond. For
+that silent, unwavering look set them each, the red man and the white,
+in their niche; placed them with an assurance that was final. It was a
+questioning, analytic look, yet, unconcealed, it bore the tolerance of a
+strong man for a weak. Had that look been a voice, it would have spoken
+one word, and that word was "cad."
+
+For a moment the two men sat so, unconscious of time, unconscious of
+place; then of a sudden, to both alike, the present returned--and again
+that return was typical. As deliberately as he had moved previously, the
+Indian faced back. His left arm, free at his side, hung loose as before.
+His right, that held the reins, lay motionless on the pony's mane. In no
+detail did he alter, nor in a muscle. By his side, the white man
+stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit, until his
+horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation, sent the rowels of
+his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank, with a curse held the
+frightened beast down to a walk. That was all, a secondary lapse, a
+burst of flowing, irresponsible passion like a puff of burning
+gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was enough. In that second was told
+the tale of a human life. In that and in the surreptitious sidelong
+glance following, that searched for an expression in the boyishly soft
+face of his companion. But the Indian was looking straight before him,
+looking as one who has seen nothing, heard nothing; and, silent as
+before the interruption, they journeyed on.
+
+A half hour slipped by, a period wherein the horses walked and galloped,
+and walked again, ere the white man forgot, ere the instinct of
+companionship, the necessity of conversation, urban-fostered, gained
+mastery. Then as before, he looked at the other surreptitiously, through
+unconsciously narrowed lids.
+
+"I haven't yet asked your name?" he formalised baldly, curtly.
+
+The guide showed no surprise, no consciousness of the long silence
+preceding.
+
+"The Sioux call me Ma-wa-cha-sa: the ranchers, How Landor."
+
+Craig dropped the reins over his saddle and fumbled in his pockets.
+
+"The Indian word has a meaning, I presume?"
+
+"Translated into English, it would be 'the lost pappoose.'"
+
+The eyebrows of the Easterner lifted; but he made no comment.
+
+"You have been with my uncle, with Mr. Landor, I mean, long?"
+
+"Since I can remember--almost."
+
+The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor produced a
+pipe and lit it. It took three matches.
+
+"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting a girl.
+Bess he called her, was it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in getting it
+alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking out of doors.
+
+"Do you like this country, this--desert?" he digressed suddenly.
+
+"It is the only one I know."
+
+"You mean know well, doubtless?"
+
+"I have never been outside the State."
+
+Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was habitual.
+
+"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere that it
+were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern cemetery than
+to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning to believe it."
+
+No comment.
+
+"I suppose you will leave though, some time," pressed the visitor. "You
+certainly don't intend to vegetate here always?"
+
+"I never expect to leave. I was born here. I shall die here."
+
+Once more the shoulders of the Easterner lifted in mute thanksgiving of
+fundamental difference. Of a sudden, for some indefinite reason, he felt
+more at ease in his companion's presence. For the time being the sense
+of antagonism became passive. What use, after all, was mere physical
+courage, if one were to bury it in a houseless, treeless waste such as
+this? The sense of aloofness, of tranquil superiority, returned. He even
+felt a certain pleasure in questioning the other; as one is interested
+in questioning a child. Bob Manning's store and Pete Sweeney were
+temporarily in abeyance.
+
+"Pardon me, if I seem inquisitive," he prefaced, "but I'll probably be
+here a month or so, and we'll likely see a good deal of each other. Are
+you married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will be, though." It was the ultimatum of one unaccustomed to
+contradiction. "No man could live here alone. He'd go insane."
+
+"I eat at the ranch house sometimes, but I live alone."
+
+"You won't do so, though, always." Again it was the voice of finality.
+
+The Indian looked straight ahead into the indefinite distance where the
+earth and sky met.
+
+"No, I shall not do so always," he corroborated.
+
+"I thought so." It was the tolerant approval of the prophet verified.
+"I'd be doing the same thing myself if I lived here long. Conformity's
+in the air. I felt it the moment I left the railroad and struck
+this--wilderness." Once again the unconscious shoulder shrug. "It's an
+atavism, this life. I've reverted a generation already. It's only a
+question of time till one would be back among the cave-dwellers. The
+thing's in the air, I say."
+
+Again no comment. Again for any indication he gave, the Indian might not
+have heard.
+
+Craig straightened, as one conscious that he was talking over his
+companion's head.
+
+"When, if I may ask, is it to be, your marriage, I mean?" he returned.
+"While I am here?"
+
+For an instant the other's eyes dropped until they were hid beneath the
+long lashes, then they returned to the distance as before.
+
+"It will be soon. Three weeks from to-day."
+
+"And at the ranch, I presume? My uncle will see to that, of course."
+
+"Yes, it will be at the ranch."
+
+"Good! I was wondering if anything would be doing here while I was
+here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and adjusted
+the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do you--your
+people--celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a bit ignorant on
+the point."
+
+"Celebrate? I don't think I understand." The Easterner glanced at his
+companion suspiciously but the other man was still looking straight
+ahead into the distance.
+
+"You have a dance, or a barbecue or--or something of that sort, don't
+you? It's to be an Indian wedding, is it not?"
+
+Pat, pat went the horses' feet on the prairie sod. While one could count
+ten slowly there was no other sound.
+
+"No, there will be no dance or barbecue or anything out of the ordinary,
+so far as I know," said a low voice then. "It will not be an Indian
+wedding."
+
+Craig hesitated. An instinct told him he had gone far enough. Lurking
+indefinite in the depths of that last low-voiced answer was a warning, a
+challenge to a trespasser; but something else, a thing which a lifetime
+of indulgence had made almost an instinct, prevented his heeding. He was
+not accustomed to being denied, this man; and there was no contesting
+the obvious fact that now a confidence was being withheld. The latent
+antagonism aroused with a bound at the thought. Something more than mere
+curiosity was at stake, something which he magnified until it obscured
+his horizon, warped hopelessly his vision of right or wrong. He was of
+the conquering Anglo-Saxon race, and this other who refused him was an
+Indian. Racial supremacy itself hung in the balance: the old, old issue
+of the white man and the red. Back into the stirrup went the leg that
+hung over the saddle. Involuntarily as before he stiffened.
+
+"Why, is it not to be an Indian wedding?" he queried directly. "You
+seemed a bit ago rather proud of your pedigree." A trace of sarcasm
+crept into his voice at the thinly veiled allusion. "Have you forsaken
+entirely the customs of your people?"
+
+Pat, pat again sounded the horses' feet. The high places as well as the
+low bore their frost blanket now, and the dead turf cracked softly with
+every step.
+
+"No, I have not forsaken the customs of my people."
+
+"Why then in this instance?" insistently. "At least be consistent, man.
+Why in this single particular and no other?"
+
+The hand on the neck of the cayuse tightened, tightened until the tiny
+ears of the wicked little beast went flat to its head; then of a sudden
+the grip loosened.
+
+"Why? The answer is simple. The lady who is to be my wife is not an
+Indian."
+
+For an instant Craig was silent, for an instant the full meaning of that
+confession failed in its appeal; then of a sudden it came over him in a
+flood of comprehension. Very, very far away now, banished into remotest
+oblivion, was Pete Sweeney. Into the same grave went any remnants of
+gratitude to the other man that chanced to remain. Paramount, beckoning
+him on, one thought, one memory alone possessed his brain: the
+recollection of that look the other had given him, that look he could
+never forget nor forgive. "Since you have told me so much," he
+challenged "you will probably have no objection to telling me the lady's
+name. Who is it to be?"
+
+Silence fell upon them. Far in the distance, so far that had the white
+man seen he would have thought it a star, a light had come into being.
+Many a time before the little roan had made this journey. Many a time he
+had seen that light emerge from the surface of earth. To him it meant
+all that was good in life: warmth, food, rest. The tiny head shook
+impatiently, shifted sideways with an almost human question to his rider
+at the slowness of the pace, the delay.
+
+"That light you see there straight ahead is in the ranch house,"
+digressed the Indian. "It is four miles away."
+
+Again it was the warning, not a suggestion, but positive this time; and
+again it passed unheeded.
+
+"You have forgotten to answer my question," recalled Craig.
+
+Swift as thought the Indian shifted in his seat, shifted half about;
+then as suddenly he remembered.
+
+"No, I have not forgotten," he refuted. "You tell me you have already
+heard of Bess Landor. It is she I am to marry."
+
+At last he had spoken, had given his confidence to this hostile stranger
+man; not vauntingly or challengingly, but simply as he had spoken his
+name. Against his will he had done this thing, despite a reticence no
+one who did not understand Indian nature could appreciate. Then at
+least it would not have taken a wise man to hold aloof. Then at least
+common courtesy would have called a halt. But Clayton Craig was neither
+wise nor courteous this night. He was a great, weary, passionate child,
+whose pride had been stung, who but awaited an opportunity to retaliate.
+And that opportunity had been vouchsafed. Moreover, irony of fate, it
+came sugar coated. Until this night he had been unconscious as a babe of
+racial prejudice. Now of a sudden, it seemed a burning issue, and he its
+chosen champion. His blood tingled at the thought; tingled to the tips
+of his well-manicured fingers. His clean-shaven chin lifted in air until
+his lashes all but met.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me,"--his voice was a bit higher than normal and
+unnaturally tense,--"do you mean to tell me that you, an Indian, are to
+marry a white girl--and she my cousin by adoption? Is this what you
+mean?"
+
+Seconds passed.
+
+"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss the matter
+further."
+
+"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the family it is
+my right, and I demand an answer."
+
+Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would not be long
+until they were home now.
+
+"Yes," answered the Indian.
+
+"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again the
+silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."
+
+Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a red flood,
+that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about him.
+
+"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I live, and
+if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is white, you'll not
+marry her. If it's the last act of my life, I'll prevent you!"
+
+The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not. Beat, beat,
+beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until the hot blood fairly
+roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not until the challenge was spoken
+did he realise to the full what he had done, that inevitable as time
+there would be a reckoning. Now in a perfect inundation, the knowledge
+came over him, and unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move.
+Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
+reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's store,
+the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding thereto,
+recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now
+irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might against the feeling, a
+terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind,
+unreasoning, primitive terror. But one impulse possessed him: to be
+away, to escape the outburst he instinctively knew was but delayed. In
+an abandon he leaned far forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur
+dug viciously into his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan
+from the surprised beast, a forward leap--then a sudden jarring halt.
+As by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another hand.
+
+"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do that. It will
+only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the same hand, stopped
+there on the prairie. The riders were face to face. "I have tried to
+prevent this, for the sake of the future, I have tried; but you have
+made an understanding between us inevitable, and therefore it may as
+well be now." The voice halted and the speaker looked at his companion
+fixedly, minutely, almost unbelievingly. "I know I am not as you white
+men," went on the voice. "I have been raised with you, lived my life so
+far with you; yet I am different. No Indian would have done as you have
+done. I cannot understand it. Not three hours ago I saved your life. It
+was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and yet already you have
+forgotten, have done--what you have done." So far he had spoken slowly,
+haltingly; with the effort of one to whom words were difficult. Now the
+effort passed. "I say I cannot understand it," he repeated swiftly. "Mr.
+Landor has been very good to me. For his sake I would like to forgive
+what you have done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it;
+but I cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your people
+have conquered my people, have penned them up in reservations to die;
+but that is neither your doing nor mine. We are here as man to man. As
+man to man you have offered me insult--and without reason." For the
+first time a trace of passion came into the voice, into the soft brown
+face. "I ask you to take back what you have just said. I do not warn
+you. If you do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to
+take it back."
+
+He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips were
+twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.
+
+Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
+perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's mane.
+
+"Will you not take it back?" he asked.
+
+Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+That was all--and it was not all. For an instant after the Easterner had
+spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they were, face to face;
+then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a very different scene: one
+as old and as new as the history of man. Just what happened in that
+moment that intervened neither the white man nor the red could have
+told. It was a lapse, an oblivion; a period of primitive physical
+dominance, of primitive human hate. When they awoke--when the red man
+awoke--they were flat on earth, the dust of the prairie in their
+nostrils, the short catch of their breath in each other's ears, out one,
+the dark-skinned, was above. One, again the dark-skinned, had his
+fingers locked tight on the other's throat. This they knew when they
+awoke.
+
+A second thereafter they lay so, flaming eyes staring into their
+doubles; then suddenly the uppermost man broke free, arose. In his ears
+was the diminishing patter of their horses' hoofs. They were alone there
+on the prairie, under the smiling satiric stars. One more moment he
+stood so; he did not turn; he did not assist the other to rise; then he
+spoke.
+
+"I do not ask your pardon for this," he said. "You have brought it upon
+yourself. Neither do I ask a promise. Do as you please. Try what you
+have suggested if you wish. I am not afraid. Follow me," and,
+long-strided, impassive as though nothing had happened, he moved ahead
+into the distance where in the window of the Buffalo Butte ranch house
+glowed a light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+It was very late, so late that the sun entering at the south windows of
+the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of his bed when
+Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long been over, but
+throughout the unplastered ranch house the suggestion of coffee and the
+tang of bacon still lingered. At home those odours would have aroused
+slight sensations of pleasure in the man, even at this time of day; but
+now and here they were distinctly welcome, distinctly inviting. With the
+aid of a tin pail of water and a cracked queensware bowl, he made a
+hasty toilet, soliloquised an opinion of a dressing-room without a
+mirror, and descended the creaking stairs to the level below.
+
+The main floor of the ranch house contained but three rooms. Of these,
+it was the living-room which he entered. No one was about. The pipe
+which he had smoked with his uncle before retiring the night before
+remained exactly as he had put it down. His cap and gloves were still
+beside it. Obviously there was no possibility of breakfast here, and he
+moved toward the adjoining room. On his way he passed a hook where upon
+arrival he had hung his riding blouse. Telltale with its litter of dust
+and grass stems, it hung there now; and unconsciously he scowled at the
+recollection it suggested.
+
+Opening the door, he was face to face with a little fast-ticking cheaply
+ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven, and the man grimaced
+tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human was present, but here the
+indications for material sustenance were more hopeful. It was the
+dining-room, and, although in the main the table had been cleared, at
+one end a clean plate, flanked by a bone-handled knife and fork and an
+old-fashioned castor, still remained. Moreover, from the third room, the
+kitchen, he could now hear sounds of life. The fire in a cook-stove was
+crackling cheerily. Above it, distinct through the thin partition, came
+the sound of a girlish voice singing. There was no apparent effort at
+time or at tune; it was uncultivated as the grass land all about; yet in
+its freshness and unconsciousness it was withal distinctly pleasing. It
+was a happy voice, a contented voice. Instinctively it bore a suggestion
+of home and of quiet and of peace; like a kitten with drowsy eyes
+purring to itself in the sunshine. A moment the visitor stood silent,
+listening; then, his heavy shoes clumping on the uncarpeted floor, he
+moved toward it. Instantly the song ceased, but he kept on, pushed open
+the door gently, stepped inside.
+
+"Good-morning!" he began, and then halted in an uncertainty he seldom
+felt among women folk. He had met no one but his uncle the previous
+night. Inevitably the preceding incident with his guide had produced a
+mental picture. It was with the expectation of having this conception
+personified that he had entered, to it he had spoken; then had come the
+revelation, the halt.
+
+"Good-morning!" answered a voice, one neither abnormally high nor
+repressedly low, the kind of voice the man seldom heard in the society
+to which he was accustomed--one natural, unaffected, frankly interested.
+The owner thereof came forward, held out her hand. Two friendly brown
+eyes smiled up at him from the level of his shoulder. "I know without
+your introducing yourself that you're Mr. Craig," she welcomed. "Uncle
+Landor told me before he left what to expect. He and Aunt Mary had to go
+to town this morning. Meanwhile I'm the cook, and at your service," and
+she smiled again.
+
+For far longer than civility actually required, to the extreme limit of
+courtesy and a shade beyond, in, fact, until it unmistakably sought to
+be free, Clayton Craig retained that proffered hand. Against all the
+canons of good breeding he stared. Answering, a trace of colour,
+appearing at the brown throat, mounted higher and higher, reached the
+soft oval cheeks, journeyed on.
+
+"I beg your pardon," apologised the man. He met the accusing eyes
+fairly, with a return of his old confidence. "You had the advantage of
+me, you know. I was not forewarned what to expect."
+
+It was the breaking of the ice, and they laughed together. The girl had
+been working with arms bare to the elbow, and as now of a sudden she
+rolled the sleeves down Craig laughed again; and in unconscious echo a
+second later she joined. Almost before they knew it, there alone in the
+little whitewashed kitchen with the crackling cook-stove and the
+sunshine streaming in through the tiny-paned windows, they were friends.
+All the while the girl went about the task of preparing a belated
+breakfast they laughed and chatted--and drew nearer and nearer. Again
+while Craig ate and at his command the girl sat opposite to entertain
+him, they laughed and chatted. Still later, the slowly eaten meal
+finished, while Elizabeth Landor washed the dishes and put everything
+tidy and Craig from his seat on the bottom of an inverted basket
+reversed the position of entertainer, they laughed and chatted. And
+through it all, openly when possible, surreptitiously when it were wise,
+the man gave his companion inspection. And therein he at first but
+followed an instinct. Very, very human was Clayton Craig of Boston,
+Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and very, very good to look upon was
+brown-eyed, brown-skinned, brown-haired Elizabeth Landor. Neither had
+thought of evil, had other thought than the innocent pleasure of the
+moment that first morning while the tiny clock on the wall measured off
+the swift-moving minutes. Good it is to be alive in sun-blessed South
+Dakota on a frosty warm October day, doubly good when one is young; and
+these two, the man and the girl, were both young. Months it takes, years
+sometimes, in civilisation, with barriers of out on the prairie, alone,
+with the pulse of nature throbbing, throbbing, insistently all about,
+the process is very swift, so swift that an hour can suffice. No, not
+that first hour wherein unconsciously they became friends, did the angel
+with the big book record evil opposite the name of Clayton Craig; not
+until later, not until he had had time to think, not until--.
+
+But again we anticipate.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," the girl had ejaculated, "now when you have."
+At last the work was over, and in unconscious comradery they sat side by
+side on the broad south doorstep; the sun shining down full upon their
+uncovered heads--smiling an unconscious blessing more potent than
+formula of clergy. She was looking out as she spoke, out over the level
+earth dazzling with its dancing heat waves, mysterious in its suggestion
+of unfathomable silence, of limitless distance. "It's such a little time
+now before I am going away, and Uncle Landor has talked of you so much,
+particularly of late." A pause, a hesitating pause. "I suppose you'll
+laugh at me, but I hope you'll stay here, for a time, anyway, after I'm
+gone."
+
+Clayton Craig, the listener, was not gazing out over the prairie. The
+object at which he was looking was very near; so near that he had leaned
+a trifle back the better to see, to watch. He shifted now until his
+weight rested on his elbow, his face on his hand.
+
+"You are going away, you say?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes. I supposed you knew--that Uncle had told you." Despite an effort,
+the tiny ears were reddening. She was very human also, was Elizabeth
+Landor. "I am to be married soon."
+
+"Married?" A long pause. "And to whom, please?" The voice was very low.
+
+Redder than before burned the tiny ears. No more than she could keep
+from breathing could she prevent telling her secret, her happiness, this
+prairie girl; no more than she could prevent that accompanying telltale
+scarlet flood.
+
+"You didn't know it, but you've met him already," she confided. "You met
+him last night." To her at this time there was no need of antecedent.
+There was but one to whom the pronoun might refer. "It was he who showed
+you here--How Landor."
+
+For a long time--for he was thinking now, was Clayton Craig, and did not
+answer--there was silence. Likewise the girl, her confession voiced,
+said no more; but her colour came and went expectantly, tantalisingly,
+and the eyes that still looked into the distance were unconscious of
+what they saw. From his place the man watched the transparent pantomime,
+read its meaning, stored the picture in his memory; but he did not
+speak. A minute had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was
+thinking of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had
+received--and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl, but it
+was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big shaggy-haired
+collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his aimless wandering about
+the place to thrust a friendly muzzle into the stranger's hand; but even
+then he did not respond. For almost the first time in his irresolute
+life a definite purpose was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig,
+and little things passed him by. A third minute passed. The colour had
+ceased playing on the face he watched now. The silence had performed its
+mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was
+prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the volume and
+made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke.
+
+"I met him last, night, you say?" It was the hesitating voice of one
+whose memory is treacherous, "I have been trying to recall--Certainly
+you must be mistaken. I saw no one last night except Uncle Landor and an
+Indian cow-puncher with a comic opera name." He met the brown eyes that
+were of a sudden turned upon him, frankly, innocently. "You must be
+mistaken," he repeated.
+
+Searchingly, at first suspiciously, then hesitatingly, with a return of
+the colour that came as easily as a prairie wind stirs the down of a
+milk-weed plant, Elizabeth Landor returned his look. It was an instinct
+that at last caused her eyes to drop.
+
+"No, I was not mistaken," she voiced. "How Landor is an Indian. It is he
+I meant."
+
+For a carefully timed pause, the space in which one recovers from
+hearing the unbelievable, Craig was silent; then swiftly, contritely he
+roused. "I beg a thousand pardons," he apologised. "I meant no
+disrespect. I never dreamed--Forgive me." He had drawn very near. "I
+wouldn't hurt you for the world. I--Please forgive me." He was silent.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive." The girl's colour was normal again and she
+met his eyes frankly, gravely.
+
+"But there is," protested the man humbly. "Because he happened to be
+minus a collar and had a red skin--I was an ass; an egregious,
+blundering ass."
+
+"Don't talk that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know him, was all.
+If you had been acquainted all your life as I have--" Against her will
+she was lapsing into a defence, and she halted abruptly. "You were not
+at fault."
+
+Again for a carefully timed pause the man was silent. Then abruptly,
+obviously, he changed the subject.
+
+"You said you were going away," he recalled. "Is it to be a wedding
+journey?"
+
+"Yes," tensely.
+
+"Tell me of it, please; I wish to hear."
+
+"You would not be interested."
+
+"Elizabeth--" syllabalised, reproachfully. "Am I not your cousin?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Haven't you forgiven me yet?" The voice was very low. Its owner was
+again very near.
+
+"You'd laugh at me if I told you," repressedly. "You wouldn't
+understand."
+
+Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away--resumed the former position;
+the place from which, unobserved, he could himself watch.
+
+"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly, reluctantly.
+Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right. "Just the two of us
+are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse and a tent and How's camp
+kit and stay out there alone until winter comes." Against her will she
+was warming to the subject, was unconsciously painting a picture to
+please the solitary listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and
+plenty to read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never
+carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game whenever we
+want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when we please." Again
+unconsciously she glanced at the listener to see the effect of her art.
+"We'll be together, How and I, and free--free as sunshine. There'll be
+nothing but winter, and that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's
+what I've always wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes
+away every year, and he's promised this once to take me along."
+Suddenly, almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her
+companion. "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.
+
+"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of listlessness
+in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want anything at any time you
+can go to the nearest ranch house. One always does forget something you
+know."
+
+"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly. "That's the
+best of it all. The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch that way, to the
+west, until you get to the Hills. We probably won't see another human
+being while we're gone. We'll be as much alone as though we were the
+only two people in the world."
+
+Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.
+
+"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I was
+thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for breakfast.
+And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly if I were changing
+my residence so frequently." He lifted from his elbow. "Pardon me again,
+though," he added contritely. "I always do see the prosaic side of
+things." The smile vanished, and for the first time he looked away,
+absently, dreamily. As he looked his face altered, softened almost
+unbelievably. "It would be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be
+alone, absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for
+most, the single person who always had the same likes and dislikes, the
+same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of such a thing before; it
+would be wonderful, wonderful!"
+
+No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face and her
+eyes were bright.
+
+"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig. Warmer and
+warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always envy other
+people the things we haven't ourselves; and I--" He checked himself
+abruptly.
+
+"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate, sympathetic,
+unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land. Just this she was; and
+another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad. Inevitably
+she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird
+responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.
+
+"Maybe it's true now--you think it is," she halted; "but there'll be a
+time--"
+
+"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed shortly,
+unmusically. "It's merely my lot."
+
+The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly for her
+as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it
+altered now under the cloud of another's unhappiness. But one suggestion
+presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her
+child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.
+
+The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.
+
+"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought differently,
+when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl I
+understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter how well
+I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch, never become
+necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm the only one of my
+kind, that I must go through life so--alone."
+
+Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as one child
+presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her companion's hands
+lay listless on his knee, and instinctively, compellingly, she placed
+her own upon it, pressed it softly.
+
+"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my own love,
+my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply couldn't help it,
+it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so sorry."
+
+Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at her. When
+he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his voice; but that
+was all.
+
+"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't know how
+lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a bit ago, shows
+me the other side of life, the happy side; and I wish I were dead." A
+mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The future looks so blank, so
+hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to me. Anything else would be
+preferable, anything. It's so to-day, now." He halted and of a sudden
+turned away so that his face was concealed. "God forgive me, but I wish
+it were over with, that I were dead!"
+
+"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful entirely, the
+girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could not prevent were in
+the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so good to be alive. You
+can't mean it. You can't."
+
+"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up. "What's
+the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else cares, ever will
+care. What's the use--"
+
+"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all of us here
+care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear to hear you." She
+halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose hinderingly in her throat.
+"I feel somehow as though I was to blame, as though if you should mean
+what you said, should--should--" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes
+glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her fingers
+locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless; then of a
+sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had suggested came
+over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve. Not the faintest
+suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his honesty, occurred to her, not
+the remotest doubt. In all her life no one had ever lied to her; she had
+never consciously lied to another. The world of subterfuge was an unread
+book. This man had intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant
+it. He would do it, unless--unless--
+
+"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still lying idle
+on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it, held it prisoner
+between her own. It was not a suggestion she was combating now. It was a
+certainty. "Promise me you won't do this thing." She shook the hand
+insistently; at first gently, then, as there was no response, almost
+roughly. "Tell me you won't do it. Promise me; please, please!"
+
+"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless absolutely; I
+never realised before how useless. You didn't intend to do it, but
+you've made me see it all to-day. I don't blame you, but I can't
+promise. I can't."
+
+Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a mountain,
+as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the prairie. For
+seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out, distorted seconds;
+then, interrupting, something happened. There was not a cloud in the
+sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun still shone bright as before;
+yet distinctly, undeniably, the man felt a great wet spattering drop
+fall from above upon his hand--and a moment later another. He glanced
+up, hesitated; sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of
+the little woman already standing.
+
+"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe it." He took
+her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's length; and the
+angel who watched halted with pen in air, indecisive. "We've known each
+other such a ludicrously short time--but a few hours. Can it be possible
+that you really meant that, that at least to someone it does really
+matter?" It was his turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no
+answer came. "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess,
+tell me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained
+its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively sought
+that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his ancestors, had
+done to similar chins in their day, lifted it until their eyes met. Had
+he been facing his Maker that moment and the confession his last,
+Clayton Craig could not have told whether it were passion or art, that
+action. "Tell me, Bess girl, is it mere pity, or do you really care?"
+
+Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers, meeting by
+chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's mind in the glitter
+of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so fantastic, so unexpected
+that for a moment the girl did not realise, did not understand. For an
+instant she stood so, perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and
+wider, opening wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what
+she feared--and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking,
+ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength of a
+captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second longer she stood
+there, not her chin alone, but her whole body trembling; then without a
+word she turned, mounted the single step, fumbled at the knob of the
+door. "Bess," said the man softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not
+glance back nor speak, and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard
+her slowly climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close
+behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain
+the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois
+and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception
+to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made
+his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob
+Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the
+free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held
+true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
+soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked
+above the knob of the door before him.
+
+"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like a strip
+of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the entrance, found it
+locked, and in lieu of entering tested the badge of sorrow between thumb
+and finger. "Pant stuff, sure enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob
+himself, or they'd have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now
+what in thunder, I wonder--"
+
+He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house. Like the
+general store, the door was closed, and just above the catch, flapping
+languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the mate to the black rag
+dangling at his back. The spectator's shaggy eyebrows tightened in
+genuine surprise, and with near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts
+of the short row of other buildings along the street.
+
+"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
+evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse with
+carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted, indecisive, and
+for the first time became conscious that not a human being was in sight.
+In the street before him a pair of half-grown cockerels with ludicrously
+long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from
+amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's
+meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
+physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of
+the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the
+present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet.
+Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin
+prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had
+hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal
+recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the
+sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead--.
+
+"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though another were
+listening. "There must have been a general cleanup this time. I fear
+that the report of my respected nephew--" He checked himself suddenly, a
+bit guiltily. Even though no one was listening, he was loath to voice an
+inevitable conclusion. Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at
+last, and, leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud
+citizens denominated the residence quarter--a handful of unpainted
+weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
+surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now, and as
+he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious satisfaction at
+the relief. At the second domicile, a residence as nearly like the first
+as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he turned in at the lane leading
+to the house unhesitatingly, and without form of knocking opened the
+door and stepped inside.
+
+The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its uncarpeted
+cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished, smoke-tinted walls. In it,
+to the casual observer, there were visible but four objects: an
+old-fashioned walnut desk that had once borne a top, but which did so no
+longer; two cane-bottomed chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one
+thereof, a man. The latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing
+an unshaven chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of
+which the lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie,
+and scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair
+was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though he
+looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the scrutiny,
+there was no salutation, not even when, without form of invitation, the
+rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and tossed his broad felt
+hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk. A moment they sat so, while
+with an effort the newcomer recovered his breath.
+
+"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated eventually. "I've
+noticed that the last place to look for a doctor is in the proximity of
+a funeral." He fumbled in his pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that
+in the other's mouth. "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather
+from the appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than
+ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face was
+concealed.
+
+"Rather," laconically.
+
+"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze had
+cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion appreciatively.
+"I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I think she can be trusted
+to attend to such little matters."
+
+Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes were
+observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two men known
+each other these five years.
+
+"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family," commented
+Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper, any time." Again
+the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't decided yet to prove the
+fact for yourself, have you?"
+
+Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that had
+brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent. Only too
+well he knew the signs--the good-natured satire that ill concealed a
+tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of trivialities that cleared the
+way later of non-essentials. In silence he waited; and, as he had known
+the moment that big figure appeared in the doorway, it came.
+
+Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as deliberately
+flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his side, inspected the
+burning tuck critically.
+
+"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow--an old fellow like
+myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his business as
+an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with canvas curtains such
+as you've seen me drive sometimes." The speaker paused a second to clear
+his throat. "Supposing this old fellow was just riding through the
+country easy, taking his time and with nothing particular on his mind,
+and all of a sudden he should feel as though someone had sneaked up and
+stuck him from behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should
+happen, and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go
+black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much later,
+and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig and the team
+stock still out in the middle of the prairie." Deliberately as it had
+left, the cigar returned to the speaker's lips, was puffed hard until
+it glowed furiously; and was again critically examined. "Supposing such
+a fat old fellow as myself should tell you this. As a doc and a
+specialist, would you think there was something worth while the matter
+with him?"
+
+Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his fingers
+sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a goodly collection
+of its mates, and the drooping eyelid tightened.
+
+"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the second time,
+and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking, should be spilled out
+and have to foot it home three miles. What would you think then?"
+
+One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash off his
+vest absently.
+
+"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.
+
+"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my nephew when
+the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I sent How over
+instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy to come a couple of
+weeks ago--that's when it caught me first."
+
+"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"
+
+Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the ranch. Mary'd
+have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out to shoot at a coyote,
+and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at the other explanatorily,
+deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's son and the only real relative I
+have, you know. I just asked him to come on general principles."
+
+Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he fumbled amid a
+litter of articles useful and useless, and, extracting a battered
+stethoscope, shifted his chair forward until it was close to the other
+and stuck the tiny tubes to his ears. Still without comment he opened
+the rancher's shirt, applied the instrument, listened, shifted it,
+listened, shifted and listened the third time--slid his chair back to
+the former position.
+
+"What else do you know?" he asked.
+
+Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.
+
+"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father went that
+way when he was younger than I am, and his father the same." The stogie
+had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a fresh one steadily. "I've
+been expecting it to catch up with me for years."
+
+"Your father died of it, you say?"
+
+"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in
+sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I
+remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed
+sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and
+Frances--that's my sister--were waiting, and they sent me running to
+call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself up and
+work. I was starved hungry, and I remember I hot-footed it proper
+upstairs to his den and threw open the door." Puff! puff! went the big
+stogie. "An Irish plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I
+recollect," he completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that
+day to this."
+
+"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.
+
+"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing the opening
+anthem at the time."
+
+The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared impassively out
+the single window. It faced the main street of the town.
+
+"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed evenly. "I
+see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's place."
+
+Landor did not look around.
+
+"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he recalled in mock
+sarcasm. "What I want to know is your opinion."
+
+"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.
+
+Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal agony.
+
+"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be before--" he
+halted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"before Bob and the rest
+will be doing that to me?"
+
+Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes beneath the
+other's drooping lids.
+
+"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.
+
+Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws closed
+tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned the other's
+gaze.
+
+"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed. "Tell me,
+and let's have it over with."
+
+For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black eyes
+bored the other through and through, at first impersonally, as, scalpel
+in hand, he would have studied a patient before the first incision in a
+major operation; then, as against the other's will, a great drop of
+sweat gathered on the broad forehead, personally, intimately.
+
+"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated evenly. He
+did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was about to say, did
+not qualify in advance by intimating that his prognosis might be wrong.
+"I think the next attack will be the last. Moreover, I believe it will
+come soon, very soon." Impassively as he had spoken, he produced a book
+of rice paper from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long
+fingers were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a
+machine. Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame
+was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly smoke
+separated him from the other.
+
+With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, passed his sleeve
+across his forehead clumsily.
+
+"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I said, I
+expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For the second time
+his cigar was dead, but he did not light it again. There was no need of
+subterfuge now. "I want you to do me a favour." He looked at the other
+steadily through the diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"
+
+"No," said Chantry.
+
+Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.
+
+"No!" he interrogated.
+
+"I said so."
+
+A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as, with an
+effort, he got to his feet.
+
+"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly. "I was
+labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."
+
+The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long fingers had
+locked over his knee. He did not move.
+
+"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am your friend
+that I will not promise."
+
+Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.
+
+"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm dense."
+
+"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one thing I
+can't promise you."
+
+Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.
+
+"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of your
+affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"
+
+"Yes. But how in the world--" "Don't ask it then, please," swiftly. He
+ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else, someone you've known
+for a long time."
+
+"I've known you for a long time--five years."
+
+"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry scouted the
+obvious. "If there should be need she could get a lawyer from the
+city--"
+
+"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to avoid.
+Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of taking care of
+themselves as they have of speaking Chinese. They'd be on the county
+inside a year, with no one interested to look out for them."
+
+"But How--"
+
+"He's as bad. He can ride a broncho, or stalk a sandhill crane where
+there isn't cover to hide your hat, or manage cattle, or stretch out in
+the sun and: dream; but business--He wouldn't know a bank cheque if he
+saw one; and, what's worse, he doesn't want to know."
+
+"Craig, then, your nephew--" It was not natural for Chantry to be
+perfunctory, and he halted.
+
+For a moment the big rancher was silent. In his lap his fingers met
+unconsciously, tip to tip, in the instinctive habit of age.
+
+"I anticipated that," he said wearily. "I realise it's the obvious thing
+to do. I never adopted How as I did the girl--I was willing to, but he
+didn't see the use--and so Craig's the only man kin I have." The life
+and magnetism, usually so noticeable in Landor's great figure, had
+vanished. It was merely an old man facing the end who settled listlessly
+into his seat. "I had big hopes of the boy. I hadn't seen him since he
+was a youngster, and Frances, while she lived, was always bragging about
+his doings. That's why I sent for him." Pat, pat went the big fingers in
+his lap against each other. "I've always felt that if worst came to
+worst the women folks would have someone practical to rely on; but
+somehow, when I saw him last night, from what he said and what he didn't
+say, from the way he acted and the way he explained--what happened here
+last evening--" The speaker caught himself. A trace of the old
+shrewdness crept into the grey eyes as he inspected his companion
+steadily. "I know How pretty well, and when someone intimates to me that
+he is a grand-stand player, or goes out of his way to pick a quarrel, or
+meddles with someone else's affairs--" Again the big man caught himself.
+The scrutiny became almost a petition. "I cut you off short about what
+went on here yesterday," he digressed. "I didn't want to hear. I guess I
+was afraid to hear. It's been foolish, I know, but I've depended a good
+deal upon the boy, and I'm afraid he's going to be a--disappointment."
+
+With the old machine-like precision Chantry rolled another cigarette,
+lit it, sent a great cloud of smoke tumbling up toward the ceiling. That
+was all.
+
+"You see for yourself how it is," said the rancher. "I wouldn't ask you
+again if there was anyone else I could go to; but there isn't. Maybe I'm
+only borrowing trouble, maybe there won't be anything for you or anyone
+to do; but it would be a big load off my mind to know that if anything
+should happen.--" He halted abruptly. It was not easy for this man to
+discuss his trouble, even to a friend. "It isn't such a big thing I'm
+asking," he hurried. "I'm sure if positions were reversed and you were
+to request me--"
+
+"I know you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I--" Of a sudden,
+interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin, ungainly figure in
+shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the point of caricature.
+Unconsciously he started pacing back and forth across the room,
+restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the years he had previously known
+the man had Landor seen him so, seen him other than the impassive,
+almost forbidding practitioner of a minute ago. For the time being his
+own trouble was forgotten in surprise, and he stared at the
+transformation almost unbelievingly. Back and forth, back and forth went
+the thin, ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved,
+paused at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a
+silhouette looking out over the desolate town. Watching, Landor shifted
+uncomfortably in his seat. Once he cleared his throat as if to speak. An
+instinct told him he should say something; but he was in the dark
+absolutely, and words would not come. Reaching over to the desk he took
+up his broad felt hat and sat twirling it in his fingers, waiting.
+
+As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his seat. His
+face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid drooped even more
+than normally.
+
+"I feel I owe you an apology," he said swiftly. "In a way we've been
+friends, and as you say, it's not a big thing you ask of me; but
+nevertheless I can't grant it. Please don't ask me."
+
+The hat in Landor's hands became still, significantly still.
+
+"I admit I don't understand," he accepted, "but of course if you feel
+that way, I shall not ask you again." Unconsciously a trace of the
+former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose heavily. "I think
+I'd better be going." His mouth twitched in an effort at pleasantry.
+"Mary'll be dying to give me the details."
+
+Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume his seat.
+Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest squarely.
+
+"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said repressedly.
+"Would you like to hear?"
+
+"Yes--if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to, however--"
+
+"No, I'd rather you--understood than to go that way." The doctor cleared
+his throat in the manner of one who smokes overmuch. "We all have our
+skeleton hid away somewhere, I suppose. At least I have mine, and it
+keeps bobbing out at times like this when I most wish--" He caught
+himself, met his companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you
+wondered why I ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried
+suddenly. "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
+don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there was
+something peculiar about it all?"
+
+"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving again. He
+had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it tolerantly, with a
+vague sense of commiseration--an attitude very similar to that with
+which the uninitiated observe a player at golf; but that there might be
+another, a sinister meaning--.
+
+"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem peculiar, now that
+you consider it?" The question came swiftly, tensely, with a
+significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell me, please."
+
+"Yes, perhaps; but--"
+
+"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but see." The
+speaker started anew the restless, aimless pace. "The country is full of
+us; all new countries are." He was still speaking hurriedly, tensely, as
+we tell of a murder or a ghastly tragedy; something which in duty we
+must confide, but which we hasten to have over. "It's easier to get here
+than to Mexico or to Canada, and until the country is settled, until
+people begin to suspect--" He halted suddenly opposite the other, his
+face deathly pale, deathly tortured. "In God's name, don't you
+understand now?" he questioned passionately. "Must I tell you in so many
+words why I refused, why I don't dare do anything else but refuse?"
+
+"No, you don't need to tell me." Absently, unconsciously, the rancher
+produced a red bandana handkerchief and wiped his face; then thrust it
+back into his pocket. "I think I understand at last." His eyes had
+dropped and he did not raise them again to his companion. "I'm sorry,
+very sorry, that I asked you; sorry most of all that--" He halted
+diffidently, his great hands hanging loose at his side, his broad
+shoulders drooping wearily. He was not glib of speech, at best, and this
+second blow was hard to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant,
+searching for words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the
+door. "I really must be going," he concluded.
+
+Chantry did not ask him to stay, made no motion to prevent his going.
+Tense, motionless, he stood where he had last paused, waited in silence
+until the visitor's hand was upon the knob.
+
+"Good-bye Landor," he said then simply.
+
+Not the words themselves, but something in the tone caused the rancher
+to halt, to look back.
+
+"Good-day, you mean, rather," he corrected.
+
+"No, good-bye. You will not see me again."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"No. I'm too much of a coward for that, or I should have done so long
+ago. I merely mean I'll move on to-morrow."
+
+Face to face the two men stood staring at each other. Seconds drifted
+by. It was the doctor who spoke at last.
+
+"God knows that if I could, I'd change with you even now, Landor," he
+said repressedly. "I'd change with you gladly." A moment he stood so,
+tense as a wire drawn to the point of breaking, ghastly tense; then of a
+sudden he went lax. Instinctively his fingers sought his pockets, and
+there where he stood he started swiftly to roll a cigarette.
+
+"Go, please," he requested. "Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+Eight miles out on the prairie, out of sight of the Buffalo Butte ranch
+house--save for a scattering herd of grazing cattle in the distance, and
+a hobbled mouse-coloured broncho feeding near at hand, out of sight of
+every living thing--a man lay stretched full length upon the ground. It
+was the time of day that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's
+store, and the broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to
+keep the glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket;
+an Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a blot
+of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his moccasined
+feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would have thought him
+asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes that looked forth
+motionless from beneath the hat brim, that apparently never for an
+instant left that scattering blot where, distorted, fantastic from
+distance and through the curling heat waves the herd grazed, were very
+wide awake indeed. They were not even drowsy or off guard. They were
+merely passive, absolutely passive. The whole body was passive,
+motionless, relaxed in every muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the
+marvel--to all save the thousandth human in this restless age, the
+impossibility. To be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely
+nothing, not even sleep--seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one
+of the most difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need
+is sufficient; but man, modern man--Here and there one retains the
+faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth; but
+here and there only. Yet it was such an one that lay alone out there on
+the Dakota prairie that October day; one who, as Craig had said, hinted
+unfortunately of comic opera, but who never, even in remotest
+conception, fancied that comic opera existed, a dreamer and yet,
+notwithstanding, a doer, an Indian, and still not an Indian;
+Ma-wa-cha-sa by name.
+
+With the approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now, wandering
+northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane and tail, set each
+individual hair of the little beast vibrating in unjustified ferocity;
+and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the brittle grass stalks at the
+man's feet with the muffled crackling of a far-distant prairie fire. The
+herd, a great machine cutting clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in
+its path, moved on and on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling
+country, and passed slowly from view; then, still moving forward, took
+shape on the summit of the next rise, more distinct than before.
+
+Time passed as the man lay there, time that to another would have been
+interminable, that to him was apparently unnoted. Gradually, as the full
+heat of the day approached, the breeze became stronger, set the heat
+waves dancing to swifter measure, sang audibly in the listener's ears
+its siren song of prairie and of peace. The broncho, its appetite
+temporarily satisfied, lay down fair in its tracks, groaned lazily in
+the action, and shut its eyes. It was the rest time of the wild, and the
+same instinct appealed to the leader of the distant herd. Down it went
+where it stood as the pony had done, disappeared absolutely from view. A
+moment later another followed, and another, and another. It was almost
+uncanny, there in the fantastic glimmer, that disappearance. In the
+space of minutes, look where one would, the horizon was blank. Where the
+herd had been there was nothing, not even a blot. It was as the desert,
+and the vanished herd a mirage. It was like the far northland tight in
+the grip of winter, like the ocean at night. It was the Dakota frontier
+at midday.
+
+Again time passed and, motionless as at first, wide eyed, the man lay
+looking out. The pony was sound asleep now. Its nostrils widened and
+narrowed rhythmically and it snored at intervals. Save for this and the
+soft crackle of the grass and the aeolian song of the wind the earth was
+still; still as death; so still that, indescribably soft as it was
+immeasurably distant, the man detected of a sudden against it a new
+sound. But he did not stir. The black eyes looked out motionless as at
+first. He merely waited a minute, two--and it came again; a bit louder
+this time, more distinct, unmistakable.
+
+This time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy
+blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his
+body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning
+back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the
+sky, motionless as a prairie boulder.
+
+Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley, a chorus.
+It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance; but nearer than
+before and approaching closer second by second. Not from the earth did
+it come, but from the air. Not by any stretch of the imagination was it
+an earthly sound, but aërial. It was an alien note and still it was not
+alien. There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
+distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote was the
+keynote of the time and place, its message was their message, the thrill
+it bore to the listener the thrill of the whole. It was not a musical
+call, that steadily approaching sound. No human being has ever been able
+to locate it in pitch or metre; yet to such as the listening man upon
+the ground, to those who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless
+the sweetest, most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note
+which will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
+the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
+impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the man heard
+drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was the swelling,
+diminishing note of the migrant on its way south, of the grey Canada
+honker en route from the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within a half
+mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its
+makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys,
+louder and louder, confused as children's voices at play; then in turn
+diminishing, retreating. Very mystifying to one who did not understand
+would have been that augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting
+human boulder it was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he
+knew every movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
+broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
+sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To all wild
+things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile high in the air as
+inevitably as to the beast on earth instinct had said "halt." They were
+still going southward, still drawing nearer and nearer; but it would not
+be for long. Already they were circling, descending, searching here and
+there for a place to alight, to rest. Suspicious even here, they were
+taking their time; but distinct now amid the confusion was the sound of
+their great wings against the denser air, and the "Honk! honk! honk!"
+was a continuous chatter.
+
+Circle after circle made the flock. Once their noise all but ceased, and
+the listener fancied for an instant they were down, but in a moment it
+was resumed louder than before, and he knew they were still a-wing.
+"Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" They were very near indeed, so
+near that the sleeping pony was aroused at the clamour and, lifting its
+head, looked about curiously.
+
+"Honk! honk! honk! Flap! flap! Swish!" Between the sun and the watcher
+there fell a moving shadow and another--then a multitude. The clamour
+was all-surrounding, the flap of great wings a continuous beating, the
+whistle of air like that in a room with a myriad buzzing electric fans.
+Temporarily the prairie breeze was lost; swallowed up in the greater
+movement. Surprised, for the moment frightened, the broncho sprang to
+his feet--paused irresolute. For an instant the sky was hid. Overhead,
+to right, to left, all-obscuring, was nothing but a blot of great grey
+bodies, of wide wings lighter on the under surface, of long, curious
+necks, of dangling feet; then, swiftly as it had come it passed; the sun
+shone anew; the cloud and the shadow thereof, going straight in the face
+of the wind, wandered on. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" they
+repeated; but it was the voice of departure. The thing was done. There
+on the level earth, fair in view, they had passed overhead within twenty
+feet of their arch-enemy, man; and had not known. Now less than a
+quarter of a mile away they were circling for the last time. One big
+gander was already down and stretching his long neck from side to side.
+Another, with a great flapping of wings, was beside him; and another,
+and another. The prairie wind carried along the sound of their chatter;
+but it was subdued now, entirely different from the clamour of a bit
+ago. Against the blue of the sky where they had been a blot only, the
+curling, dancing heat waves arose. One and all had answered the siesta
+call.
+
+Up to this time the man who watched had not stirred. As they had gone
+over, the wide-open eyes had stared up at them; but not in the twitching
+of a muscle had the long body betrayed him. Not even now that it was
+over did he move. Instead, low at first, then louder, a whistle sounded.
+The pony, wide awake now, was grazing contentedly; but he paused. The
+whistle sounded for the third time, and reluctantly he drew near, halted
+obediently. Then at last there was action. With one motion the Indian
+was on his feet. Swiftly as it was spread the blanket was rolled and
+replaced in the waterproof pouch with the remnants of the lunch and a
+book of odds and ends which he carried always with him. The whole was
+strapped to the pony's bare back. As swiftly the hobble was removed and,
+not a minute from the time the last bird was down, the man and the
+beast, the latter only visible from the direction in which they were
+going, were moving on a zigzag, circuitous trail toward the resting yet
+ever-watchful flock before them.
+
+On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his body even
+with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through the wind-tossed
+mane. First to the right, then to the left they tacked, halting at
+intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will halt now and then to feed;
+but never losing the general direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer
+and nearer. A half hour passed by and in it they covered forty
+rods--half the distance. Thirty minutes more elapsed and they had
+crossed an equal portion of the remaining space. Then it was they halted
+and a peculiar thing happened.
+
+The wind had gradually risen during the day, and now, the middle of the
+afternoon, was blowing steadily. Light objects unattached move easily
+across the level prairie at this time of year, and here and there under
+its touch one after another of a particular kind were already in motion.
+Fluffy, unsubstantial objects they were, as large as a bushel measure
+and rudely circular. Looking out over the level earth often a half dozen
+at a time were visible, rolling and halting and rolling again on an
+endless journey from nowhere to nowhere. They were the well-named tumble
+weeds of the prairie; as distinctive as the resting flock of late
+autumn, of approaching winter. One of these it was now that came
+tumbling in lazily from the south and, barely missing the indifferent
+birds themselves, dawdled languidly on toward the pony beyond. On it
+came, would have passed to the right; but, under an impulse he in no way
+understood, the broncho moved to intercept it. Fair in its path, the
+little beast would still have shifted to give it right of way, for the
+weed is very prickly; but again the authority he did not question held
+him in his place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came
+together. Then it was the _finale_ began, the real test, the matching of
+human cunning and animal watchfulness.
+
+Left alone there upon the prairie, the indifferent broncho resumed its
+feeding. Away from it, foot by foot, so slowly that a careful observer
+could barely have seen it stir, moved the great weed. No animal on the
+face of earth save man himself would have been suspicious of that
+natural blind; even he would have overlooked it had he not by chance
+noted that while every other of its kind was moving with the wind, it
+slowly but surely was advancing against it. The scene where the drama
+was taking place was level as a floor, the grazed grass that covered it
+scarcely higher than a man's hand; yet from in front not an inch of the
+Indian's long body was visible, not a sound marked its advance. In
+comparison with its movement time passed swiftly; a third half hour
+while it was advancing ten rods. Already the short autumn afternoon was
+drawing to a close. The sun was no longer uncomfortably hot. The heat
+waves had ceased dancing. In sympathy the prairie breeze, torn of the
+sun, was becoming appreciably milder. As certainly as it had come, the
+brief rest period was drawing to a close.
+
+But the long figure that gave the blind motion showed no haste. Inch by
+inch it advanced, never still, yet never hurrying. The great
+unsuspicious birds were very near now, so near that a white hunter
+would have lost his equanimity in anticipation. Through the meshwork of
+the blind the stalker counted them. Twenty-seven there were together,
+and near to him another, a sentinel. He was within half the distance of
+a city block of the latter, so close that he could see the beady,
+watchful eyes, the pencillings of the plumage, the billowing of feathers
+as the long neck shifted from side to side. Verily it was a moment to
+make a sportsman's blood leap--to make him forget; but not even then did
+the Indian show a sign of excitement, not for a minute did the lithe
+body cease in its soundless serpentine motion. It was splendid, that
+patient, stealthy approach, splendid in its mastery of the still hunt;
+but beyond this it was more, it was fearful. Had an observer been where
+no observer was, it would inevitably have carried with it another
+suggestion--the possibilities of such a man were a real object, one
+vital to his life, and not a mere pastime, at stake. What would this
+patient, tireless, splendid animal do then? What if another man, his
+enemy, were the object, the quarry?
+
+The rest time at last was over. Insidiously into the air had crept a
+suggestion of coolness, of approaching night. In the background the pony
+ceased feeding, stood patiently awaiting the return of its rider. Far in
+the distance, the herd, a darker blot against the brown earth, were once
+more upon their feet. The flock, that heretofore like a group of
+barnyard fowls in the dust and the sun had remained indolently resting
+and preening their plumage, grew alert. One after the other they began
+wandering here and there aimlessly, restlessly. The subdued chatter
+became positive. Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a
+challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings tentatively,
+and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The cycle was all but
+complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them south, that
+had for this brief time sent them to earth, was calling again. In
+sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went still. Another minute,
+another second even, perhaps, and they would be gone. Through the filmy
+screen the stalker saw it all, read the meaning. He had ere this drawn
+unbelievably near. Barely the width of a narrow street separated him
+from the main flock--less than the breadth of a goodly sized room the
+motionless sentinel. It was the moment for action.
+
+And action followed. Like a mighty spring the slim muscular body
+contracted in its length. Toes and fingers dug into the earth like a
+sprinter awaiting the starting pistol. He drew a long breath. Then of a
+sudden, straight over the now useless blind, unexpected, startling as a
+thunderclap out of a cloudless sky, directly toward the nearest bird
+bounded a tall brown figure, silent as a phantom. For a second the
+entire flock stared in dumb paralytic surprise; then following there
+came a note of terror from eight and twenty throats that rose as one
+voice, that over the now silent prairie could have been heard for
+miles. It was the signal for action, for escape, and, terror-mad, they
+broke into motion. But a flock of great Canada geese cannot, like quail,
+spring directly a-wing. They must first gather momentum. This they
+attempted to gain--in its accomplishment all but one succeeded. That
+one, the leader, the sentinel, was too near. Almost before that first
+note of terror had left his throat the man was upon him. Ere he could
+rise two relentless hands had fastened upon his beating wings and held
+him prisoner. Hissing, struggling, he put up the best fight he could;
+but it was useless. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" shrilled the
+flock now safe in the air. "Honk! honk! honk!" as with wings and feet
+they climbed into the sky. "Honk! honk! honk!" softer and softer. "Honk!
+honk! honk!" for the last time, faint as an echo; and they were gone.
+Behind them the human and the wild thing his prisoner stood staring at
+each other alone.
+
+For a long, long time neither moved. Its first desperate effort to
+escape past, the bird ceased to struggle, stood passive in its place;
+passive as the man himself had remained there on the ground a few hours
+before. Its long neck swayed here and there continuously, restlessly,
+and its throat was a-throb; but no muscle of the body stirred. It had
+made its fight--and lost. For the time being resistance was fatuous, and
+it accepted the inevitable. Silent as its captor, it awaited the move of
+the conqueror. It would resist again when the move came, resist to the
+last ounce of its strength; but until then in instinctive wisdom it
+would husband its energy.
+
+Yet that move was very slow in coming. It was the time of day when
+ordinarily the herder collected his drove and returned toward the home
+corral; still he showed no intention of haste. The broncho was shaking
+his head at intervals restlessly; too well trained to leave, yet
+impatient as a hungry child for the return--and was ignored. For the
+time being the man seemed to have forgotten all external considerations.
+Not savagely nor cruelly, but with a sort of fascination he stood gazing
+at this wild thing in his power. For a long, long time he did nothing
+more, merely looked at it; looked admiringly, intimately. No trace of
+blood hunger was in his face, no lust to kill; but pure
+appreciation--and something more; something that made the two almost
+kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike. Each was
+graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of its kind physical
+perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of the wild; of solitude,
+of magnificent distances. Each was a part of its setting; as much so as
+the all-surrounding silence. Last of all, each stood for one quality
+dominant, one desire overtowering all others; and that was freedom,
+unqualified, absolute.
+
+Long as it was they stood there so, the bird was true to its instinct of
+passive inaction. It was the human that made the first move. Gently,
+slowly, one hand freed itself, stroked the silky soft plumage; stroked
+it intimately, almost lovingly--as an animal mother caresses its young.
+The man did not speak, made no sound, merely repeated the motion again
+and again. Under the touch the restless head became still, the watchful
+black eyes more watchful. That was all. Slowly as it had moved before,
+the man's hand shifted anew, passed down, down, the glossy throat to the
+breast--paused over the heart of the wild thing. There it remained, and
+for the first time a definite expression came into the mask-like face; a
+look of pity, of genuine contrition. A moment the hand lay there; then,
+childish as it may seem, absurd, if you please, the man spoke aloud.
+
+"You're afraid of me, deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he queried
+softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a cannibal, I'm going
+to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into the black eyes--deep,
+mysterious as the wild itself. "You think this, and still you don't
+grovel, don't make a sound. You're brave, birdie, braver than most men."
+He paused, and one by one his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of
+you; so proud that I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his
+full height. Unconsciously his arms folded across his chest. "Go,
+birdie; you're free."
+
+A moment longer there was inaction. Unbelieving, still a captive, the
+great bird stood there motionless as before; then of a sudden it
+understood; it was free. By some chance, some Providence, this great
+animal, its captor, had lost the mastery, and it was free.
+Simultaneously with the knowledge the pent-up energy of the last minutes
+went active, fairly explosive. With a mighty rush it was away; feet and
+wings beating the earth, the air. Swifter and swifter it went, gaining
+momentum with each second. It barely touched the frost-brown prairie; it
+cleared it entirely, it rose, rose, with mighty sweeps of mighty wings.
+Oh, it was free! free! free! "Honk! honk!" Free! free! "Honk! honk!
+honk!"
+
+Like a statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot
+on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at last into the
+all-surrounding brown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor returned that
+evening. The herd safely corralled for the night, he rode slowly toward
+the ranch house, and, without leaving the pony's back, opened and closed
+the gate of the barb wire fence surrounding the yard and approached the
+house. There was a bright light in the living-room, and, still without
+dismounting, he paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs.
+Landor, looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her
+hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his feet
+on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking a cigarette,
+and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the room looked blue.
+Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not finding conversation easy,
+and the former appeared distinctly bored. Neither Landor himself nor the
+girl was anywhere visible, and, after a moment, the spectator moved on
+around the corner. The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the
+kitchen, and the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing
+at last under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It
+was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim light was
+burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the barebacked broncho
+hesitated, looking up; then rolling his wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder
+he moved very close to the weather-boarded wall. The building was low,
+and, by stretching a bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the
+second story. He tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.
+
+No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.
+
+Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.
+
+Still no answer.
+
+Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit frosty, the pony
+stamped impatiently.
+
+"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me good-night?"
+
+This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash was
+opened; a face appeared, very white against the black background.
+
+"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.
+
+The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was unrolled.
+
+"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not sick?"
+
+"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired, is all."
+
+For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his black head
+bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed human that he was,
+there seemed to him nothing now to say, nothing adequate. Meanwhile the
+pony was growing more and more impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the
+half-frozen ground rhythmically.
+
+"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit there in the
+window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."
+
+The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.
+
+"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade closed as
+before.
+
+For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of head,
+motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a sound, and
+at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own quarters.
+
+The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the Buffalo Butte
+ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room shack, grudgingly
+built according to government requirements to prove up on a homestead,
+it had recently been enlarged by the addition of a second larger room,
+and as a whole the place further improved by the building of a sod and
+weather-board barn. The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted
+with the tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had
+remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor himself
+could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for years, and in
+all that time, even in the coldest weather, the voluntary exile had
+never lived under a roof. Primitive or evolved as it might be, as youth
+and as man, the Indian was a tent-dweller. Just now the little house was
+being fitted up for occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of
+the day and at evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under
+eight by ten feet of canvas near at hand.
+
+A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against a dark
+horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house yard the man on
+the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that he had company; yet,
+characteristic in his every action, he did not hurry. Methodically he
+put up the pony in the new barn, fed and bedded him for the night. From
+the adjoining stall, out of the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish
+whine and the protest of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an
+observer would have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a
+pair of sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two
+gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible. It was
+to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps from his lunch
+remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the pony, he made a bed;
+then--though the little beast was only a grey prairie wolf, it was a
+baby and lonely--he knelt down and for a moment laid his own face
+against the other's softly shaggy face.
+
+When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there was a moist
+spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had inscribed its
+affection.
+
+On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man with his
+back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap and stepped
+inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the manner of one
+whose thoughts had been far away.
+
+"You're late to-night," he commented.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or expected,
+and the subject dropped.
+
+There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in silence the
+Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging opposite was burning
+low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the tin reflector so that the
+light would play on the scene of operations. Leaving the tent for a
+moment, he returned with a young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put
+it in a skillet to fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he
+produced a couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the
+opposite side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be
+dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that supper
+was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey red cloth was
+set, the odour of coffee--cheap coffee, yet surprisingly fragrant--was
+in the air, and the bird and potatoes were temptingly brown. It was
+almost uncanny the way this man accomplished things. Landor himself
+never ceased to marvel. How always seemed unconscious of what he was
+doing, seemed always thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a
+motion, and when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was
+so in small things. It was identical in large.
+
+Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a word had
+been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted hospitably.
+
+"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an early supper.
+I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."
+
+"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his seat
+wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."
+
+In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not press his
+invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's admission. Either
+would have been superfluous. Instead he ate with the hearty appetite of
+a healthy human, and thereafter, swiftly and methodically as he had
+prepared the meal, cleared the table and put all in order. Then at last,
+the fire replenished and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown
+within the radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the
+perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and awaited
+the something he knew had brought the other to him at this unusual hour.
+"There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of the little table at your
+right," he assisted.
+
+Landor roused with a trace of surprise.
+
+"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.
+
+"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the superfluous, the
+obvious explanation.
+
+Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and pressed the
+brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match he lit crackled
+explosively, and he started at the unexpected sound as one whose nerves
+were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still sat for a moment puffing hard.
+
+"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a favour.
+Will you promise me?"
+
+The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my power,
+yes, sir," he said.
+
+That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the relation of
+the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the younger, the trace of
+almost patriarchal respect that never left his manner when, addressing
+the elder. "If in my power, yes, sir."
+
+"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly. "It's
+simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of waiting until the
+day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though the speaker were uncertain
+whether or no to say more. "I have a particular reason for wishing it,"
+he completed inadequately.
+
+For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question was voiced;
+there was no probing of the confidence the other preferred not to give.
+
+"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.
+
+Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already glowing
+bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had done.
+
+"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong now, but
+nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day while I was in
+town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form, but I feel
+better to have things settled." With forced matter of factness he
+knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the grate and filled the
+bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any responsibility, so I left
+practically everything to Bess. I know that if anything should happen to
+me you'd take care of her mother."
+
+No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.
+
+"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very different
+from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher to-night, very
+obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear natural. "I know you'll
+make her happy, my boy."
+
+Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted uncomfortably.
+As well as he knew his own name he knew that his secret was secret no
+longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild thing that hides itself to die
+alone he avoided direct mention of the fact, direct wording of the
+inevitable. But something in the attitude of the motionless figure
+before him prevented further dissimulation. Some influence urged him to
+hasten the _dénouement_ which he knew was but postponed. With an effort
+he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the other's black
+eyes steadily.
+
+"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned directly.
+
+"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is that I'm
+sorry you did as you did."
+
+"Sorry, How?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Very sorry."
+
+"And why?"
+
+No answer.
+
+The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon the Indian's
+face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the corner by the stove was
+in shadow.
+
+"I will tell you why." He returned to his place and stretched himself as
+before, his hands locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr.
+Landor, and Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you
+will compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have
+seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."
+
+For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with a
+fragment of coal from the grate.
+
+"I don't see why, How," he refuted.
+
+"You do, though, sir."
+
+"No. Tell me."
+
+There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other would not
+answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black eyes fixed upon him
+unshiftingly.
+
+"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As we are now
+I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because--I love her." He
+paused, and into the tent there came the long-drawn-out wail of the baby
+prisoner. Silence returned. "As surely as that little wolf is lonely,
+Bess will know the trouble money brings if you do as you intend. Not
+myself, but other men will teach her."
+
+Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his fingers.
+
+"Once more I ask why, How?"
+
+The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.
+
+"Because she is white and they are white, and I--am an Indian."
+
+At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto
+succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no
+longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true.
+Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing--as they would
+do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a
+child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make
+it possible!
+
+Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move
+about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by
+inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been
+dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great
+hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last
+he turned.
+
+"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and understand the way
+you feel. God knows I wish it were different, wish I did not believe
+what you say true; but things are as the are. What we have to do now is
+the best thing possible under the circumstances." He sat down in the
+chair again heavily, his hands still locked in his lap. "If wrong has
+been done I am to blame, I myself, in raising you and Bess together. I
+might have known that it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for
+each other; but I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess--"
+
+"Mr. Landor--"
+
+The big man halted. For the first time he realised the admission of what
+he had been saying, the inevitable implication--and he was silent. For
+seconds likewise the Indian was still; but in them he was looking at the
+other steadily, in a way he had never looked at him before, with an
+intensity that was haunting.
+
+"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There was no anger
+in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes, pathos--terrible,
+gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else felt so--everyone except
+Bess herself; but you--you--I did not know that before, Mr. Landor."
+
+Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the bottom of
+his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in self-defence; but
+he could not. There was nothing to say.
+
+"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the repressed voice,
+"not even when at first you were slow to give your consent to our
+marriage. I fancied it was merely because you thought me impractical,
+because I cared nothing for a life that was different, was not my own.
+Nor again, even a bit ago when you asked me to promise--what I did
+promise--I did not suspicion such a thing. I thought it a compliment,
+the sincerest compliment I had ever received in my life: the fact that
+you should trust me so, with all that was dear to you in the world."
+Just perceptibly he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's
+face. "But I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You
+are like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that we've
+lived together for half a generation makes no difference. You're square,
+square to the end. You even like me in a way. You've given your word and
+won't go back on it; but nevertheless you're sorry. Even while you urge
+us to marry, to have the thing over, to have a responsibility off your
+mind, you feel you are sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a
+second, and even at this time Landor was conscious that it was
+infinitely the longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't
+blame you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
+race; but nevertheless, nevertheless--"
+
+The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes were of a
+sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at the roof of the
+tent. No power on earth could have made him complete that sentence, made
+him admit the deadly hurt it suggested. From the unusual confidence of a
+bit ago he merely lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive
+self. Yet as plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the
+difference, realised as well that while outwardly there would be no
+change, from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
+the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to exist. He
+had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the knowledge for the
+first time in the years they two had lived together he realised how much
+after all he had grown to depend upon this laconic human, how much he
+had lost. It was the last drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing
+straw. His great ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in
+his hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
+marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with his
+deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them, silence that by
+word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from the stable there
+sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a moment later, muffled,
+echo-like from the distance, the answering call of one of its own kind
+free upon the infinite prairie; but apparently neither man noticed,
+neither man cared--and the silence returned. Long minutes passed. The
+fire in the stove burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a
+suggestion of the coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without
+a word he put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were
+unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a moment
+he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of attempting an
+explanation where none was possible; but he realised it would but make
+matters worse, and desisted. The Indian, too, had arisen, and
+repressedly courteous, stood ready to open the flap of the tent for the
+other to pass. For a moment, the last moment they were ever to see each
+other alive, they stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each
+knowing that the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly,
+Landor took a step forward.
+
+The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he passed; then
+closed again, shutting him out.
+
+For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man remained
+as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an inanimate thing. The
+kerosene lamp was burning low now and sputtered dismally; but he did not
+notice, did not hear. For the third time, tremulous against the
+background of night and of silence, came the wail of the lonely little
+captive. It was a kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the
+figure responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute
+later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey, bright-eyed
+something, happy as a puppy at release and companionship. Methodically
+the man banked the coal fire and put out the lantern. He did not make a
+bed, did not undress. Instead, weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid
+the buffalo robes, lay still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed,
+inquiring nose in the darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no
+response, and becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the
+silent being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly--and likewise
+became still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+The darkness that precedes morning had the prairie country in its grip
+when Howard, the gaunt foreman of the B.B. ranch, drew rein before the
+silent tent, and with the butt end of his quirt tapped on the heavy
+canvas.
+
+"Wake up," he called laconically. "You're wanted at the ranch house."
+
+Echo-like, startling in its suddenness, an inverted V opened in the
+white wall and in it, fully dressed, vigilant, appeared the figure of
+its owner.
+
+"What is it?" asked a voice insistently.
+
+The Texan stared in unconcealed surprise.
+
+"In Heaven's name, man, don't you ever sleep?" he drawled. "The boss is
+dead," he added baldly at second thought.
+
+The black V closed again, and distinct in outline against the white
+background appeared the silhouette of the listener. His arms were folded
+across his chest in a way that was characteristic, and his moccasined
+feet were set close together. He spoke no word of surprise, asked no
+question; merely stood there in the silence and the semi-darkness
+waiting.
+
+The foreman was by no means a responsive soul, yet, watching, there
+instinctively crept over him a feeling akin to awe of this other silent
+human. There was the mystery of death itself in that motionless,
+listening shadow.
+
+"It was just before I came over to tell you that Mrs. Landor raised the
+house," he explained. "She woke up in the night and found the boss
+so--and cold already." Unconsciously his voice had lowered. "She
+screamed like a mad woman, and ran down-stairs in her nightdress,
+chattering so we could hardly understand her." He slapped at his baggy
+chaperajos with his quirt absently. "That's all I know, except there's
+no particular use to hurry. It's all over now, and he never knew what
+took him."
+
+Silently as before the aperture in the tent opened and closed and the
+listener disappeared; to reappear a moment later with a curled-up woolly
+bundle in his arms. Without a word of explanation he strode toward the
+barn, leaving Howard staring after him uncertainly. Listening, the
+latter heard a suppressed little puppyish protest, as though its maker
+were very sleepy, a moment later the soft, recognising whinny of a
+broncho, and then, startlingly sudden as the figure had first emerged
+from the tent, it appeared again, mounted, by his side.
+
+For half the distance to the ranch house not a word was said; then of a
+sudden Howard drew his horse to a walk meaningly.
+
+"I suppose it's none of my business," he commented without preface, "but
+unless I'm badly mistaken there'll be hell to pay around the Buffalo
+Butte now."
+
+Again, as at the tent door, his companion made no answer; merely waited
+for the something he knew was on the other's mind. The east was
+beginning to lighten now, and against the reddening sky his dark face
+appeared almost pale.
+
+Howard shifted in his saddle seat and inspected the ground at his right
+as intently as though there might be jewels scattered about.
+
+"The boss's relative--Craig," he added, "has taken possession there as
+completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead of been a
+visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the man's face an
+unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted characteristically. "I like you,
+How, or I wouldn't stick my bill into your affairs. That boy is going to
+make you trouble, take my word for it."
+
+Even then there was no response; but the overseer did not seem surprised
+or offended. Instead, the load he had to impart off his mind, his manner
+indicated distinct relief. But one thing more was necessary to his
+material comfort--and that solace was at hand. Taking a great bite of
+plug tobacco, a chew that swelled one of his thin cheeks like a wen, he
+lapsed into his normal attitude of disinterested reverie.
+
+The ranch house was lighted from top to bottom, abnormally brilliant,
+and as the Indian entered the odour of kerosene was strong in his
+nostrils. In the kitchen as he passed through were the other two
+herders. They sat side by side in uncomfortable inaction, their big
+sombreros in their hands; and with the suppression of those unused to
+death nodded him silent recognition. The dining-room was empty, likewise
+the living-room; but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled
+catch of a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative,
+the voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
+even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of the
+three who were already present knew that he was there.
+
+Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one corner of
+the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She did not look up
+as he entered, apparently did not see him, did not see anything. The
+first wild passion of grief past, she had lapsed into a sort of passive
+lethargy. Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the loose dressing
+sack she had put on, and now and then her thin lips trembled; but that
+was all.
+
+Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to the bed;
+shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done when Howard first
+broke the news, his feet came close together and his arms folded across
+his chest in characteristic, all-observing attention. Not a muscle
+moved, he scarcely seemed to breathe. He merely watched.
+
+And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at first
+beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised until the face
+was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as she had thrown herself
+down, her head all but buried from view, was the girl Bess. She was
+sobbing as though her heart would break: sobbing as though unconscious
+of another human being in the world. Above her, leaning over her, was
+the form of a man: Craig. His uncle had brought his belongings from the
+tiny town the day before, and even at this time his linen and cravat
+were immaculate. He was looking down at the little woman before him,
+looking and hesitating as one choosing between good and evil.
+
+"Bess," he was saying, "you must not. You'll make yourself sick.
+Besides, it's nearly morning and people will be coming. Don't do so;
+please!"
+
+No answer, no indication that he had been heard; only the muffled,
+racking, piteous sobs.
+
+"Bess," insistently, "Bess! Listen to me. I can't have you do so. Uncle
+Landor wouldn't like it, I know he wouldn't. He'd be sorry if he knew.
+Be brave, girlie. You're not alone yet."
+
+Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty, curved
+shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.
+
+The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face went very
+close.
+
+"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't let you
+cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl; infinitely too
+much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly, hurts me more than I
+can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated, and like an inexperienced
+gambler his face went tense and white. "You must listen to me,
+Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are others who will take care of
+you. I myself will take care of you, girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's
+something I must tell you, something you make me tell you now." Swiftly,
+unhesitatingly, he leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed
+about her and he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle,
+could not prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you
+two days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is
+why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love you!"
+
+This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the roof,
+came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living actors
+remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the
+tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting
+before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking
+at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in
+bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him
+tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the
+climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself
+into a man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the
+close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a sound,
+one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate--and again the first.
+Unexpected as death itself would have been at that instant, Craig felt
+two mighty irresistible hands close on his shoulders; close with a grip
+that all but paralysed. Irresistibly again he felt himself turned about,
+put upon his feet; realised of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly
+even to admit of a cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot
+distant, he was staring into the face of the one being on earth from
+whom he had most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully
+intervening, a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came
+between. The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.
+
+"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he didn't.
+Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive him--for my
+sake."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test kerosene still
+hung about the closed living-room where the same four people sat in
+council. No effort had as yet been made to put the place to rights, and
+in consequence it was stuffy and disordered and proportionately
+depressing. The mound of cigarette stumps which Craig had builded the
+night before lay unsightly and evil of odour on the table. The faded rag
+carpet was littered with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding
+blouse and cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat,
+which he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a
+chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences of
+his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two days'
+residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete possession.
+Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority in the past,
+concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That voice was speaking
+now.
+
+"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is buried in
+Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's father." The voice
+halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his other sister, who died
+years and years ago, are both there." Obviously, too obviously, he
+turned away until his face was hid. Into the voice there crept a throb
+that was almost convincing. "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure,
+even though he wouldn't have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned
+it the first night I came, but of course I didn't realise--then--" The
+voice was silent.
+
+As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no emotion, did
+not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain awakened, had she
+grasped the full meaning of the thing which had happened to her. Later,
+indefinitely later, the knowledge would come, and with it the hour of
+reckoning; but for the present she was a mere puppet in the play. Craig,
+the dominant, had told her to dress, and she had dressed. He had
+summoned her to the council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her
+now that he had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had
+entered, stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had
+spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.
+
+"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who cares for him
+or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was becoming unmanageable
+and the girl halted, winking hard. "It seems cruel."
+
+"Not if he would have wished it, Bess."
+
+"But if he hadn't wished it--"
+
+"I repeat I think he would." Craig shifted until his back was toward the
+other man. "I think that his mentioning the possibility at all, the
+first night I came, proves that he wished it."
+
+"Perhaps.... I don't know." ... A long pause; then of a sudden the girl
+arose and walked to the window. But subterfuge was from her a thing
+apart, and she merely leaned her face against the casement. "I can't
+bear to think of it," she trembled.
+
+Craig moved half way toward her; then remembered, and halted.
+
+"Yes, let's decide, and not talk about it," he returned swiftly. "You
+agree with me after all, don't you, Bess?"
+
+The girl did not look up.
+
+"Don't ask me. You and How and Aunt Mary decide." With an effort she
+resumed her former place; but even yet she did not glance at him.
+"Wherever you take him I shall go along, is all."
+
+Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.
+
+"Yes, I think he would have liked that. I ... You agree with me too,
+don't you, Aunt Mary?"
+
+The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up vacantly.
+"What?" she queried absently.
+
+Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.
+
+"Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me," she returned
+monotonously.
+
+In sympathy, the girl's brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig turned away
+almost impatiently. "Let's consider it settled then," he said.
+
+For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at Craig that she
+looked. It was at that other figure in the background, the figure that
+not once through it all had stirred or made a sound. "What shall we do,
+How? what ought we to do?" she asked.
+
+For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig recognise
+the other's presence by so much as a glance. Only the look of exultation
+left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids tightened perceptibly.
+
+"Don't consider what I think, Bess," said a low voice at last. "Do what
+you feel is right."
+
+It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who brought the
+decision to pass. How Landor, the Indian, it was who, alone in the
+dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man out decently, and for
+five dragging minutes thereafter, before the others had come, stood like
+a statue gazing down at the kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own
+that no living human had ever seen or would ever see. How Landor, the
+Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with the closely drawn
+canvas curtains, drove all that day and half the night to the nearest
+undertaker at the railroad terminus beyond the river, seventy-five miles
+away. How Landor, the Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses,
+but barely a pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail,
+and ere it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre,
+knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of Mary
+Landor he knew. How Landor it was once more who, before twenty-four
+hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the unwilling visitor
+by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch yard. Last of all, How
+Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the old surrey once more to the
+east, and with still another team before him and a cold lunch in his
+pocket, sat waiting within the hour to take the departing ones away.
+
+Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was superfluous.
+What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew. That he had expected
+what had taken place in his absence, his bringing Mrs. Burton proved. At
+last realisation had come, and Mary Landor was paying the price of the
+brief lethargic respite; paying it with usury, paying it with the
+helpless abandon of the dependent. The dreary weather-coloured ranch
+house was not a pleasant place to be in that day. Craig left it
+thankfully, with a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting
+topcoat, as the door closed behind him. The other passenger, the one who
+should have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth--.
+
+How Landor it was again who, when minutes of waiting had passed, minutes
+wherein Craig consumed cigarettes successively, tied the team and
+disappeared within doors. What he said none save the girl herself knew;
+but when he returned he was not alone, and though the eyes of his
+companion were red, there was in her manner no longer a trace of
+hesitation.
+
+The two passengers comfortably muffled in the robes of the rear seat,
+the driver buttoned the curtains tight about them methodically. The day
+was very still, not a sound came to them from over the prairie, and of a
+sudden, startlingly clear, from the house itself there came an
+interruption: the piteous, hopeless wail of a woman in a paroxysm of
+grief, and a moment later the voice of another woman in unemotional,
+comforting monotone.
+
+"How," said a choking, answering voice, "I can't go after all, I can't!"
+
+Within the carriage, safe from observation, her companion took her hand
+authoritatively, pressed it within his own.
+
+"Yes, you can, Bess," he said low. "Aunt Mary will have to fight it out
+for herself. You couldn't help her any by staying."
+
+But already the Indian was gone. Within the house as before, even
+keen-eared Mattie Burton failed to catch what he said. Had she done so,
+she would have been no wiser, for apparently that moment a miracle took
+place. Of a sudden, the hysterical voice was silent. The man spoke again
+and--the watcher stared in pure unbelief--her own hand in her
+companion's hand, Mary Landor followed him obediently out to the surrey.
+
+"We haven't any time to lose," he said evenly, as he drew back the flap
+of the curtain. "You'd better say good-bye now."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Bessie, girl. Bessie!"
+
+Again within the ranch house, Mary Landor sank into a seat with the
+utter weariness of a somnambulist awakened. Fully a half minute the
+Indian stood looking down at her. For one of the few times in his life
+his manner indicated indecision. His long arms hung loose from his
+shoulders. His wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes. The watcher thought he
+looked very, very weary. Then of a sudden he roused. Bending over--did
+he foresee what was to come, that moment?--he did something he had never
+done before.
+
+"Good-bye, mother," he said, and kissed her on the lips.
+
+The door closed behind him noiselessly, and a half minute later the
+loose-wheeled old surrey went rumbling past the door. Mrs. Burton was
+feminine and curious, and she went to the window to watch it from sight.
+The Indian, alone on the front seat, sat looking straight ahead. The
+bronchos, fresh from the stall, and but a few weeks before wild on the
+prairie, tugged at the bit wickedly, tried to bolt; but the driver did
+not stir in his place. The left hand, that held the reins, rose and fell
+with their motion, as an angler takes up slack in his line; that was
+all. The woman had lived long on the frontier. She was appreciative and
+pressed her face against the pane the better to see. They were through
+the gate now, well out on the prairie. The clatter of the waggon had
+ceased, the figure of the driver was concealed by the curtains; but the
+bronchos were still tugging at the bit, still--.
+
+"Mary! In heaven's name!" The sound of a falling body had caught her ear
+and she had turned. "Mary Landor!" The dishes in the cupboard against
+the wall shook as something heavy met the floor. "Mary!" A pause and a
+tongue-tied examination. "My God! The woman is dead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was ten minutes before starting time. The old-fashioned engine,
+contemptuously relegated to the frontier before going to the junk heap,
+was puffing at the side of the low sanded station platform. The rough
+cottonwood box was already in the baggage car. How himself had assisted
+in putting it there, had previously settled for its transportation.
+Likewise he had bought the girl's ticket, and checked her scanty
+baggage. The usual crowd of loafers was about the place, and his every
+action was observed with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the
+spectators followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels
+for his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the
+vanquished--and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing upon
+the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop sounded; and
+when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was repeated intrepidly
+near at hand. They put themselves elaborately in his way, to move at his
+approach with grunts of guttural protestation. Already, even here on the
+frontier, the Sioux and his kind were becoming a novelty. Verily they
+were rare sportsmen, those mimicking loafers; and for Indians it was
+ever the open season. All about sounded the popping of their artillery;
+to be, when exhausted, as often reloaded and fired again.
+
+But through it all, apparently unseeing, unconscious, the man had gone
+about his business. Now as he left the ticket window and approached the
+single coach, it was nearly starting time. The girl had already entered
+and sat motionless in her seat watching him through the dusty window
+glass. Craig, his feet wide apart, stood on the platform smoking a last
+cigarette. He shrugged in silence as the other passed him and mounted
+the steps.
+
+Save for the girl, the coach was empty; but, destitute of courtesy, the
+spectators without stared with redoubled interest. Without a word the
+man handed over the ticket and checks. Still in silence he slipped a
+roll of bills into her passive hand. Until that moment the girl had not
+thought of money; but even now as she accepted it, there never occurred
+the wonder from whence it had come. Had she known how those few dollars
+had been stored up, bit by bit, month by month--But she did not know.
+Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless, was
+Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on the
+threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was entering,
+she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was merely passive,
+trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down from the prairie
+milkweed plant, she was to be the sport of every breath of wind that
+blew. And already that wind was blowing. She had watched the scene on
+the platform, had understood the intent of the mimicry, had seen the
+winks and nudges, had heard the mocking war whoop. All this she had
+seen, all this had been stored away in her consciousness to recur again
+and again in the future. Even now her cheeks had burned at the
+knowledge, and at last she had watched the man's coming with a feeling
+of repression she had never known before, whose significance she did not
+try to analyse, did not in the least understand. She did not thank him
+for the money. To do so never occurred to her. It was the moment for
+parting, but she did not throw her arms about his neck in abandon, as
+she would have done a week before. Something, she knew not what,
+prevented. She merely sat there, repressed, passive, waiting. A moment,
+by her side, the Indian paused. He did not speak, he did not move. He
+merely looked at her; and in his dark eyes there was mirrored a
+reflection of the look there had been in the eyes of the wild thing he
+had stalked and captured that day alone on the prairie. But the girl was
+not looking at him, did not see. A moment he stood so, unconsciously as
+so many, many times before, in pose; then deliberately, gently, ignoring
+the row of curious observant eyes, he took her hand and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said low. "Come back as soon as you can; and don't
+worry. Everything will come right." Gently as he had lifted the hand, he
+released it. A smile--who but he could have smiled at that
+moment?--played for an instant over his face. Then, almost before the
+girl realised the fact, before the repressive something that held her in
+its grip gave release, he was gone.
+
+As he left the coach, Craig, who was waiting, started without a word or
+a hint of recognition to enter. His foot was already on the step, when
+he felt a hand upon his arm; a hand with a grip whose meaning there was
+no misinterpreting. Against his will he drew back. Against his will he
+met the other, face to face, eye to eye. For what seemed to him minutes,
+but which in reality was only a second, they stood so. Not a word was
+spoken, of warning or of commonplace. There was no polite farce for the
+benefit of the spectators. The Indian merely looked at him; but as once
+before, alone under the stars, that look was to remain burned on the
+white man's memory until he went to his grave.
+
+"A'board," bawled the conductor, and as though worked by the same wire,
+the engineer's waiting head disappeared within the cab window.
+
+Side by side, Clayton Craig and Elizabeth Landor sat watching the
+weather-stained station and the curious assembled group, as apparently
+they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the alien figure of an
+Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless after them; and by his side,
+in baiting pantomime, one gawky urchin engaged in the labour of scalping
+a mate. The last sound that reached their ears was the ironic note of a
+war whoop repeated again and again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the girl had
+left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the bare lot
+adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith, the twelfth since
+How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny railway terminus. The one train
+from the East was due at 8:10 of the morning. It was now eight o'clock.
+Within the shambling, ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior
+and its wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and
+freshly dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the
+single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed according
+to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey, recently oiled and
+tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn up conveniently to the
+door. In a tiny room, designated the study, of the Methodist parsonage,
+on the straggling outskirts of the town, the only minister the
+settlement boasted sat staring at the unpapered wall opposite. He was a
+mild-featured young man of the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from
+a school of theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the
+frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared marriage
+licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time to time he
+glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to the tiny
+fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and frowned
+unconsciously.
+
+At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the arrival or
+departure of a train were congregated. In some way suggestions of the
+unusual had passed about, and this day their number was greatly
+augmented. Just what they anticipated they did not know; they did not
+care. Restless, athirst for excitement, they had dumbly responded to the
+influence in the air and come. In the foreground, where a solitary
+Indian stood motionless, waiting, there was being repeated the same
+puerile pantomime and horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals,
+from the rear, sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as
+that afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar
+even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily into the
+sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and lighter, became
+denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy, the humorists on the
+platform redoubled their efforts. The instinct of anticipation, of
+Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that had brought them there, urged them
+on. Not one throat but many underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection.
+A half dozen voices caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to
+throat. Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing
+became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before, who had
+come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd pressed closer and
+closer about the alien, the centre of attraction. When he moved farther
+along the platform to avoid them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the
+innate racial hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air
+jostled him--and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no
+retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion redoubled,
+drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators in the rear began
+mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to see. Within the station
+itself the shirt-sleeved agent surreptitiously locked the door to the
+ticket-room and sprung the combination of the safe. Beginning
+harmlessly, the incident was taking on a sinister aspect, and he had
+lived too long in this semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning
+to his place of observation at the window, he was just in time to see a
+decayed turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with
+enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear. Simultaneously, with
+a roar and a puff of displaced air, the light train drew into the
+station, on time.
+
+Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move twice
+farther away along the platform, he had not stirred. Unbelievable as it
+may seem, even when the missile had struck him, though it had left a
+great red welt, he gave no sign of feeling. For a space following the
+arrival of the train there was a lull, and in it, as though nothing had
+happened, he approached the single coach and stood waiting.
+
+It was the last of the week and travel was very light.
+
+A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip descended
+first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared with speed. A
+big rancher with great curling moustaches and a vest open save at the
+bottom button followed. He likewise took stock of the surroundings, and
+discreetly withdrew. Following him there was a pause; then of a sudden
+onto the platform, fair into view of the crowd, appeared one for whom
+apparently they had been looking, one who on the instant caused the
+confusion, temporarily stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a
+dainty brown girl with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth
+Landor returned alone!
+
+"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the refound voice
+of the expectant crowd.
+
+"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had introduced the
+jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her; we don't mind."
+
+A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far up the
+single street, and that brought curious faces to a half score of doors.
+
+"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!"
+
+Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had appeared. Her
+great eyes opened wider than before, her face shaded paler momentarily,
+the soft oval chin trembled. Another minute, another second even.
+
+"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll take
+care of you."
+
+It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure curiosity the
+crowd went silent, listening--silent until he was silent; then with the
+lack of originality ever manifest in a mob, they caught up his words
+themselves.
+
+"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't keep him
+waiting."
+
+But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that moment, she
+could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the chin had at first
+presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but she was beyond the reach
+of tears now. The complete meaning of the scene had come to her at last,
+the realisation of personal menace; and a fear such as she had never
+before known, gripped her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word;
+but her muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old
+telescope satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes,
+wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now rapidly
+accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.
+
+"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't stand there,
+come."
+
+At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly, with
+trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then of a sudden
+she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted defensively. But she was
+not quick enough, had seen too late; and that instant came the
+_dénouement._ A second turnip, decayed like its predecessor, aimed
+likewise unerringly, caught her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke
+into fragments that fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain
+after a thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down
+her face.
+
+Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still prairie about
+them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had themselves wittingly or
+unwittingly done. Save one, not a human being stirred. That one, no need
+to tell whom, transformed visibly; transformed as they had never seen a
+human being alter before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself
+on the platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from
+sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically. In the
+stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear distinctly. For
+an instant after he had reached her the Indian stood so, his left arm
+about her, his back toward them. He did not say a word, he did not move.
+For the first time in his life he dared not. He did not see red that
+moment, this man; he saw black--black as prairie loam. Every savage
+instinct in his brain was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his
+free hand was clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind
+his right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone, it
+was nothing, he could forgive; but now--now--He stared away from them,
+stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky; but, listening, they,
+who almost with fascination watched, could hear beneath the catch of the
+girl's sobs the sound of his breathing.
+
+Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second or a
+minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell. What they
+did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them. All their lives
+they had seen passion, seen it in every phase, seen it until it was
+commonplace. It was in the very air of the frontier, to be expected,
+life of the life; but as this man shifted they saw a kind of which they
+had never dreamed. For How Landor was master of himself again, master,
+as well--they knew it, every man and youth who saw,--of them. For
+another indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them;
+looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face within the
+surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a drunken cowman, had
+seen that identical look. Now not one but a score saw it, felt a
+terrible ice-cold menace creep from his brain into their brains. Even
+yet he did not speak, did not make a sound; nor did they. Explain it as
+you will, he did this thing. Another thing he did as well; and that was
+the end. Slowly, deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out
+his hand. Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes
+were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but she had
+grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully calm--almost as much so
+as the man. Deliberately as he had stepped down into the spectators'
+midst, the Indian took the old telescope from the girl's hand and, she
+following by his side, moved a step forward. He did not touch her again
+nor did she him. They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up
+the single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were
+alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed;
+through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by magic
+closed behind them, until they were within a solid human square. But of
+all the assembled spectators that day, an aggregation irresponsible,
+unchivalrous as no other rabble on earth--a mob of the frontier,--not
+one spoke to challenge their action, not one attempted to bar their way.
+The complete length of the platform they went so, turned the corner by
+the station--and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view, hid
+by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl weakened.
+Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it fast.
+
+"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this with you and
+me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"
+
+But the man said never a word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire crackled
+cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room where the same two
+people sat alone. Already the world had taken on a different aspect. Not
+that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten that recent incident at the depot.
+She would never forget it. It had merely passed into temporary
+abeyance, taken its proper place in the eternal scheme of things.
+Another consideration, paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded
+it from the stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent
+far longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that at
+last prompted speech.
+
+"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried suddenly.
+
+"How did _you_ know I would be at the train to meet you?" echoed a
+voice.
+
+The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.
+
+"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow when you
+wrote as if I--I--" A swiftly gathered shower called a halt. Tear drops,
+ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell me," she completed.
+
+The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic life, so there
+was little to record of the death of Mary Landor. "It was best that you
+were away," he ended. "It was best for her that she went when she did."
+
+"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious query.
+"You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"
+
+"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."
+
+A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something more.
+
+"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would--go while I was
+away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me away on
+purpose."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How. I want to know."
+
+"I thought so, Bess," simply.
+
+For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new understanding
+of this solitary human stole over her, an appreciation that drowned the
+sadness of a moment ago. "How you must care for me," she voiced almost
+unconsciously. "How you must care for me!"
+
+She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again a silence
+fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she was thinking.
+Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were passively waiting. At the
+parsonage the young minister still sat scowling in his study. No time
+had been set for the visit he expected. There was no apparent reason why
+he should not have gone about his work; but for some reason he could
+not. Angry with himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket
+and, placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked
+over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.
+
+Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl shifted, dropped
+to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged slowly red.
+
+"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me to-day that
+I would come alone?"
+
+The Indian showed no surprise.
+
+"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."
+
+"Why, How?" The question was just audible.
+
+"Because I trusted you, Bess."
+
+Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes glanced
+up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance fell. A longer
+pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not have spoken if she
+would. A great preventing lump was in her throat, an obstacle that
+precluded speech. Many things had happened in the short time since she
+had last been with this man, some things of which she was not proud; and
+beside such a trust as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition
+upon her part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise
+without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The memory of
+that draught was with her now. Under its influence she spoke.
+
+"You are better than I am, How," she said.
+
+If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He did not
+even look at her. Time was passing, time which should have found them
+upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It was his day, his moment,
+his by right; but no one looking at him would have doubted that he
+himself would never first suggest the fact. Conditions had changed very
+rapidly in the recent past, altered until, from his view-point, it was
+impossible for him to make the move toward the old relation, to even
+intimate its desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In
+the fulness of time he was rewarded.
+
+"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed voice, "will
+you do me a favour?"
+
+"What is it, Bess?"
+
+The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the recall
+had come, and for the first time he was looking at her steadily.
+
+"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.
+
+"I promise."
+
+Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she wished to
+say.
+
+"You won't be--offended or angry, How?"
+
+"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me angry."
+
+"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you humour
+me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married to-day you'll
+be dressed--well, not the way you usually dress." Her colour came and
+went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed like--You understand, How."
+
+Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he checked
+himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the immaterial, went, as
+ever, straight to fundamentals without preface or delay. Scarce one
+human in a generation would have held aloof at that moment. It was his,
+his by every right; but even yet he would not take it, not until--.
+
+"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to
+answer me--as you would answer your mother were she alive." Once again,
+unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms across his breast, his great
+shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr. Landor's will. He has left you
+nearly everything. You are rich, Bess; I won't tell you how rich because
+you wouldn't understand. You are young and can live any life you wish.
+You know what marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You
+know what others, people of your own race, think when you are with me.
+They have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all
+this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish to come?
+Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer. Don't do it, or
+we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as you know I love you,
+whether you have thought of all this and still wish to marry me. Tell
+me." He was silent. Once again it was a climax, and once again came
+oblivion of passing time. For minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide
+open eyes, the girl made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision
+made, not as before in ignorance of what that decision meant.
+Deliberately, with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight
+of future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.
+
+"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I wish to
+marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's no one in the
+world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry you to-day, How."
+
+Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until then, he
+accepted his reward.
+
+"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise. "Bess!" That
+was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled with
+portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was gathered; only
+now it was not at the station, but at a place of far more sinister
+import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope" saloon. Again in
+personnel it was different, notably different from that of the first
+occasion. The same irresponsibles were there, as ever they are present
+at times of storm; but added to the aggregation now, outnumbering them,
+were others ordinarily responsible, men typical in every way of the time
+and place. A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
+gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had
+brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last, these
+dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously. Rumour,
+inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story
+buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to
+haunt the station at the time of the incoming train. The incident of the
+morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had
+followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become
+certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the
+point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its
+place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the
+girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street
+through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
+prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the
+ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet
+well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as
+on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet
+call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous
+familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an
+instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace. Not once did
+he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his
+side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when
+he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor
+realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as
+surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise--and
+that soon, very, very soon.
+
+Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever
+garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously
+grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and
+the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable
+unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying
+dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not
+the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the
+alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they
+went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them,
+at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and
+noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope
+saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
+William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where
+the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in
+sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to
+the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed--for they were
+in the residence section now--had its pair or multiple pairs peering out
+through the slats of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a
+performance, at the side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had
+spread; like turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their
+shells; yet everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to
+take a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the pedestrians
+were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding across the lawn to
+pause at a safe distance and growl a menace; and again the all-noting
+Indian had observed the cause of the unwonted bravery, had heard the low
+voice from the kitchen that had urged the beast on.
+
+Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm approached.
+Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the girl not been
+living in the future instead of the present, she would have recognised
+its coming. For the pursuers were gaining rapidly now. They had crossed
+onto the same street, the principal residence thoroughfare, and were
+coming as a crowd ever moves: swiftly, those in the rear exerting
+themselves to get to the fore, and so again. Far from silent by this
+time, the man ahead, the man who never deigned a backward glance, could
+hear their voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
+interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
+seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a commander, a
+directing spirit--and as well as he knew his own name he knew who that
+leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in the ways of the world was this
+man; but in the reading of his fellows he was a master.
+
+Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had congregated at
+the train, he had nevertheless observed them individual by individual;
+and in his own consciousness had known that the moment, his moment, had
+not come: for a leader, the leader, was not there. Again when the train
+had pulled in he had watched--and still the leader did not appear. But
+he was not deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had
+trusted in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that
+one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been right. For
+the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained on them so
+rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in those brief hours the
+Indian and the girl had been alone in the tiny room at the hotel had
+vitalised the lukewarm racial hostility into a thing of menace, was the
+same man whose life he had once saved, the same man about whose throat
+ere the identical night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig
+by name, one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master
+of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!
+
+Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was again
+looking out the single window. Time and time again he had tried to
+work--and as often failed. At last he had conformed to the inevitable
+and was merely waiting. The house was on the outskirts of the town and
+the window faced the open prairie; bare and rolling as far as the eye
+could reach. He was city bred, this mild-faced servant of God, and as
+yet the prairie country was a thing at which to marvel. He was looking
+out upon it now, absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and
+its silence--when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no longer
+silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by moment,
+penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an indistinct roar; rising,
+lowering, yet ever constant: a sound unlike any other on earth,
+distinctive as the silence preceding had been typical--the clamour of
+angry, menacing human voices _en masse._ Once, not long before, in a
+city street the listener had heard that identical sound; and
+recognition was instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike
+that had been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden
+appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate figure of
+the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment only, for life, in
+their midst. Swift as memory came that picture; and swift upon its
+heels, blotting it out, the present returned. Clifford Mitchell had not
+been among this people long; yet already he had caught the spirit of the
+place, and as he listened he knew full well what a similar gathering
+among them would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor;
+not a drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after
+moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first real
+terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind was there a
+doubt as to the destination of that oncoming multitude. Premonition had
+been too electric in the air that day for him to question its meaning.
+They were coming to him, to him, Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible
+menacing humans. It might be another for whom they had gathered; but he
+as well would share in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he
+was a party to the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from
+the time the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours
+of trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
+anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a certainty.
+Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring out on his
+forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand.
+Following came a purely physical weakness; and stumbling across the room
+he took the seat beside the desk. Unconsciously nervous, restless, his
+fingers fumbled with the pile of papers before him until they came to a
+certain one he had buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to
+do so he spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
+waiting.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
+cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by it
+alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He could hear
+them down the street at the other end of the block before the residence
+of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a certainty because part of those who
+came were on the sidewalk, and that was the only piece of cement in
+town. Again, by the same token, he knew when they passed the only other
+house in the block besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk
+there, and when the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps
+went suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in a
+moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own yard, the
+roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could even distinguish
+what they were saying now, could catch names, his own name.
+
+Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed before
+his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously faces, not a few
+but as many as could crowd into the space, appeared outside the panes,
+staring curiously in. Involuntarily he arose to draw the shade; and at
+that moment, interrupting, startlingly loud, there came a knock at his
+front door.
+
+Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood irresolute;
+and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of curious faces
+multiplied.
+
+The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but deliberately
+and with an insistence there was no misunderstanding.
+
+This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out the faces
+of the curious. The licence he had been absently holding was still in
+his hand; but he did not delay to put it down. There was something
+compelling in that knock; something that demanded instant obedience, and
+he obeyed. The living-room through which he passed on his way had two
+windows and, identical with that of his study, each was black with
+humanity; but he did not even glance at them. His legs trembled
+involuntarily and his throat was dry as though he had been speaking for
+hours; yet, nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly
+he turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto the
+street, looked out.
+
+While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the uncounted
+throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that October day, they
+remembered that moment, the moments that followed. As real life is ever
+stranger than fiction, so off the stage occur incidents more stirring
+than at the play. Standing there in the narrow doorway, white-faced,
+hesitant, awaiting a command, the minister himself exemplified the fact
+beyond question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had
+thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his consciousness for
+but one impression; and that was for the drama ready there before him.
+And small wonder, for, looking out, this was what he saw:
+
+An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass
+and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on
+fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In
+the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of
+his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was
+a solid zone of motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and
+untrimmed beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation
+and passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously aping
+their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments; all ages and
+conditions of the human frontier male were there--but in that zone not a
+single woman. Ranchers there were in corduroys and denims, cowboys in
+buckskin and flannel, gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of
+their kind, business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in
+anything and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the
+surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to bay.
+
+In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple of paces
+of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them, a rather small
+brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of ready-made clothes
+and a derby hat of the model of the year before, were nearest; so near
+that the door, which swung outward, all but touched them. The other, a
+well-built, smooth-faced Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands,
+was opposite. His dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat
+and patent leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his
+linen was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin.
+Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to prevent, as
+he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and left. One look told his
+story. He had been drinking, drinking for days; and, worst of all, he
+had been drinking this day, drinking in anticipation of this very
+moment, swallowing courage against the necessity of the now. All this
+the stage and its setting, upon which the white-faced minister raised
+the curtain. Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the
+real play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used
+front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not a
+sound marked the opening of the drama.
+
+A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could feel; then
+of a sudden it was broken--not by words, but by action. One step the
+white-skinned man took forward; a step toward the girl. A second step he
+advanced, and halted; for, preventing, the hand of the other man was
+upon his own.
+
+"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for
+congratulations yet. Stand back, please."
+
+Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a curse, a
+challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical terrified little
+cry the girl shrank back into the doorway itself. But none other, not
+even the minister, stirred.
+
+"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in the
+stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to stand back. I
+don't warn you, I merely request--but I shall not ask it again." Of a
+sudden the speaker's hand left the other's arm, dropped by his own side.
+"Stand back, please."
+
+Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working, passionate,
+menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky overhead. A moment they
+remained so while the breathless onlookers expected anything, while from
+the doorstep the minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then
+slowly, lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took
+silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still another, and
+was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first time he found voice.
+
+"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd have let
+you go if you'd given up the girl; but now--now--May God have mercy on
+your soul now, How Landor!"
+
+Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first meeting on
+the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It was the crisis,
+and as before an instinct which she did not understand, which she merely
+obeyed, brought her to the Indian's side; held her there motionless,
+passive, mysteriously unafraid. Her usually brown face was very pale and
+her eyes were unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably
+calm--calm as a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that
+solid zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or
+no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that motionless,
+dominant human by her side.
+
+A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear each other
+breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the minister's lips
+became audible; then came the end. Incredible after it was over was that
+_dénouement_, inexplicable to a legion of old men, then among the boys,
+who witnessed it, to this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take
+place in this world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate
+other men it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first
+challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken. The
+only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life found
+voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that listening,
+expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion his arms folded
+across his chest.
+
+"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done my best to
+avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything at your hands,
+every insult which you could conceive, things which no white man would
+have permitted for a second; and so far without resentment. But I shall
+stand it no more. I'm one to a hundred; but that makes no difference.
+Bess Landor and I are to be married now and here; here before you all. I
+shall not talk to you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace;
+but as surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to
+me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I shall
+kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing." A
+moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms;
+then, still facing, he moved back a step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we
+are ready."
+
+And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred
+curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night
+itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married. The
+minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close
+before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the
+pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet it was done, and, save
+one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent
+stayed and listened to the end. That one, a tall, modish alien with a
+red, flushed face covered with a two-days' growth of bread, was likewise
+watching when it began. But when it was over he was not there; and not
+one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling,
+sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl
+of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of
+them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a
+straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling
+brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall,
+the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
+mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after
+three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though
+the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey
+flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the
+ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the
+ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at
+intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of
+the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried
+grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was
+no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny
+town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
+behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
+followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he
+was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce visible landmarks he
+alone distinguished was returning to his own, to the wild that lay in
+the distance beyond.
+
+Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went; and back of
+them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built terminus grew
+dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as completely as though it
+had never been. Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot
+against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three
+miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious
+motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind
+them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue
+surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there
+with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
+alone.
+
+As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From
+horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion
+of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or
+hate--and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she
+could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift
+her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of
+fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have
+been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so,
+did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch
+her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the
+last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something
+which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing
+taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of
+darkness. But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had
+awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they
+had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
+panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations,
+thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been
+hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare
+on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the
+experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events
+had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but _en masse_ the
+effect had been definite--startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may
+seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
+consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
+metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an
+adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place.
+Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself
+to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as
+existence itself, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back
+there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not,
+mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came
+to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing
+that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear
+again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
+taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the
+woman.
+
+Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the
+swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the
+personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into
+abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the
+hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent
+dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain
+itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by
+minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
+impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming
+bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it
+blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had
+done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that
+the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite
+loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a
+child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
+intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future
+endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied
+a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony
+would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature
+impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration
+intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
+distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled
+the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for
+worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was
+no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge
+overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born,
+became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first
+time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable.
+Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she
+sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her
+eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.
+
+"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"
+
+The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not
+yet completely returned.
+
+"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."
+
+"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a
+walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close.
+"I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."
+
+"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has
+never hurt it. It merely is."
+
+At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not
+move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change
+had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful
+as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The
+high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made
+a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious.
+Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a
+colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The
+black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
+of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of
+exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a
+standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour
+had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the
+truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was
+almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it
+should prove a myth.
+
+Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
+worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his
+God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus
+the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been
+eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his
+again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork,
+watched to the end; and then, observing that _finale_, laughed--and with
+the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
+understand, and I can't tell you."
+
+She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture
+she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly
+with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all
+right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She
+laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
+"It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
+someone else; even though that property were a girl."
+
+Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On
+his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that
+something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true
+to his instincts, waited.
+
+"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl,
+"even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
+anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to
+do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to
+you; not even as possibility."
+
+Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light
+came.
+
+"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never
+occur to me to do so."
+
+More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of
+Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the
+vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I
+hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than
+you; but now--now--" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap
+the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a
+sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"
+
+More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to
+fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled
+with the reins impotently.
+
+"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell
+me what it is, won't you?"
+
+"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?"
+Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is
+wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as
+you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone?
+Wrong: the preposterous idea!"
+
+She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to
+be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking
+at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible
+in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He
+did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the
+seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace
+of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
+the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab
+she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and
+contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood
+changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears.
+In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed
+close to his face.
+
+"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous
+and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the
+map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere
+to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.
+
+Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when,
+far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had
+seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short
+fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn,
+was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low
+sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the
+old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the
+tall frost-cured grass to feed.
+
+"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it
+face north, south, east, or west?"
+
+"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the
+morning."
+
+With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set
+about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box.
+The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More
+quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take
+shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself
+was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and
+swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed
+and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by
+legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed
+the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the
+frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task
+was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
+and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that
+light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole.
+Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless
+earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for
+her to descend.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a
+time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook
+supper and all. Come, girlie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel
+William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the
+same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light
+from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face.
+In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo
+robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was
+toward her. His eyes--eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature
+man--were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was
+living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was
+at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
+made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
+worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a
+devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they
+had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence
+at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had
+apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said,
+"we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day--" he had
+looked down as he had spoken--"to-day I felt somehow as though I could
+not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."
+
+Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time;
+and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing
+at her--and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return
+that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning,
+her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was
+afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
+gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths
+of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such
+confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it--and still she did
+not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save
+the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason
+therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to
+shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively,
+almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the
+way.
+
+"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly.
+"It makes me afraid of myself--afraid of dropping. Supposing I should
+fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you,
+could ever put the pieces together."
+
+"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be
+there to catch you."
+
+"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth,
+you know."
+
+"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in
+the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated,
+too, then."
+
+The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon,
+very carefully.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm
+perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very--bad at times."
+
+The other smiled; that was all.
+
+"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I
+don't like you and run away."
+
+"If you did you'd return very soon."
+
+"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"
+
+"I know so."
+
+"Why, How?"
+
+"Because you care for me."
+
+"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."
+
+"You'd find your mistake and come back."
+
+The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.
+
+"And when I did--come back--you'd forgive me, How?"
+
+"There'd be nothing to forgive."
+
+"It wouldn't be wrong--to leave you that way?"
+
+"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."
+
+"Not if I did anything, if I--ran away with another man?"
+
+The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.
+
+"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."
+
+"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no
+matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"
+
+For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the
+man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since
+they had been speaking his eyes dropped.
+
+"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have
+everything go on as before--I am human. I could not."
+
+A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of
+a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.
+
+"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say
+it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry
+a mortal, you know."
+
+The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
+
+"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the
+girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me
+anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run
+away? Would you forgive him, too?"
+
+Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
+
+"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't
+give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
+
+Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted
+in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood
+out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
+
+"Forgive _him_, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
+
+That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking
+at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no
+human being could have misread the answer. With the same little
+hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense
+hands went lax.
+
+"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day,
+you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things
+lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed
+before that I possessed them."
+
+Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man
+arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the
+girl to her feet.
+
+"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something
+you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now,
+girlie?"
+
+Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look
+up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long
+lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow
+of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.
+
+"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She
+smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for
+me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How,
+man; absolutely nothing."
+
+For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but,
+still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip
+that was a caress his hands dropped.
+
+"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel
+that you are unhappy, is all."
+
+"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so
+easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm
+very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't
+you?"
+
+"Forgive you!--Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast,
+the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as
+the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only
+realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you
+could only realise!"
+
+Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes,
+sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
+
+"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that
+you love me. Tell me! tell me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read
+and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth
+of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were
+left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only
+nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a
+tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once
+"unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the
+aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate
+not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had
+builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city
+bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
+could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my
+adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of
+greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned
+laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but
+incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other
+names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called
+How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred
+words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet
+was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
+who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William
+Landor of the Buffalo Butte.
+
+Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution.
+Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated
+manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that
+score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather
+case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a
+kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence
+he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
+Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took
+possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo
+Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place
+upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked
+to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
+
+Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a
+memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and
+wife--and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back
+from the land of nothingness they came--and again no one was at hand to
+welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that
+plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration
+of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced.
+Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay
+for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
+Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle
+against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew
+not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks
+she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The
+very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of
+change on the morrow. The next day it was the same--and the next. When
+they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
+time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her
+companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and
+the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day
+by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was
+struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way
+they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days
+that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the
+change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she
+lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
+precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it
+was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly.
+What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever
+know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man
+and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had
+there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another.
+That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could
+have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
+which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have
+questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed.
+The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown
+sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics.
+Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the
+first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had
+shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit
+the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this
+newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the
+prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
+returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.
+
+One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that
+was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax
+boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had
+intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch,
+and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its
+furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up
+in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable,
+in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that
+frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he
+led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he
+threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
+her.
+
+"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said,
+and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.
+
+A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and
+cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never
+before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl
+realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive
+human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his
+own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the
+knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms
+flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.
+
+"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"
+
+"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.
+
+For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening
+the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.
+The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision
+of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection
+of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch
+for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left
+astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark
+or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever
+considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and
+the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl
+stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into
+the darkness.
+
+"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone
+about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and
+that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.
+
+Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his
+manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a
+blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the
+obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by
+nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable.
+Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne
+what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;
+but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched
+linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant
+town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he
+polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly
+an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who
+knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from
+humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing
+at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in
+this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How
+Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it
+all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of
+a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered
+his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish
+undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes
+to observe, to pity perchance, then--But let it pass what he did then.
+It is another tale and extraneous.
+
+Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew
+shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No
+human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on
+pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had
+both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the
+execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a
+distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They
+accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further
+than that--they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
+whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on--whither no
+one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old
+Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had
+been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the
+olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor
+was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were
+gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did
+a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when
+by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His
+reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again,
+they were white and he was red--and between them the chasm yawned.
+
+Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It
+was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was
+one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and
+there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal
+white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights
+the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh
+layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more
+into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
+migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or
+at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the
+booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this
+impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God
+is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally
+manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite
+bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon
+beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of
+words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the
+girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
+at a time did not glance without.
+
+Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long
+before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its
+advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the
+range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound
+was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and
+frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page
+appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and _en masse_,
+wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of
+an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of
+prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies
+branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on
+the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were
+changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though
+soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
+white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day,
+as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they,
+and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky
+now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of
+his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed
+through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.
+After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
+in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks;
+flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not
+only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white
+blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long
+absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on
+motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their
+five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders,
+appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and
+grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last,
+the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable,
+with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
+whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
+following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in
+their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with
+their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's
+advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical
+as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie
+and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
+that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive,
+alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and
+re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it
+repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each
+to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung
+slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the
+stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no
+sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the
+newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable,
+did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway,
+he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his
+long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.
+
+The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in approved riding
+togs, halted likewise and returned the look; equally minutely, equally
+suspiciously. The horse he rode was one of a kind seldom seen on the
+ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider
+sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another
+life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance
+they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective
+"smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness
+of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general
+youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there,
+have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so, taking in every detail
+of the commonplace surroundings. Then, apparently satisfied, he
+dismounted and, tying the animal to the wheel of an old surrey drawn up
+in the yard, he approached the single entrance of the house and rapped.
+
+To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a
+frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a plain gingham gown.
+A moment they looked at each other; then the man's riding cap came off
+with a sweep and he held out his hand.
+
+"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was all. Then he
+looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see your husband," he
+exclaimed. "Is he at home?"
+
+The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched hand.
+
+"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that you had
+returned."
+
+A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his hand
+dropped; but his eyes held their place.
+
+"Yes. I only came yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to
+talk over with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"
+
+Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.
+
+"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man. "Aren't we to
+be even neighbourly?"
+
+"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be otherwise."
+
+"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming positive
+now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."
+
+"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately. "Answer?" She
+undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by courtesy, that after
+I've lived the last four months I'm still such a child as that? Do you
+really wish me to answer, Neighbour Craig?"
+
+For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins in his
+trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously. Then again he
+looked up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave an hour
+ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It was you I came
+to see. May I stay?"
+
+Again the girl ignored the question.
+
+"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you wouldn't have
+come, that nothing you know of could have made you come? Let's
+understand each other in the beginning. You admit this?"
+
+"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"
+
+The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the eyes;
+silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could not fathom,
+could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as deliberately she released
+him, looked away.
+
+"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."
+
+"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an obvious effort
+he checked himself "Thank you," he completed repressedly.
+
+This time the girl did not smile.
+
+"Don't you realise yet that sort of thing is useless?" she queried
+unemotionally.
+
+It was the man this time who was silent.
+
+"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so; but for
+once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us good, we're both
+living a lie; but at least we understand each other. Let's not waste
+energy in pretending--when there's no one to be deceived."
+
+Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too much a part
+of his life to shake off instantly. Then he laughed.
+
+"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway be it so.
+And now, that I'm to stay--" A meaning glance through the open door.
+"You were working, weren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch. You
+remember another morning once before, don't you--a morning before you
+grew up--"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."
+
+"I am quite deficient in imagination."
+
+"At least, though, dishes must be washed."
+
+"Not necessarily--this moment at least. They have waited before."
+
+"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or interfere."
+
+"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and enjoy the
+sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated? They're clean, I
+know. I scrubbed them this very morning myself."
+
+The man hesitated. Then he sat down.
+
+"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm going to
+return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit--the way you are now.
+You've changed terribly."
+
+"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely as I am
+this moment for--a lifetime."
+
+"For--how long, Bess?"
+
+"A lifetime, I think."
+
+"For four months, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps--it's all the same."
+
+"Since you did a foolish thing?"
+
+"I have done many such."
+
+"Since the last, I mean."
+
+"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened. "The last
+was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in the smallest
+possible manner since then."
+
+The man inspected his boots.
+
+"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at length.
+
+"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took a place
+beside him. "I had forgotten."
+
+They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real perplexity.
+
+"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."
+
+"I have not denied it," evenly.
+
+The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for anything;
+but he was finding his mistake.
+
+"This life you've--selected, is wearing on you," he added. "Frankly, I
+hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and happy."
+
+"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin mine. You're
+dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the signs."
+
+The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank criticism
+than to receive it.
+
+"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said intimately, "nor
+attempt to deny it. There is a reason, however."
+
+"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually is an
+explanation for everything we do in this life."
+
+"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."
+
+"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."
+
+"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."
+
+The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back against the
+lintel of the door. She looked very young that moment--and very old.
+
+"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my explanation for
+being--as I am. What is yours?"
+
+"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"
+
+"I wish to know the reason."
+
+"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be here."
+
+"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you have
+married?"
+
+"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life, and--the man you
+have named."
+
+"I don't believe I understand, Bess."
+
+"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence I
+possessed, for two weeks."
+
+"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.
+
+"I repeat you have the compliment--if you consider it such."
+
+Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all the time,
+the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them now, steadily,
+immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without, against the background
+of the dark interior his eyes shone as though they were afire.
+
+"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I have
+made you unhappy."
+
+"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a voice.
+
+"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"
+
+"No. I merely understand you--now. You're not sorry, because otherwise
+you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be here--even though my
+husband were away."
+
+Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly a novelty
+in his life to be treated as he was being treated this day. Ordinarily
+glib of speech, for some reason in the face of this newfound emotionless
+characterisation, he had nothing to say. It is difficult to appear what
+one is not in the blaze of one's own fireside. It was impossible under
+the scrutiny of this wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events
+gone by.
+
+"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've got other
+things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway." He looked at her
+openly, significantly. "Your own self, for instance."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I'm listening. Tell me everything."
+
+"You really fancy I will after--the past?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And why, please?"
+
+"You've already told me why."
+
+"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to be
+ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."
+
+"I'm still listening."
+
+"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"
+
+"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your husband?
+You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"
+
+The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively, impassively.
+Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an untrained eye, a black dot
+stood out above the horizon line. Her eyes paused upon it.
+
+"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Never, Bess."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"I swear."
+
+Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.
+
+"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still perjure
+yourself. To answer your question, I really don't know."
+
+"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll stand a lot
+from you, but there's a limit--"
+
+"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's not a soul
+but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be seated."
+
+From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily,
+resentfully--then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were
+mingled. He sat down.
+
+The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and on.
+
+"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my soul, if I
+have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make the exchange, no
+one who can give me light. Does that answer your question?"
+
+Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.
+
+"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"
+
+"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are why."
+
+No answer, only silence.
+
+"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl. "A little
+tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit? You're not plural,
+but nevertheless you personified that pack. You and the unknown things
+you represented were pressing me close. I was confused and afraid. I was
+a babe four months ago. I was not afraid of How, I had loved him--at
+least I thought I had, I'm sure of nothing now--and, as I say, I was
+afraid of you--then."
+
+"And now--"
+
+Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she looked
+away.
+
+"I'm not in the least afraid of you now--or of anything."
+
+"Not even of your husband?"
+
+"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."
+
+Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.
+
+"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I made a
+mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am afraid of
+something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are of death, of this
+infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip deep, unconsciously. "I
+sometimes think the old fear of everything were preferable, were the
+lesser of the two evils."
+
+Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose skin under
+his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.
+
+"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think you've
+gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked away; but
+unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the landscape that
+spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you realise what a mess
+you've made of your life."
+
+The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.
+
+"Yes, I think I do," she said.
+
+"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a brute after
+all in attempting to prevent your doing as you did."
+
+"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't been a
+brute."
+
+Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.
+
+"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then, Bess? Cared
+for me myself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that I frightened you back here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.
+
+"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it now?"
+
+The girl looked away in silence.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"
+
+"I can't tell you. I don't know."
+
+"Don't know?"
+
+"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days--anything except
+that I'm afraid."
+
+"Of the future?"
+
+"Yes--and of myself."
+
+For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said nothing. A
+long silence fell between them. It was the girl herself who broke it.
+
+"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and the voice
+was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with Uncle Landor."
+
+"Was I to blame, Bess?"
+
+"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."
+
+"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."
+
+The girl said nothing.
+
+"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can restore
+the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making you unhappy?"
+
+"Yes. I admit it."
+
+The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.
+
+"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.
+
+"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't. You're too
+selfish."
+
+"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.
+
+"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.
+
+The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.
+
+"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively maddening!"
+
+"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be ourselves
+to-day. I merely told you things as they are."
+
+Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in silence. One of
+his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay in his lap. Against
+his will now and then a muscle contracted nervously; and of a sudden he
+thrust the telltale member deep into his trousers pocket.
+
+"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't go on
+this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Haven't you ever thought of it?"
+
+"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else--for an age."
+
+"And you've decided nothing?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing."
+
+Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his voice
+trembled.
+
+"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.
+
+"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By what right
+should you be permitted to decide?"
+
+The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His eyes were
+steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that he would win,
+that the moment was his moment.
+
+"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said simply.
+
+"Love me, after what you have done?"
+
+"Yes. I have been mad--and done mad things. But I've discovered my
+fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you so--and to make amends."
+
+Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look; but the
+man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure that he voiced a
+challenge.
+
+"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you ran away,
+in spite of the fact that you are married, you love me!"
+
+Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her lips
+parted, but she said no word.
+
+"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't--because it is true."
+
+A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second time that day
+Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise. While yet he was
+master of the situation, while yet the time was his, he arose.
+
+"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He looked at her
+deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say, for I've told you
+that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember this: If I've stolen
+your happiness, I'll give it all back. As God is my witness, I'll give
+it all back with interest." Swiftly, before she could answer, he turned
+away and strode toward the impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he
+undid the tie strap and mounted. Without another word, or a backward
+glance, he rode away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the
+damp spring earth.
+
+Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not move. She
+did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at the C-C ranch
+house, until the buildings hid the owner from view, did her eyes leave
+him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she looked away over the
+prairie, away where the last time she had glanced a tiny black dot stood
+out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not
+find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not.
+Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the
+unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes.
+With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable
+doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening, and as he
+came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled his feet as one
+unconsciously will when very weary. He was wearing his ready-made
+clothes and starched collar; but the trousers were deplorably baggy at
+the knees from much riding, and his linen and polished shoes were soiled
+with the dust of the prairie.
+
+Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared. Serving
+it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the
+slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and
+throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek. A
+young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his
+hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the
+buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace
+just outside the ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly,
+continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year
+before. To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her
+companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned,
+unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a
+note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted
+colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every
+motion. Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing
+human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation:
+yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the
+unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never
+was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive,
+sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not remarkable.
+He had never done so except when she had not. When he looked at her
+there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that
+also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery in the depths of his
+steady black eyes. Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious
+was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the
+girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring
+night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes
+intimately close.
+
+Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south
+breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears;
+about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the
+subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing
+things. But not even then could the girl be still. Far too full of this
+day's revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be
+silent. The mood of her merely changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless,
+ceased. In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a
+definite question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed
+arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown,
+when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she did not alter her
+position.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "whether if one has made a mistake, it were better
+to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to
+admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay
+the penalty?" She paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do
+you think, How?"
+
+In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the lighter sky her
+face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a silhouette.
+
+"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he answered.
+
+"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from suffering?"
+
+"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."
+
+The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.
+
+"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the truth makes
+one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any difference, How?"
+
+The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with his steady
+eyes.
+
+"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he said. "I
+think this is one of them."
+
+Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.
+
+"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.
+
+"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with
+ourselves or not."
+
+"You think that, really?"
+
+"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."
+
+Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last,
+abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new
+query.
+
+"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
+
+"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no
+irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain.
+"How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at
+all?"
+
+Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words
+themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
+
+"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
+
+This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where
+the running might read.
+
+"Yes, I have an idea--and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness,
+has always been the first thing in my life."
+
+Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by
+step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she
+was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched
+her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he
+made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately
+from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was
+filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke
+no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not
+but have admired her child that night.
+
+One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had
+walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no
+hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.
+
+"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I
+haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She
+paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been
+watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become
+restless week by week. Last night,--you didn't notice, but I did,--I
+heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see
+what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and
+I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn.
+It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost
+as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but
+all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere
+away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing
+there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that
+second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he
+could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He
+didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he
+couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the
+chain stretched across his back--" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat
+up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she
+pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me
+you'll let him go!"
+
+Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.
+
+"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save Shaggy's
+life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out of her den and
+shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when I found him."
+
+"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't make any
+difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him here."
+
+Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with the
+argument.
+
+"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't live
+through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will shoot him on
+sight."
+
+"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the girl. "We
+all have to take our chances in this life."
+
+For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.
+
+"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill the first
+animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of that?"
+
+The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.
+
+"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I made him as
+he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to be; and if he's bad,
+God alone is to blame." Her glance returned, met the other fair. "I wish
+you'd let him go, How."
+
+The man made no answer.
+
+"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"
+
+"You really wish it, Bess?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a sudden he
+arose.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said.
+
+Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more, followed his
+lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But
+there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung
+from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the
+way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep,
+but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise
+there was no move. Look where one would within the building, there was
+no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the Indian led the way
+outside, made the circuit of the stable, paused at the south end where
+a chain hung loose from a peg driven into the wall. A moment he stood
+there, holding the light so the girl could see; then, impassive as
+before, he extinguished the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.
+
+They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke; then,
+detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.
+
+"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."
+
+They walked on so.
+
+"You wanted him to go?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.
+
+"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.
+
+For the second time there was no answer.
+
+"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.
+
+"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I thought
+I--understood."
+
+For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither
+stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the hand dropped.
+
+"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.
+
+Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his chest.
+That was all.
+
+The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.
+
+"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.
+
+"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.
+
+"No, Bess," repeated.
+
+"But still you're not coming?"
+
+"No."
+
+Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.
+
+"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She scarcely
+recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with me again?"
+
+"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that, Bess." A
+second halt. "Not until things between us are different, at least."
+
+"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped the casing
+of the door. "Oh, How! How!"
+
+No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a breath;
+just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl stood it, hoping
+against hope, praying for a miracle; then she could stand it no longer.
+Gropingly clutching at every object within reach, she made her way into
+the dark interior; flung herself full dressed onto the bed, her face
+buried desperately among the covers.
+
+All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth in front
+of the ranch house door; back and forth like an automaton, back and
+forth in a motion that seemed perpetual. Within the tiny low-ceiled
+room, in the fulness of time, the girl sobbed herself into a fitful
+sleep; but not once did the sentinel pause to rest, not once in those
+dragging hours before day did he relax. With the coming of the first
+trace of light he halted, and on silent moccasined feet stole within.
+But again he only remained for moments, and when he returned it was
+merely to stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before
+the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did everything, he
+rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into the darkness to the
+west.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague sense of
+depression and of impending evil. The door was open and the bright
+morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance stretched the open
+prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny brown island, her own
+dooryard, in the foreground. With dull listlessness, the girl propped
+herself up in bed and sat looking about her. Absently, aimlessly, her
+eyes passed from one familiar object to another. Without any definite
+conception of why or of where, she was conscious of an impression of
+change in the material world about her, a change that corresponded to
+the mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the
+sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering joy.
+Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message passed her by.
+Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a haunting memory of
+the past night and of what it had meant. As a traveller lost in this
+fog, she lay staring about, indecisive which way to move, idly waiting
+for light. Ordinarily action itself would have offered a solution of the
+problem, would have served at least as a diversion; but this morning she
+was strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no
+adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything more
+than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow higher and,
+lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her palm and lay with
+wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.
+
+Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The doorway faced
+south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had entered therein began
+moving to the left across the floor. Unconsciously, for the lack of
+anything better to do, she watched its advance. It fell upon a tiny
+shelf against the wall, littered with a collection of papers and
+magazines; and the reflected light from the white sheets glared in her
+eyes. It came to the supper table of the night before, the table she had
+not cleared, and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of
+her own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on;
+crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live thing,
+began climbing the wall beyond.
+
+Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched its
+advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its relentless
+stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny. Like a hostile
+alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in the tiny room for
+something definite, something it did not find. Fatuous as it may seem,
+the impression grew upon her, augmented until in its own turn it became
+a dominant influence. Her glance, heretofore absent, perfunctory, became
+intense. The glare was well above the floor by this time and climbing
+higher and higher. Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat
+up free in bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her
+fairly.
+
+The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light was
+mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from rough-fashioned wooden
+pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant wardrobe. At first glance
+there seemed to the girl nothing unusual revealed thereon, nothing
+significant; and, restlessly observant, the inspection advanced. Then,
+ere the mental picture could vanish, ere a new impression could take its
+place, in a flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came
+realisation complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute
+thereafter she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and
+wider, her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a
+minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of weariness
+and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place, and covered her
+face from sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+SACRIFICE
+
+A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the
+slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren
+dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition
+the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was
+perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long
+waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he
+had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully
+concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
+litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had
+grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the
+visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer
+present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had
+come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever
+rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.
+
+For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been
+invited to enter, yet he had entered--and the girl had spoken no word to
+prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a
+peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged,
+they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging
+intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the
+bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was
+present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids,
+whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour
+of putting the place to rights.
+
+"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that
+unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching.
+Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"
+
+The girl did not smile.
+
+"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were
+tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer--" She drew another
+chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.
+
+A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the
+whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had
+grown to assume in her presence took its place.
+
+"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm
+when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible
+offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
+
+"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of
+punishment?"
+
+The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the
+past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed
+plain.
+
+"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held
+me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
+
+"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that
+I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
+
+For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that
+the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to
+abandon at once.
+
+"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he
+objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all.
+Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
+
+"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to
+appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten
+immeasurably farther away from another."
+
+"Your husband you mean?"
+
+"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
+
+The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to
+each other not to know everything there is to know."
+
+"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The
+inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly--and she herself had
+chosen. "He's merely given me up."
+
+"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something
+else as well, something akin to exultation.
+
+"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
+
+"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
+
+Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old
+pride, broke forth.
+
+"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before
+this if he objected?" she flamed.
+
+"Bess!"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had
+died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean
+to."
+
+The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the
+last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon
+blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive,
+conscious conformity such as this--The thing was unbelievable,
+providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic
+moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a
+change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to
+permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he
+had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to
+avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not
+alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to
+himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not
+the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the
+girl--particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be
+gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He
+merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
+that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.
+
+"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"
+
+"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."
+
+"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any
+longer. It's intolerable for both of us."
+
+"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."
+
+Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had
+imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now
+that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He
+hardly knew how to begin.
+
+"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very
+dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided
+the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in
+keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any
+longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the
+responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that
+before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from
+this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad--at least leave for a
+time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we
+wish; but for the present--I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
+another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.
+
+"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we
+can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He
+cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've
+arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last
+week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses
+waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the
+ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before
+morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again,
+nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say,
+not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been
+enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
+the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at
+the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.
+Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.
+There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on
+her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows
+you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to
+live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess;
+happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"
+
+He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the
+dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat
+looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As
+she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.
+Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an
+evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden,
+within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
+instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than
+life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading,
+distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her
+ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn
+philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she
+had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full
+knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him
+so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
+wife--.
+
+The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face
+drew nearer.
+
+"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense.
+Will you go?"
+
+With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back
+until she was free.
+
+"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to
+think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes;
+but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must
+consent--"
+
+"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I
+can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you
+must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not
+insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"
+
+The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.
+
+"I can't now, as things are."
+
+"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"
+
+For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.
+
+The man came a step forward, and another.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"
+
+"I have told you," said a low voice.
+
+Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human
+being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move
+or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he
+commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily,
+irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."
+
+"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent
+effort to be free. "You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but
+not wholly. Please let me go."
+
+Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the
+moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to
+escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out
+of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.
+
+But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His
+back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in.
+Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out
+the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same
+all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the
+doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first
+woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might
+have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.
+
+"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten
+you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and
+not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could
+no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you
+go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're
+mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--"
+
+The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible
+muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the
+shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside
+them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the
+invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent
+poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent
+passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder
+in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count,
+the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical
+spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction
+had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure,
+there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense,
+desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.
+
+"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips
+and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I
+guess. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the
+two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his
+presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once
+more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful,
+he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More
+maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that
+passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot
+blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
+his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband,
+tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward
+menacingly.
+
+"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps,
+not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word
+his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost,
+lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"
+
+From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that
+instant the room became deathly still.
+
+A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then,
+white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so,
+motionless:--for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was
+speaking.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step
+the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the
+white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice,
+unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was
+even as before.
+
+"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said.
+"I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I
+expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may
+listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but
+now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a
+moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the
+old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they
+rested on the face of the girl.
+
+But for still another moment--he was as deliberate as nature herself,
+this man--he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more
+so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death.
+His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands,
+folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but
+look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath
+the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now,
+very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
+expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite
+in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in
+the low-pitched voice.
+
+"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a
+request to make--and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly,
+to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came
+because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had
+reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the
+folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned
+abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon
+for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to
+do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into
+it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the
+girl's recollection while memory lasted.
+
+"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on.
+"Things are as they are--and final. I don't judge you, I--understand.
+Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now
+I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At
+least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to
+tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he
+stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment,
+please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to
+say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.
+
+"I said I had a request to make. This is it--that you don't leave until
+you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have
+inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you
+will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned
+anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he
+halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise
+me this, Bess?" he asked.
+
+Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened
+through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent,
+and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever
+in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was
+no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A
+myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was
+gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed
+nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was
+expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.
+
+"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently.
+"I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall
+again."
+
+At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips
+were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.
+
+"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."
+
+Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality;
+but the girl did not break it, said no more--and forever the moment, her
+moment, vanished into the past.
+
+"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely
+different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room.
+"There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he
+explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."
+
+With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope
+satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly
+here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No
+one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence,
+except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the
+satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army
+greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap
+which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered
+in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
+there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small,
+and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood
+beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover
+and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes
+large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At
+last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and
+the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the
+last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from
+nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
+heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his
+burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out
+his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her
+very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but
+I don't, so I'll only say good-bye--and--I wish you happiness." Just a
+moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her
+hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.
+
+"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it--as you cared for me once.
+Don't make things any harder--make them impossible!" Desperately,
+without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door.
+Beside the entrance--for he was not watching these last minutes--stood
+the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted.
+Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant,
+wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did
+everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those
+words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
+grave.
+
+"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say.
+Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so,
+if you will. If you do not--" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace--"if
+you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not
+a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall
+know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times
+better, if you do as I say."
+
+Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then,
+similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there
+broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+REWARD
+
+The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch
+house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the
+supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The
+vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained
+likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
+powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried.
+Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking
+permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a
+convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the
+eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the
+house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking
+permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
+
+Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were
+eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one
+corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
+
+Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor,
+Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy
+queensware proceeded.
+
+"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his
+chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to,
+stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
+
+In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his
+work.
+
+Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete
+was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had
+filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on
+the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
+
+"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
+
+The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of
+cigars.
+
+"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
+
+Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter--for cigars were a rarity on
+the frontier--puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content.
+The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and
+washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a
+cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue,
+disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor
+introduced himself.
+
+"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the
+Centre."
+
+The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
+
+"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at
+last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now.
+You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up
+the two kids."
+
+It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
+
+"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you
+were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look
+reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other
+side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over
+here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
+
+The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he
+glanced up.
+
+"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and--" Hawkins
+laughed peculiarly--"made a fizzle of it."
+
+"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
+
+"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even
+heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with
+his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl
+went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud
+of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
+
+"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing
+the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they
+hit it off well together?"
+
+Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands
+fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
+
+"While the money lasted, yes."
+
+"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
+
+"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
+
+"And then--"
+
+"It's the old story."
+
+"They went to pieces?"
+
+"Craig left her--for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter
+and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he
+was supporting the other woman all the time."
+
+Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the
+cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the
+mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
+
+"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
+
+"Bess came back."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed
+by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes
+were blazing.
+
+"Yes, she was alone," he said.
+
+The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The
+blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
+
+"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
+
+"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday,
+just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
+
+The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
+
+"Back at the ranch--with the Indian?"
+
+Equally directly Manning returned the look.
+
+"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not
+there."
+
+"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
+
+Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
+
+"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came
+here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to
+tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
+
+Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the
+lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing.
+For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face
+incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
+
+"Know where he is? Of course I do--now." He leaned back in his chair.
+"To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here,
+or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
+
+He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
+
+"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last
+week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for
+me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We
+never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a
+sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the
+board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm
+with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a
+two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
+
+For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand
+on the chair arm loosened its grip.
+
+"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think
+we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two
+fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its
+mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the
+morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded
+things a bit on the way up."
+
+For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
+unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
+
+"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty
+miles, and there's plenty of time."
+
+Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old
+storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
+
+"Yes, there's plenty of time--after How Landor knows," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny
+dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a
+shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam.
+In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized
+pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little
+altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was
+very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near
+and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet,
+they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in
+flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
+been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was
+pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking
+mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho
+had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and
+grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were
+unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened,
+something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror
+they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this
+something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and
+invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the
+confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had
+been interrupted.
+
+Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late
+September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy
+brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish
+speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all
+the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as
+irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while
+time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within
+the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
+
+Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On
+soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing,
+he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than
+once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did
+not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within
+stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an
+Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that
+object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he
+peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
+instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its
+revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken
+prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely
+beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent
+human in their midst this autumn day.
+
+How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could
+have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last,
+interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great
+quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost
+before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had
+ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up
+beside the tent.
+
+Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched
+himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was
+waiting.
+
+They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat
+eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
+
+"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be
+enough around when I came."
+
+The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
+
+"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
+
+A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he
+dismounted.
+
+"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed
+abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before
+I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to
+dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind
+I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
+
+In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the
+flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
+
+Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew
+on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then,
+however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now
+at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was
+intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of
+a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old
+storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The
+message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
+begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with
+a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite
+care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man
+himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the
+sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the
+impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied,
+well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him
+at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a
+measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
+that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
+emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
+inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white
+he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an
+inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice,
+with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's
+sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence
+calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless
+savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken
+for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
+realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine
+punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal,
+with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that
+had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his
+interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances
+unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling
+suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a
+readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the
+dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came
+fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal--if the other wished;
+but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the
+decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit
+it afresh suggestively.
+
+"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not
+Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
+
+The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
+
+"I thought so," it said simply.
+
+Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight,
+the glow lit up his face.
+
+"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service--and
+I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
+
+Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless,
+smiling infinite.
+
+"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I
+should know."
+
+The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
+
+"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
+
+Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his
+heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved.
+Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe
+opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground--his
+long fingers locked across his knees.
+
+"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
+
+For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white
+man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit
+now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering
+outside the bowl onto his knee.
+
+"About a month ago"--the speaker cleared his throat raspingly--"on
+August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started
+from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It
+wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one
+was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp
+crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker.
+"It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
+
+Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
+
+"Go on, please," requested a voice.
+
+"Early yesterday morning"--again the narrator halted perforce, to clear
+his throat--"just before I left three men went through town on their way
+to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man
+who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water
+their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch
+house closing the bargain now."
+
+"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
+
+The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged
+when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted
+physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness
+and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set
+eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when
+telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was
+all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by
+request.
+
+"I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old
+formula.
+
+For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a
+match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the
+sound, came a question.
+
+"Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they
+looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the
+mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
+
+"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two
+days old."
+
+"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
+
+"Yes. Several weeks."
+
+"She returned alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to stay?"
+
+Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the
+inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the
+other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
+
+"Yes," answered Manning.
+
+"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
+
+"No, Craig had left her."
+
+Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither
+man noticed the change.
+
+"There was a reason?"
+
+"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
+
+The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as
+the sunlight without.
+
+"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
+
+"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
+
+"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had
+done? You mean to tell me this?"
+
+Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white
+man got to his feet, stood so silent.
+
+"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear
+against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
+
+"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
+
+"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the
+third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come.
+"There could be but one other way!"
+
+Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face
+opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the
+moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so
+was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big
+game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the
+expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the
+end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted,
+waiting, postponing the inevitable.
+
+"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
+repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
+
+To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow
+fell.
+
+"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to the east
+whither he had taken his way not even a dot now indicated his former
+presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon the wheels of the old road
+waggon had temporarily blazed a trail had returned normally erect.
+Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over the parched earth, the storm had
+gathered and broken; and passed on as though it had not been. All about
+smiled the sunshine; sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing,
+heard nothing. On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned,
+swam and splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal
+breeze of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
+song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had nature, the
+serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her
+customary course. Man alone it is who changes to conform with the
+passing mood. Man alone it was amid this primitive setting who had
+altered now.
+
+For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming. Instead, his
+every action was that of one with a definite purpose. Yet even then he
+did not hurry. At first he seemed merely to be going about the ordinary
+routine of his life. Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself
+a generous meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for
+the first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
+unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or even
+touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward the tent and
+disappeared inside.
+
+For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to place; and
+when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing indeed. In his arms
+were several articles of clothing rolled into a bulky bundle. Without a
+halt he made his way back to the place where he had eaten. The fire
+which he had builded had burned low ere this; and, standing there beside
+it, he scraped away the ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until
+the glowing embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had
+opened with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which
+it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a
+battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A moment the
+Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely; then gently as
+though they were a lost child he was returning to its mother's arms he
+laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool is slow to catch ablaze and
+for the moment they lay there black against the brown earth; then of a
+sudden, like the first lifting of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column
+of blue went trailing upward. Second by second it grew until with a
+muffled explosion the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood
+watching; now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned
+to the tent.
+
+This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with an armful
+of books--and something more. The fire was crackling merrily now, and
+volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for the first time he
+hesitated. There was still something to destroy, something which he had
+gathered in the old felt hat from off his own head; yet he hesitated.
+Greedy as a hungry animal deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept
+sending out spurts of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he
+delayed. Like the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into
+passive waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
+this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But this
+time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head glistening
+in the sunlight, he started away toward the now expectant broncho; and
+back of him the pathetic little gathering of useless trinkets, bearing
+indelibly the mark of a woman's handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with
+the ashes of the things which had gone before.
+
+Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking cayuse
+following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back; waiting
+impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a land where
+prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever leaves fire alive
+when out of his sight; and to this instinct the Indian was true. Minute
+after minute he waited; until the flame vanished and in its stead there
+lay a mass of blazing coals. Then with a practical hand he banked the
+whole with a layer of earth until, look where one would, not a dot of
+red was visible. The act was the last, the culmination of preparation.
+At its end, with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his
+head high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in anticipation. Well
+he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was there of a
+second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost ere the taking of
+the single leap that put the rider in his seat the little beast was
+away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing deep of the prairie air, the
+patter of his tiny hoofs a continuous song upon the close-cropped sod.
+As two human beings living side by side grow to know each other, so this
+dumb menial had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to
+the dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He did
+so now; and as time passed and the miles flowed monotonously beneath his
+galloping feet the relentless determination of the man himself was
+repeated in that undeviating pace.
+
+Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the dragging hours of
+the September afternoon it continued. Many a time before the little
+beast had followed the trail from sun to sun. As well as the rider knew
+his own endurance he knew the possibilities of his mount, knew that now
+he would not fail. He did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he
+check it. He spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual
+drouth of fall, and as time passed on the dust the pony raised collected
+upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he noticed
+it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the broncho grew
+darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on the diminutive
+beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was unconscious. Silent
+as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his place; his lithe body
+conforming involuntarily to the motion, to the play of muscles beneath
+his legs; yet as unconsciously as one breathes in sleep. Not until the
+sun was red in the west, until of its own accord the broncho had drawn
+up at the first bit of water they had met on the way--a shallow marshy
+pond--did he move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the
+man washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition,
+shook the dust from his clothing.
+
+For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by side the man
+and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved and ever southward.
+Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but the sky was clear as it
+had been during the day, and the man needed no guide but the stars to
+show him the way. As he moved the hand of the Indian remained on the
+broncho's neck; and bit by bit as the time passed he felt the moist hair
+grow stiff and dry. Then, and not until then, came the final move, the
+beginning of the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion,
+apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and again
+as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly, that instant
+the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent as before, a
+ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into the night and the
+solitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch had
+changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer had driven
+about the place. One by one the cowboys had given testimony of the
+fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At first resignedly
+complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had grown cumulatively
+impatient at the inevitably dragging inventory. Nothing but necessity
+absolute in the shape of an imminent foreclosure had brought him back to
+this land at all. Delay had followed delay until at last immediate
+action was imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in
+a fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since they
+had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had been upon him.
+The team that had brought them out could not move fast enough. The
+preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had been, nevertheless
+dragged interminably. Strive as he might to combat the impression, to
+ignore it, this land had of a sudden become to him a land of terror.
+Every object which met his eye called forth a recollection. Every minute
+that passed whispered a menace. In a measure it had been so a half year
+ago ere he had tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had
+occurred in that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented
+immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a minute
+since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had he been
+without a revolver at hand. All the previous night, despite the
+grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had bunked, a lamp had
+burned beside the bed; yet even then he could not sleep. Whether or no
+he felt contrition for the past, this man, he could not have told, he
+never paused to consider. All he knew was that he had a deathly fear of
+this silent waste and of a certain human who dwelt somewhere therein.
+Repugnant as consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing
+compared with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual
+experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of money,
+badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence. Now that he
+was here he must needs see the transaction through; he could not well do
+otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a close and the necessity of
+tarrying a second night became assured, the premonition of retribution,
+that had before lowered merely as a possibility, loomed into the
+proportions of certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink;
+not at stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but
+continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged glances
+of understanding.
+
+To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal was
+complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with tobacco smoke, by
+the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene lamp Craig had accomplished
+a sprawling signature and received in return a check on a Chicago bank.
+It was already late, and very soon the new owner, with a significant
+look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt
+"Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a thinly
+veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself, and Craig and
+his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes thereafter the two
+men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite his muddled brain, the
+former realised that the big Irishman was observing him with a
+concentration that was significant. Ever short of temper, the man's
+nerves were stretched to the jangling point this night, and the look
+irritated him. Responsive, he scowled prodigiously.
+
+"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"
+
+No answer; only, if possible, the look became more analytic than before.
+
+"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous staring that
+way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't you like my selling
+and putting you out of a job?"
+
+"No, it's not that," refuted the Hibernian. "There are plenty of other
+places I can get. I could stay right here for that matter if I wanted
+to--but I don't. I wouldn't live in this house any longer if my pay were
+doubled." As he spoke he had looked away. Now of a sudden his glance
+returned. "I meant to quit anyway, whether you sold or not."
+
+"Why so?" queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was repeated. "You
+seemed glad enough to come."
+
+"I was--then," shortly.
+
+"And why not now? Talk up, if you've any grievance. Don't sit there like
+a chimpanzee, hugging it."
+
+"You know why well enough," ignored the other. He passed a knotty hand
+through his shock of red whiskers absently. "I've expected the devil or
+worse here every night these last weeks."
+
+Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.
+
+"God," he satirised, "who'd ever imagined you were the superstitious
+sort! Weren't you ever in a place where anyone died before?"
+
+"I never was where a woman and her child were murdered," deliberately.
+
+Quick as thought Craig's red face whitened.
+
+"Damn you, O'Reilly," he challenged, "you're free with your tongue." He
+checked himself. "I don't wish to quarrel with you to-night, though," he
+conciliated.
+
+"Nor I with you," returned the other impassively. "I was merely telling
+you the truth. Besides, it's none of my affair; and even if it were, I'm
+thinking you'll pay for it dear enough before you're through."
+
+Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude
+supercilious.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean, O'Reilly? You keep suggesting things, but
+that is all. Talk plain if you know anything."
+
+"I don't know anything," impassively; "unless it is that I wouldn't be
+in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you've made out of this
+cursed business."
+
+Bit by bit Craig's face whitened. If anything the air of conciliation
+augmented.
+
+"You think circumstances weren't to blame?" he queried. "That, in other
+words, I've brought things about as they are deliberately?"
+
+"I don't think anything. I know what you've done--and what you've got to
+answer for."
+
+Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about him.
+
+The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he arose
+unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a jerk.
+
+"You're beastly hard on me," he commented, "but let that pass. It's
+probably the last time we'll ever see each other, and we may as well
+part friends." He was back in his place again with the flask before him,
+and with a propitiatory motion he extended the liquor toward the other
+man. "Come, let's forget it," he insinuated. "Have a drink with me."
+
+"Not a drop."
+
+"Not if I requested it?"
+
+"Not if you got down on your knees and begged."
+
+"All right." The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little laugh. "I'll
+have to spoil it all myself, then."
+
+The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down swallow
+after swallow. The hand of the drinker trembled uncontrollably, and a
+tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven chin to the starched linen
+beneath.
+
+"If you'll take a word of advice," commented the spectator at last,
+"you'll cut that--for the time being at least." He hesitated; then went
+on reluctantly. "I've been in your pay and I'll try to be square with
+you. If you've got an atom of presentiment you'll realise that this is
+no place for you to get into the shape you're getting." Again he halted,
+and again with an effort he gave the warning direct. "If I were you I
+wouldn't be at this ranch a second longer than it took me to leave; not
+as long as I had a broncho or a leg or a crutch to go on."
+
+Slowly and more slowly came the words. Then followed silence, with the
+two men staring each other face to face. Breaking it, the overseer
+arose.
+
+"I've said more than I intended already," he added, "and now I wash my
+hands of you. Do as you please. I'm going to bed."
+
+Preventing, of a sudden sobered, Craig was likewise on his feet.
+
+"In common decency, even if you're no friend of mine, don't go,
+O'Reilly," he pleaded. He had no thought of superiority now, no thought
+of malice; only of companionship and of protection. "I know what you
+mean. I'm no fool, and what you suggest is exactly what's been driving
+me insane these last two days. I'm going in the morning, as soon as it's
+daylight; the team is all ordered; but to-night, now--" instinctively he
+glanced at the window where recollection pictured the darkness
+without--"I haven't nerve to face it now. I'd go plumb mad out there
+alone."
+
+The Irishman shrugged in silence and attempted to pass.
+
+"Please don't go," repeated Craig swiftly. "I know I'm acting like a
+child, but this cursed country's to blame. Stay with me this last night.
+I couldn't sleep, and it's madness to be alone. See me through this and
+I swear you'll not regret it. I swear it!"
+
+Just for a second O'Reilly paused; then of a sudden his face flamed red
+through his untrimmed beard.
+
+"To hell with your money!" he blazed. "I wouldn't lift my finger for you
+if How Landor were to come this second." He checked himself and took a
+step forward meaningly. "Besides, I couldn't help you any if I would.
+God himself couldn't protect you now unless He performed a miracle. Out
+of my way. I tell you I'm done with you."
+
+Craig had not stirred. He did not now; and of a sudden the overseer
+turned to pass around. As he did so for the first time he faced the
+single window that looked north toward the second ranch house: the house
+which How Landor had builded to receive his bride. The curtain was still
+down, but to the Irishman's quick eye there rested upon it now a dull
+glow that was not a reflection of the light within. A second after he
+noticed the man halted, looking at it, speculating as to its meaning.
+Then of a sudden he realised; and in two steps he was across the room
+and simultaneously the obscuring shade shot up with a crash. Instantly
+following, startlingly unexpected, the red glow without sprang through
+the glass and filled the room.
+
+"Fire!" announced the observer involuntarily to the sleepers above. "The
+other ranch house is afire!" Then, as they were slow in awakening, the
+cry was repeated more loudly: "Fire! Fire!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A conflagration is the universal contagion, the one excitement that
+never palls. Forth into the night, forgetful of his companion, forgetful
+of all save the interest of the moment, rushed O'Reilly. Half dressed,
+hatless, working with buttons as they went, Parker, the new owner, and
+Mead, the lawyer, descended the rickety stairs like an avalanche and
+without pausing to more than look followed running in his wake. The
+unused ranch house was dry as cardboard and was burning fiercely. Though
+there was still no moon and the overseer had several minutes the start,
+against the light they could see his running figure distinctly. Standing
+in the living-room as they rushed through, white faced, hesitant, was
+Clayton Craig; but though he had spoken to them--they both recalled that
+fact afterward--neither had paused to listen or to answer. That he would
+not follow never occurred to them until minutes thereafter. Not until,
+panting, struggling for breath after the unusual effort, they had
+covered the intervening mile, and the heat of the already diminishing
+fire was on their faces, did they think of him at all. Even then it was
+not the first thought which occurred; for the moment they arrived
+O'Reilly, who was waiting, turned, facing them excitedly.
+
+"Do you see that?" he queried, pointing to a black band that surrounded
+the building in a complete circle.
+
+Parker nodded understandingly; but Mead, who was city bred, looked
+mystified. "What is it?" he returned.
+
+"A firebreak," explained the Irishman. "Someone didn't want the blaze to
+spread and scattered earth clear around the place, with a spade."
+Leaning over he picked up a clod and thumbed it significantly. "It
+hasn't been done a half hour. The dirt isn't even dry."
+
+Brief as the time had been, already the frail walls were settling to
+embers. There was nothing to do; and standing there the three men looked
+understandingly into each other's faces. The same thought stood clear on
+all; for all alike knew every detail of the story.
+
+"The Indian, How Landor," suggested Mead adequately.
+
+"Yes," corroborated Parker, "and I'm glad of it. I'm not squeamish, but
+the Lord knows I'd never have used the place myself."
+
+Of a sudden, O'Reilly, who had turned and was staring into the blaze,
+faced about. That second he had remembered.
+
+"Where's Craig?" he queried swiftly, glancing back the way they had
+come. "Didn't he follow?"
+
+Until that moment none of the three had thought of the other man. Now
+they realised that they were alone. But even then two of the trio did
+not understand.
+
+"Evidently he didn't start," said Mead. "He couldn't have missed the
+light if he did."
+
+"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left," added Parker.
+
+"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly. "As
+there's a Heaven and a Hell he's not standing there now, I'll wager!"
+
+Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of that meaning
+black band, the three spectators there beneath the stars stood staring
+at each other. It was O'Reilly again who broke the silence.
+
+"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's happened?"
+he interrogated unbelievingly.
+
+"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no doubt
+about that," said Mead.
+
+"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor, and he's
+been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone back there in the
+ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you see now? At last the
+Indian has found out!"
+
+For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home, not a man
+stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and started back into
+the night.
+
+"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We can't get
+there a second too quick."
+
+"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We couldn't get
+there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over before this, take my
+word for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back they were too
+late. As O'Reilly had anticipated, the ranch house was empty, deserted.
+Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the adjoining tool shed. Though
+they searched every nook, until a mouse could not have escaped
+detection, they found not a trace of him for whom they looked, nor a
+clue to his disappearance. Though they shouted his name until they were
+hoarse not an answer came back from the surrounding darkness. Within the
+ranch house itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a
+struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it had
+been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap and topcoat
+were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the stable every horse
+was within its own stall: every piece of saddlery was intact. While the
+three men were looking, attracted by the blaze, the distant cowboys one
+by one began drifting in; and when they had heard the tale joined in
+the search. All through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns,
+like giant fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a
+radius of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming
+of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches
+appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on the
+prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was assembled.
+Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of riders scoured the
+country for miles and miles. And once more, from all, the testimony was
+as before. There was not a clue to the disappearance, nor the semblance
+of a clue. As out of the darkness of night surrounding, a great horned
+owl swoops down upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the
+Indian had come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as
+well into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the
+ranchers dispersed--and the search was over.
+
+And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery unsurmountable. One
+morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly had gone, when the new
+master of the ranch arose it was to find a wicked-looking mouse-coloured
+cayuse standing motionless by the stable door. Upon him was neither
+saddle nor bridle nor mark of any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless
+waste he had been released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he
+had returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He
+could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out there
+amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to pass; but what it
+was only Nature and Nature's God, who alone were witness, could ever
+know.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11683 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Where the Trail Divides
+
+Author: Will Lillibridge
+
+Release Date: March 23, 2004  [eBook #11683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Jeremy Eble, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES
+
+By WILL LILLIBRIDGE
+
+Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.
+
+With Frontispiece in Colors
+By The Kinneys
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. PRESENTIMENT
+
+   II. FULFILMENT
+
+  III. DISCOVERY
+
+   IV. RECONSTRUCTION
+
+    V. THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+   VI. THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+  VII. A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+ VIII. THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+   IX. THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+    X. THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+   XI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XII. WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+ XIII. THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+  XIV. FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+   XV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XVI. THE RECKONING
+
+ XVII. SACRIFICE
+
+XVIII. REWARD
+
+  XIX. IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+PRESENTIMENT
+
+The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In
+addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
+limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
+throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
+effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
+the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
+country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
+man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
+rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
+his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
+rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
+sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
+wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
+the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
+repressed breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
+then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand gripping the
+butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, the other,
+big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a pendulum at his side.
+
+Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in civilisation,
+humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it here, solitary, exotic,
+no observer would have laughed. Fear, mortal dogging fear, impersonate,
+supreme, was in every look, every action. Somewhere back of that curved
+line where met the earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have
+been adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused. The
+sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop by drop from
+the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but apparently he never
+noticed it. Now and then he attempted to moisten his lips; but his
+tongue was dry as powder, and they closed again, parched as before.
+
+No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the way he was
+going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his only landmark; yet
+as hour after hour went by and the sun sank lower and lower he never
+halted, never seemed in doubt as to his destination. The country was
+growing more rolling now, almost hilly, and he approached each rise
+cautiously, vigilantly. Once, almost at his feet a covey of frightened
+prairie chickens sprang a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped
+like a stone in his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall
+grass; then, reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
+on.
+
+It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from absolute
+physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at last rebelled,
+and not even fear could suffice longer to stimulate him. The grass was
+wet with dew, and prone on his knees he moistened his lips therefrom as
+drinks many another of the fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back,
+not sleeping, but very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the
+return of strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat
+the sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and thicker,
+dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day had appeared the
+fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost brightened; until at last,
+like a curious face, the full moon, peeping above the horizon, lit up
+the surface of prairie.
+
+At last--and ere this the moon was well in the sky--the man arose,
+stretched his stiffened muscles profanely--before he had not spoken a
+syllable--listened a moment almost involuntarily, sent a swift,
+searching glance all about; then moved ahead, straight south, at the old
+relentless pace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls vacillated
+between vexation and solicitude.
+
+"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or not," he
+announced in ultimatum.
+
+Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid, folded his
+arms across his chest with an air of finality.
+
+"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the warning.
+I know your intentions are good, but you people are afraid of your own
+shadows. I know as well as you do that there are Indians in this part of
+the world, some odd thousands of them between here and the Hills, but
+they were here when I came and when you came, and we knew they were
+here. You expect to hear from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,'
+don't you?"
+
+The other made a motion of annoyance.
+
+"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he returned
+swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you were alone,
+Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine without another word;
+but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord she's down in Sioux City
+where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should be, and for her sake--"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned back.
+
+"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for little
+niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his
+son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy
+as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This isn't ancient history, man,
+but took place this very day. It's Indian massacre, and at our own
+throats. The boys are down below the falls getting ready to go right
+now. By night there won't be another white man or woman within
+twenty-five miles of you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here
+arguing. If you will stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and
+the girl. I'll take care of them myself and bring them back when the
+government sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
+reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should jump it
+there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come on."
+
+Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the tone of
+vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had appeared upon the
+scene.
+
+"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed. "Take my
+advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we leave you
+behind."
+
+"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked unemotionally.
+
+"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared. "Danger, with
+Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail! Is it possible you two
+don't realise things as they are?"
+
+"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the Tetons are
+hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us would rebel if we
+were hustled away into a corner like naughty little boys, as they are;
+but actual danger--" The woman threw a comprehensive, almost amused
+glance at the big man, her husband. "We've been here almost two years
+now; long before you and the others came. Half the hunters who pass this
+way stop here. It wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a
+whole antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
+those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would be in
+Sioux City."
+
+"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the other. "I
+don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own eyes."
+
+"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland glanced
+at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost superciliously.
+"Indians are like white people. They have their loves and hates the same
+as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran once before when everyone was
+going, and when we got back not a thing had been touched; but the weeds
+had choked our corn and the rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good
+to the Indians, and they appreciate it."
+
+A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came forward
+swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to the other.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and it's pure
+madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a big-eyed, solemn-faced
+mite of humanity, had come up now and stood staring the stranger
+silently from the side of her mother's skirts. "I hope for the best, but
+before God I never expect to see any of you again."
+
+"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right--when you return," commented
+Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and without a backward
+glance started at a rapid jog trot for the tiny settlement on the river
+two miles away.
+
+Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the departing
+frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes accentuated by the
+tightened lids.
+
+"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there ever
+was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual disturbance
+somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down at the settlement
+leaving--they'd go if they heard a coyote whistle; but Brown tells me
+there've been three different trappers from Big Stone gone through south
+in the last week, and when they leave it means something. If you say the
+word we'll leave everything and go yet."
+
+"If we do we'll never come back."
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not. We went
+before because the others went. If we left now it would be different.
+We'd be tortured day and night if we really feared--what happens now and
+then to some. We came here with our eyes wide open. We can't start again
+in civilisation. We're too old, and there's the past--"
+
+"You still blame me?"
+
+"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned toward
+the rough log shanty unemotionally.
+
+"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's hungry."
+
+A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.
+
+"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its feet, one
+hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the dishes on the rough
+pine dining table clattering with the suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who
+are you, man, and what's the trouble? Speak up--"
+
+The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced about the
+interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.
+
+His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but protruded.
+
+"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.
+
+"But who are you?"
+
+"Water!" fiercely, insistently.
+
+Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner, and
+without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made for it,
+grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after measure,
+the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping onto the sanded
+floor.
+
+"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"
+
+After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir; but at his
+side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering around the fortress of
+her skirts as when before she had argued with Frontiersman Brown, stood
+the little wide-eyed girl, type of the repressed frontier child.
+
+Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working unconsciously.
+
+"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
+Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you; you
+live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop to save
+anything."
+
+Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of perspiration.
+
+"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk so I can
+understand you."
+
+"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of the massacre
+along the Minnesota River?"
+
+"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"
+
+"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a trapper."
+Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive questioner
+doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell you along the
+way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw their signal smokes this
+very morning. They're murdering everyone--men, women, and children. It's
+Little Crow who started it, and God knows how many settlers they've
+killed. They chased me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave
+out yesterday; and since then--But come. It's suicide to chatter like
+this." He turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
+minute."
+
+Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a word; but at
+last the woman shook her head slowly.
+
+Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.
+
+"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.
+
+Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin folding over
+his soft flannel shirt.
+
+"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of amusement.
+
+"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed almost to
+roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."
+
+"There is no settlement."
+
+"What?"
+
+Rowland repeated his statement impassively.
+
+"They've--gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick again.
+
+"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of scorn.
+
+For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite tan and
+dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller whitened. The same
+expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all but insane, that had been
+with him alone out on the prairie returned, augmented. Heedless of
+appearances, all but unconscious of the presence of spectators, he
+glanced about the single room like a beaten rabbit with the hounds close
+on its trail. No avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope of
+protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his forehead, at
+the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he mopped it away with
+the back of a fat, grimy hand.
+
+In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated another
+vacant beside the board.
+
+"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be hungry as
+a coyote."
+
+"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless mood
+returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He started
+shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you think I lie.
+We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught like a beaver in a
+trap." Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did they go!"
+
+Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.
+
+"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City; part west
+toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the inevitable
+contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak. "You'd better take a
+lunch along. It's something of a journey to either place."
+
+Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous hospitality
+of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint Indian basket of
+coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely touched, from the table. A
+loaf of bread followed: a bottle of water from the wooden pail in the
+corner. "You're welcome, friend," she proffered.
+
+Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his eyes.
+
+"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm sorry--" He
+lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the doorway. "Good-bye."
+
+Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected dinner.
+
+"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think we'll run at
+sight of them," he commented.
+
+Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through which
+Mueller had gone, did not answer.
+
+"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.
+
+Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few mouthfuls,
+pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak, and, rising, the man
+made his way across the room to put an arm with rough affection around
+his wife's waist.
+
+"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.
+
+The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable after her
+former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd gone too; but
+now,"--her arms crept around his neck, closed,--"but now--now it's too
+late!"
+
+For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but involuntarily
+his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the woman could not have
+turned. He had been looking absently out the door, south over the
+rolling country leading to the deserted settlement.
+
+In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was
+still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the
+trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a
+spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank
+and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland
+watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the
+movement of a coyote or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was
+the only visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life
+responds to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late,"
+with the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the first
+time, to his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of fear, but
+near akin, as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and the red man its
+child. In a hazy way came the question whether after all it were not
+foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that invisible, intangible
+something before which, almost in panic, the others had fled. To be
+sure, precedent was with him, logic; but--of a sudden--but a minute had
+passed--his arms tightened; involuntarily he held his breath. Hans
+Mueller had been moving on and on; another half minute and he would have
+been behind the base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf
+at one's feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
+tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm of
+other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score--in front, behind, all
+about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had come,
+autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked his eyes; then,
+as came swift understanding, instinctively he shielded the woman in his
+arms from the sight, from the knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears
+from over the prairie: not a single call for help. That black swarm
+simply arose, there was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic
+through the curling heat waves; then one and all, the original dark
+figure, the score of others, disappeared--as suddenly as though the
+earth from which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
+spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
+green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.
+
+Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as pale as had
+been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against the lintel of the
+door.
+
+"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he echoed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it
+was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown
+of earth that filled the spaces between--like the longitudinal stripes
+of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough
+grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares
+of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork
+of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified
+by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature
+waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it, stretching
+northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod corn: the ears already
+formed, the ground whitened from the lavishly scattered pollen of the
+frayed tassels. In the dooryard itself was a dug well with a mound of
+weed-covered clay by its side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over
+its mouth. It was deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the
+surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a
+rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
+meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it
+was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the
+spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away the
+long, sultry afternoons.
+
+Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The single horse
+Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured, was breaking sod far
+to the west on the bank of the Jim River. Not a live thing other than
+human moved about the place. With them into this land of silence had
+come a mongrel collie. For a solitary month he had stood guard; then one
+night, somewhere in the distance, in the east where flowed the Big
+Sioux, had sounded the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately
+nearer and more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
+collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild they
+never knew, nor ever filled his place.
+
+Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that afternoon of
+late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he had seen; elaborately
+careful likewise to carry out the family programme as usual.
+
+"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.
+
+Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent corroboration.
+
+"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to all fours
+and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.
+
+"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the doorway as
+only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun and the dust;
+climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly about his neck, down
+the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the pillow and the patchwork quilt
+with a deftness born of experience.
+
+"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.
+
+"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.
+
+"Sing! I can't sing, kid."
+
+"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"
+
+"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."
+
+"Please, papa; pretty please!"
+
+The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do, braced himself
+in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he knew of the song again
+and again--his voice rough and unmusical as that of a crow, echoing and
+re-echoing in the narrow space--bent over at last, touched his bearded
+lips softly to the winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an
+irresistible catch in his breath, silently to the surface, sent one
+swift glance sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
+cabin.
+
+Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer shotgun,
+and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy beside the door.
+
+"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he overhauled
+the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not deceived. This done,
+notwithstanding the fact that the sun still beat scorchingly hot
+thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit his pipe, drew his
+weather-stained sombrero low over his face, through half-closed eyes
+inspected the lower lands all about, impassively silent awaited the
+coming of the inevitable. Of a sudden there was a touch on his shoulder,
+and, involuntarily starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret
+Rowland.
+
+The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.
+
+"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
+something."
+
+In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more brightly as
+Rowland drew hard.
+
+"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"
+
+The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded reluctant
+corroboration.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"You--saw them?"
+
+Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as well, after
+all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of the rise before
+them. "They waylaid Mueller there."
+
+"And you--"
+
+"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all he--Margaret!"
+
+"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous suggestion!"
+
+"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the quiver of her
+body against his, the involuntary catch of her breath. "Forgive me,
+Margaret."
+
+"You're not to blame. Perhaps--Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"
+
+Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above the
+scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very breath of
+prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or
+a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant
+drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf
+contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In
+sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of
+the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had
+done Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
+"Water! Water! Give us drink!"
+
+Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the woman; like
+children awed by the sudden realisation of their helplessness, their
+hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute understanding. Usually at this time
+of day with nothing to do they slept; but neither thought of sleep now.
+As passed the slow time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour
+of supper; but likewise hunger passed them by. Something very like
+fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at
+motionless impassive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that
+nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod corn
+again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded in
+preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out, out--.
+
+"Sam!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You saw, too?"
+
+An answering pressure of the hand.
+
+"The eyes of him, only the eyes--out there at the edge of the corn!"
+
+"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his breath
+tightened. "They're all about: a score at least--I don't know how many.
+The tall grass there to the east is alive--"
+
+"Sam! They're there again--the eyes! Oh, I'm afraid--Sam--baby!"
+
+"Hush! Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our only chance.
+Let them make the first move." Again the hand pressure so tight that,
+although she made no sound, the blood left the woman's fingers. "Tell me
+you forgive me, Margaret; before anything happens. I'm a criminal to
+have stayed here,--I see it now, a criminal!"
+
+"Don't!"
+
+"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."
+
+"I love you, Sam."
+
+Again in the expanse of grass to the east there was motion; not in a
+single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was visible, not a
+sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here and there it stirred,
+and became motionless, and stirred again.
+
+"And--Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take either of us
+alive. The last one--I can't say it. You understand."
+
+"Yes, I understand. The last load--But maybe--"
+
+"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this way
+if--Margaret, in God's name--"
+
+"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely beneath the
+grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see her again; must,
+must--"
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+"I must, I say!"
+
+"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless we show
+the way. Think--as you love her."
+
+"But if anything should happen to us--She'll starve!"
+
+"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come--now; and Landor
+knows."
+
+"Oh, Sam, Sam!"
+
+There was silence. No human being could give answer to that mother wail.
+
+Again time passed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that were a hell
+of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun sank from sight. In
+the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed red as from a distant
+conflagration. For and eternity previous it seemed to the silent
+watchers there had been no move; now again at last the grass stirred; a
+corn plant rustled where there was no breeze; out into the small open
+plat surrounding the house sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across
+the clearing, headed for the protecting grass, halted at the edge
+irresolute--scurried back again at something it saw.
+
+"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained, unnatural.
+"They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."
+
+"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural tone!
+
+"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man dies."
+
+"Sam Rowland--my husband!"
+
+"Margaret--my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes, regardless of
+everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how can you forgive me, can
+God forgive me!" Tight in his arms he kissed her again and again;
+passionately, in abandon. "I've always loved you, Margaret; always,
+always!"
+
+"And I you, man; and I you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on the field
+mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water hole, so it came.
+Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse call of a catbird where no
+bird was, and again, and again. In front of the maize patch, always in
+front, a dark form, a mere shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out
+clear against the light of sky. To right and left appeared others, as
+motionless as boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler
+Rowland been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No
+Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand.
+Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited
+passive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight
+before him, God alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again
+in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures
+against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch
+of the cabin roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in
+front. Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge
+pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in front.
+Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the rear, reached the
+edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the maize patch, out of the
+grass, seemingly out of space itself, came a new cry--the trilling call
+of the prairie owl. It was the signal. Like twin drops of rain from a
+cloudless sky fell the two figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter
+a sound, could offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere,
+everywhere, swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them
+forth in legion. In the multitude of hands he was as a child. Within the
+space of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything had
+happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the clearing
+before the door not a human being was visible, not a live thing; only on
+the thatched roof, silent as before, patient as fate, awaited two other
+shadows, darker but by contrast with the weather-coloured grass.
+
+Minutes passed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the silence.
+Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a thing of which
+insanity is made.
+
+"Sam!" called a voice softly.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Sam!" repeated more loudly.
+
+Again no answer of voice or of action.
+
+In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly fearful.
+
+"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped outside.
+
+A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The earth was
+not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie owl. As dropped
+the figures from above there broke forth the Sioux war-cry: long drawn
+out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely
+than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a
+score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth.
+Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they
+swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in
+their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they
+seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage abandon, of drunken
+exhilaration in the cunning that had won the game without a shot from
+the white man's gun, without the injury of a single warrior. They were
+in haste, and yet they were not in haste. They looted the cabin like
+fire and then fought among themselves for the plunder. They applied the
+torch to the shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then
+capered fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until, tinder
+dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all, purposely reserved
+as a climax, they gave their attention to the pair of half-naked, bound
+and gagged figures in their midst. Then it was the scene became an orgy
+indeed. The havoc preceding had but whetted their appetite for the
+finale. Savagery personified, cruelty unqualified, deadly hate,
+primitive lust--every black passion lurking in the recesses of the human
+mind stalked brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister,
+unashamed. But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand
+similar scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
+the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a nation's
+expansion, as its progression.
+
+It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle of
+prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
+unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
+irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their
+journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the
+print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows,
+forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth,
+they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little
+river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement,
+the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to
+other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man
+who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they
+moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
+almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat
+of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer
+rain, the rustle of their passing bodies against the dense vegetation a
+soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.
+Night and distance swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined
+grainfield, the smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the
+glaring white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the
+background of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for
+this, and one other thing--a single sound, repeated again and again,
+dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.
+
+"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its depths
+that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm afraid!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as
+necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To
+the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight
+feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped
+between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the
+square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close
+together and pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by
+numerous portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers
+near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated, mingled and
+intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as diverse a gathering of
+humans as ever graced a single structure even in this land of myriad
+types. Virtually the entire population of frontier Yankton was there.
+Likewise the settlers from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the
+far-away country of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground
+of the Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the
+peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild west of
+the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the Blackfeet, the
+Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the alarm of rapine and of
+massacre had spread afar. Very late to arrive, doggedly holding their
+own until rumour became reality unmistakable, was the colony from the
+Jim River valley to the east; but even they had finally surrendered, the
+dogging grip of fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their
+throats, had fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the
+Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as you
+please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux Falls.
+Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for with the actual
+retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow mile, thanking the
+Providence which had permitted them to arrive unmolested, a
+sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old smoothbore cannon
+before the big south gate and craved admittance. Out to them went
+Colonel William Landor, colonel by courtesy, scion of many generations
+of Landors, rancher at present, cattle king of the future. The
+conversation that followed there with the east reddening in the morning
+sun was very brief, very swift to the point.
+
+"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing them
+collectively, compellingly.
+
+"My name is McPherson."
+
+"Mine is Horton."
+
+"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."
+
+"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered McPherson who
+took the lead.
+
+"From where?"
+
+"Sioux Falls."
+
+"Any news?"
+
+Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now a day
+old.
+
+"And the rest of your settlement--where are they?"
+
+McPherson told him.
+
+"They all went, you say?"
+
+For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he
+qualified.
+
+"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company
+collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That you--men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl
+alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously.
+"You come here with that story and ask me to let you inside?"
+
+McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently, his
+shoulders squared.
+
+"We're here," he announced laconically.
+
+"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids. "Moreover,
+strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned forward involuntarily;
+his breath came quick. "It gives me the opportunity, sir, to tell you to
+your face that you're a damned coward." In spite of an obvious effort at
+repression, the great veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A
+damned coward, sir!"
+
+"What! You call me--"
+
+"Men! Gentlemen!"
+
+"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was
+himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood
+shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done
+with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When
+I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a
+time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the
+Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had
+been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight,
+every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here.
+If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade--not if
+the Santees scalped you before my eyes."
+
+For a second there was silence, inaction.
+
+"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried--"
+
+"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there
+are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned
+to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,--I'm afraid it is;
+but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me?
+Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"
+
+"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of
+speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're
+all with you--that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't
+cats, so we can't croak but once--and that might as well be now as ten
+years from now."
+
+"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the
+motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first
+twenty to return, go."
+
+From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.
+
+"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.
+
+No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.
+
+For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an inverted V;
+then silent as they, equally swiftly, he followed.
+
+Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle back. Not in
+ignorance of possibilities in store did they come. They had no delusions
+concerning the red brother, these frontiersmen. Nor in the hot
+adventurous blood of youth did they respond. One and all were
+middle-aged men; many had families. All save Landor were strangers to
+the man they went to seek. Yet at a moment's call they responded; as
+they took it for granted others would respond were they in need. Had
+they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it
+they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal
+brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated
+abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious,
+smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all
+to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant
+quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled,
+parchment-faced veteran, who alone had followed the Missouri to its
+source and, stranger to relate, had alone returned with his scalp. Then
+came Landor himself, the wiry little mustang he rode all but blanketed
+under the big army saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as
+though an event of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson,
+drew up in place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat
+appreciatively, but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one
+but many riders; a half dozen, a score,--enough to make up the
+allotment, and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly
+accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho, the
+mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of apparel,
+from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or saddleless,
+across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel of a long rifle, at
+the hip of every rider hung a holster, from every belt peeped the hilt
+of a great knife. Long ere this word of the unusual had passed about,
+and now, on the rise of ground at the back of the stockade, a goodly
+group had gathered. Silent as the prairies, as the morning itself, they
+watched the scene below, awaited the _dénouement._ Not without influence
+was the taciturn example of the red man in this land from which he was
+slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to the east the red face of
+the morning sun was just peeping when Landor separated himself from the
+waiting group, led the way to the big gate and paused. "Twenty only,
+men," he repeated. "All ready."
+
+First through the opening went Crosby.
+
+"One."
+
+Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.
+
+"Two."
+
+From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came Scotchman
+McPherson; but though he passed fair before the leader's eyes and not a
+yard away, no number was spoken; no hint of recognition, of cognisance,
+crossed the latter's face. Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited
+the next in line, then voiced the one word: "Three."
+
+On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts silent--halting
+at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and twenty men who counted
+but as a score, started into motion, halted again; as by common consent
+every head save one of a sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the
+watching group back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All
+but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out
+where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
+tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the column one
+rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear. Implacable as
+Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that
+would bring with it renewed activity.
+
+And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its
+place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From his position by the
+gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind him, impassive again as
+figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line. At first a mere walk,
+the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot. By this time the
+confines of the tiny frontier town were passed. Before them on the one
+hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown
+from its coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
+glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad
+dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie. Straight
+into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the
+first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of
+civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier,
+which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off
+the passing miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.
+
+Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
+settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was the
+prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before; yet
+with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead, straight as a line drawn
+taut from point to point. Nothing stopped their advance, nothing made
+them turn aside. Seemingly destitute of animal life, the country fairly
+teemed at their approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the
+blue-faced anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks.
+Troops of antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away
+from the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the safety
+of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight. Every marshy
+spot, every prairie pond, had its setting of ducks. The teal, the
+mallard, the widgeon, the shoveller, the canvasback--all mingled in the
+loud-voiced throng that arose before the leader's approach, then, like
+smoke, vanished with almost unbelievable swiftness into the hazy
+distance. Prairie dog towns, populous as cities of man a minute before
+their approach, went lifeless, desolate, as they passed through. In the
+infrequent draws and creek beds between the low, rolling hills,
+great-eyed cotton tails scampered to cover or, like the antelope, just
+out of harm's way, watched the passage of this strange being, man.
+Wonder of wonders that display of life would have been to another
+generation; but of it these grim-faced riders were apparently
+unconscious, oblivious. Their eyes were not for things near at hand, but
+for the distance, for the possibility that lurked just beyond that
+far-away rise which formed their horizon, when they had reached that for
+the next beyond, and the next.
+
+Hour by hour the morning wore away. Hotter and hotter rose the sun above
+them. Instead of drops of dew, tiny particles of sun-dried grass flew
+away from beneath the leaders' feet, mingled with the dust of prairie,
+became a cloud shutting the leaders from the sight of those in the rear.
+From being a mere breath, the south wind augmented, became positive,
+insistent. Hot with the latent heat of many days, it sang in their ears
+as they went, bit all but scorching, at their unprotected hands and
+throats. Under its touch the horses' necks, dark before with sweat,
+became normal again: between their legs, under the, edges of the great
+saddles where it had churned into foam, dried into white powder, like
+frostwork amid the hair. Gradually with the change, their breathing
+became audible, louder and louder, until in unison it mingled with the
+dull impact of their feet on the heavy sod like the exhaust of many
+engines. No horseman who values the life of the beast between his legs,
+fails to heed that warning. Landor did not, but at the first dawdling
+prairie creek that offered water and, with its struggling fringe of
+willows, a suggestion of shade, he gave the word to halt, and for four
+mortal, blistering hours while, man and beast alike, the others slept,
+kept watch over them from the nearest rise. Relentless to others this
+man might be, but not even his dearest enemy could accuse him of sparing
+himself.
+
+It was three by the clock when again they took up the trail. It was 3.45
+when they swam what is now the Vermilion River, the last water-course of
+any size on their way. The dew was again beginning to gather when, well
+to the south, they approached the bordering hills that concealed the
+site of Sioux Falls settlement. Then for the first time since they
+began that last relay Landor gave an order.
+
+"It'll be a miracle if we don't find Sioux there in the bottom, men," he
+prophesied. "Perhaps there are a whole band, perhaps it'll only be
+stragglers; but no matter how many or how few there may be, charge them.
+If they run you know what to do--this is no holiday outing. If they
+stand, charge them all the harder." He faced his horse to the north and
+gave the word to go. "It's our only chance," he completed.
+
+What followed belongs to history. Over that last intervening rise they
+went like demons. The first to gain the crown, to look down into the
+valley beyond, was Landor. As he did so, grim Anglo-Saxon as he was, his
+whole attitude underwent a transformation. Back to the others he turned
+his face, and, plain as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage,
+and the lust of battle.
+
+"They're there; a hundred, if a single red!" he shouted. "Come on!" and
+the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse's flanks, dug until
+the blood spurted.
+
+But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction of the
+time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground. Outnumbering
+those who charged many times, it was not in savage nature to face that
+unformed oncoming motley of howling, bloodthirsty maniacs. Slowly at
+first began the retreat; then as, with great swiftness, the others
+shortened the distance intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a
+stampede. Every brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the
+dismantled ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling
+like their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for the
+thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in their
+ears, cutting at the vegetation about them. Into its friendly cover they
+plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the surface of a lake, and were
+swallowed from sight. That is, all but one. That one, unhorsed by
+accident, was left to face that oncoming flood. . . . But why linger.
+Like the charge itself, his fate is history. These men were but human,
+and thick about them were the ashes from the roof-trees of their
+friends.
+
+Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind, musical with the
+drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs from the low land
+adjoining the river, melancholy with the call of the catbird, with the
+infrequent note of the whip-poor-will, was upon the land of the Mandans
+when the score and one, their dripping ponies once more dry, took up the
+last relay of their journey. Night had caught them there in the deserted
+settlement, and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait. Now, far to
+the east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the face
+of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves through the heated
+air, slowly rising, lit up the level country softly as by early
+twilight. Lingeringly, almost reluctantly, Landor got into his saddle.
+Just to his left, impassive as the night, well to the front of the
+company as he had been that mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman
+McPherson. Not once since that early morning scene at Fort Yankton had
+he spoken a word, not once had he been addressed, had another man shown
+consciousness of his presence. A pariah, he had so far kept them
+company; a pariah, he now awaited the end. A moment, fair in his seat,
+Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for hours came
+to pass. Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein beside the other man.
+
+"McPherson," he said, "this morning I called you coward. That you are
+not such you have proven, you are proving now. For this reason I ask
+your pardon. For this reason as well, I give you warning. What we will
+find--where we are going, I do not doubt, now. I do not believe you
+doubt. For it I hold you responsible. You had best turn back before
+belief becomes certainty." Unnaturally precise, cold as November
+raindrops came the words, the sentences. Deadly in meaning was the pause
+that followed. "I repeat, you had best turn back."
+
+For a long half minute, face to face there in the moonlight, Landor
+waited; but no answer came. Just perceptibly he shifted in his place.
+
+"I may forget, give my promise of the morning the lie. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+Another half minute, ghastly in its significance, passed; then without a
+word Landor turned. "You have heard, men," he said, "and may God be my
+judge."
+
+The full moon was well in the sky, showing clear every detail in that
+scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter, patter sounded
+their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more loud they grew, muffled
+yet penetrating in the silence of night, always augmenting in volume.
+Out of the shadows figures came dimly into view, taking form against the
+background of constellations. The straining of leather, the music of
+steel in bit and buckle, the soft swish of the sun-dried grass
+proclaimed them very near; then across the trampled corn patch, into the
+open where had stood the shanty, where now was a thin grey layer of
+ashes, came the riders, and drew rein; their weary mounts crowding each
+other in fear at something they saw. Like a storm cloud they came; like
+the roll of thunder following was the oath which sprang to the lips of
+every rider save one. Good men they were, God-fearing men; yet they
+swore like pirates, like humans when ordinary speech is not adequate. In
+the pause but one man acted, and none intervened to prevent what he did.
+Out into the open, away from the others, rode Scotchman McPherson;
+halted, his hand on the holster at his hip. For a second, and a second
+only, he sat so, the white moonlight drawing clear every line of his
+grizzled face, his stocky figure. Then deliberately his hand lifted,
+before him there appeared a sudden blaze of fire, upon the silence there
+broke a single revolver report, from beneath his lifeless bulk the
+horse he rode broke free, gave one bound, by instinct halted, trembling
+in every muscle; then over all, the quick and the dead, returned
+silence: silence absolute as that of the grave.
+
+How long those twenty men sat there, gazing at that mute, motionless
+figure on the ground not one could have told. Death was no stranger to
+them. For years it had lurked behind every chance shrub they passed, in
+the depths of every ravine, in the darkness of night, from every tangle
+of rank prairie grass in broad daylight. To it from long familiarity
+they had become callous; but death such as this, deliberate,
+cold-blooded, self-inflicted--it awed them while it fascinated, held
+them silent, passive.
+
+"In God's name!" Again it was Landor who roused them, Landor with his
+hand on the holster at his hip, Landor who sat staring as one who doubts
+his own sight. "Am I sane, men? Look, there to your right!"
+
+They looked. They rubbed their eyes and looked again.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned," voiced Crosby; and no man had ever heard him
+express surprise before. To the north, from the edge of the tall
+surrounding grass, moving slowly, yet without a trace of hesitation or
+of fear, coming straight toward them across the trampled earth, were two
+tiny human figures, hand in hand. No wonder they who saw stared; no
+wonder they doubted their eyes. One, the figure to the right, was plump
+and uncertain of step and all in white; white which in the moonlight
+and against the black earth seemed ghostly. The other was slim and
+certain of movement and dark--dark as a copper brown Indian boy, naked
+as when he came on earth. On they came, the brown figure leading, the
+white following trustfully, until they were quite up to the watchers,
+halted, still hand in hand.
+
+"How," said a voice, a piping childish voice.
+
+Like rustics at a spectacle the men stared, turned mystified faces each
+to each, and stared anew. All save one. Off from his horse sprang
+Landor, caught the bundle of white in his arms.
+
+"Baby Rowland! Baby Bess! And you,"--he was staring the other from head
+to toe, the distance was short,--"who are you?"
+
+"Uncle Billy," interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of femininity
+nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa and mamma! I want them."
+
+Closer and closer the big bachelor arms clasped their burden; unashamed,
+there with the others watching him, he kissed her.
+
+"Never mind now, Kiddie. Tell me how you came here, and who this is with
+you."
+
+About the great neck crept two arms, clinging tightly.
+
+"He just came, Uncle Billy. I was calling for papa. Papa put me to sleep
+and forgot me. The boy heard me and took me out. I was afraid at first,
+but--but he's a nice boy, only he won't talk and--and--" The narrative
+halted, the tousled head buried itself joyously. "Oh, I'm so glad you
+came, Uncle Billy!"
+
+In silence Landor's eyes made the circle of interested watching faces,
+returned to the winsome brown face so near his own.
+
+"Aren't you hungry, Kid?" he ventured.
+
+On his shoulder the dark poll shook a negative.
+
+"No. We had corn to eat. The boy roasted it. He made a big fire. He's a
+nice boy, only--only he won't say anything."
+
+Again Landor's eyes made the circle, halted at the intrepid brown waif
+who, that first word of greeting spoken, had silently stared him back.
+
+"You're sure you don't know anything more, baby? You didn't hear
+anything until the boy came?"
+
+"No, Uncle Billy. I was asleep. When I woke up it was dark, and I was
+hungry and--and--" At last it had come: the spattering, turbulent tear
+storm. Her small body shook, her arms clasped tighter and tighter. "Oh,
+Uncle Billy, I want my papa and mamma. I tried to find them, and I
+couldn't. Please find them for me, Uncle Billy, Please! Please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well past midnight. The big full moon, high now in the sky, cast
+their shadows almost about their feet when, their labour complete, the
+party took up the homeward trail. But there were twenty no longer. At
+their head as before rode Landor, in his arms not a rifle but a blanket;
+a blanket from which as they journeyed on came now and anon a sound
+that was alien indeed: the sobs of a baby girl who wept as she slept.
+Back of him, likewise as when they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby;
+but he, too, was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in
+front of him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat,
+was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake
+indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him,
+every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there,
+what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know,
+could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew
+only the bizarre, with whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now,
+weary to death with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable
+reaction from the excitement of the past hours, they moved away, to the
+south, to the west. In front of them, glittering in the moonlight,
+seemingly infinite, stretched the waves of the rolling prairie, bare as
+the sea in a calm. Behind them, growing lesser and lesser minute by
+minute, merging into the infinite white, were three black dots like tiny
+boats on the horizon's edge. On they went, a half mile, a mile, looked
+behind; and, with an awe no familiarity could prevent, faced ahead anew.
+Back of them now as well as before, uniformly endless, uniformly
+magnificent, stretched that giant ocean: silent, serene, as mother
+nature, as nature's master, God himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+RECONSTRUCTION
+
+The day of the Indian terror had passed. No longer did the name of
+Little Crow carry stampede in its wake. The battles of Big Mound, of
+White Stone Hill, and of the Bad Lands had been fought, had become mere
+history; dim already to the newcomer as Lexington or Bull Run. Still in
+the memory, to be sure, was the half-invited massacre of Custer at the
+Little Big Horn; but the savage genius of Sitting Bull, of Crazy Horse,
+and of Gall, who had made the last great encounter bloodily unique in
+the conflict of the red man and the white, was never to be duplicated.
+Rightly or wrongly deprived of what they had once called their own,
+driven back, back on the crest of the ever-increasing wave of
+settlement, facing the alternative of annihilation or of submergence in
+that flood, the Sioux had halted like a wild thing at bay, with their
+backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot of earth on the face of
+the globe, the Black Hills country, and as a cornered animal ever
+fights, had battled ferociously for a lost supremacy. But, robbers
+themselves, holding the land on the insecure title of might alone,
+fighting to the end, they had at last succumbed to the inevitable: the
+all-conquering invasion of the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a
+name stood out: "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," "Little Crow,"
+"Sitting Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall,"
+"John Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic
+suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had long since
+passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to desperation, might
+incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an incorrigible by a
+harrowing reference to one or to another; yet to the incoming swarms of
+land-hungry settlers they were mere supplanted play actors, fit heroes
+for fiction, for romance perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small
+herds safe in the pasture of a reservation, preserved as a relic of a
+species doomed to extinction.
+
+A thing at which to marvel was the growth of the eastern border of
+Dakota Territory in this, the time of the great boom. History can
+scarcely find its parallel. In the space of a decade the census leaped
+from two-score thousand to nearly a half million. New towns sprang up
+like fungi in a night. Railroads reached out like the tentacles of an
+octopus, where a generation before the buffalo had tramped its tortuous
+trail. Prosperous farms came into being in the meadows where the
+antelope had pastured. Artesian wells, waterworks, electric lights,
+street railways, colleges, all the adjuncts of a higher civilisation,
+blossomed forth under the magic wand of Eastern capital. Doomed to
+reaction, as an advancing pendulum is doomed to retrace its cycle, was
+this premature evolution; but temporarily, as a springtime freshet
+bears onward the driftwood in its path, it carried its predecessor, the
+unconventional, fighting, wild-loving adventurer, before. On it went, on
+and on until at last, fairly blocking its path, was the big, muddy,
+dawdling Missouri. Then for the first time it halted; halted in a pause
+that was to last for a generation. But it had fulfilled its mission.
+High and dry on the western side of the barrier, imbued as when they had
+settled to the east, with the restless spirit of the frontier,
+unsubdued, unchanged, it cast its burden. There, as they had done
+before, the newcomers immediately took root, and, after the passage of a
+year, were all but unconscious of the migration. Over their heads was
+the same blue prairie sky. Around them, treeless, trackless, was the
+same rolling, illimitable prairie land. In but one essential were
+conditions changed; yet that one was epoch-making. Heretofore,
+surrounded by a common, an alien danger, compelled at a second's warning
+to band together for life itself, all men were brothers. Now, with the
+passing of the red peril, with eradication of necessity for any manner
+of restraint, an abandon of licence, of recklessness, born of the wild
+life, of overflowing animal vitality insufficiently employed, swept the
+land like a contagion. Unique in the history of man's development was
+this the era of the cowboy, as fantastic now as the era of the red
+peril, its predecessor; yet vital, bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously
+human, as no other period has ever been, as in all probability none
+will ever be again. Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed,
+chivalrous, fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate,
+wilful and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented,
+seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as
+certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied their own
+Hell and, impartial, chose from each to weave the web of their lives.
+
+Of this period, life of this life, was Colonel William Landor; colonel
+no longer, plain Bill, from the river to the Hills, husband these ten
+years now, but not father, Cattle King of an uncontested range. Of this
+life likewise, bred in it, saturated in it, was a dark young woman, his
+adopted daughter, two years past her majority, Elizabeth Rowland Landor
+by name. Of it most vitally of all, born of it, rooted in it through
+unknown centuries of ancestral domicile, was a copper-brown young man,
+destitute as a boy of twelve of a trace of beard, black as a prairie
+crow of hair and eyes, deep-lunged like a race-track thoroughbred, wiry
+as a mustang, garbed as a white man, but bearing the liquid name of a
+Teton Sioux, "Ma-wa-cha-sa, the lost pappoose," yet known wherever the
+Santee Massacre and the tale of his appearance was known, as "How"
+Landor. Of this period, last of all, was the great B.B.--Buffalo
+Butte--ranch, giant among the giants, whose brand was familiar as his
+own name to every cowboy west of the Missouri, whose hospitable ranch
+house, twenty-odd miles from the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote
+Centre, which in turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles
+from nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into
+this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the reverse
+side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one lunger," who, with
+gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie sun and prairie air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay Creek ranch
+had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the day previous they
+had suddenly blown in from the north; a great cloud of yellow dust,
+lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty panting of winded bronchos, a
+single demoniacal dare-man whoop heralding their coming, a groaning of
+straining leather, a jingle of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented
+stillness even in this silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was,
+Pete Sweeney, "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was
+who first entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who,
+ere ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only man
+who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute ownership. Pete
+it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared away, assisted in
+laying out that same misguided citizen, in decent fellowship, beneath
+the cottonwood bar, and thrust an adequate green roll in the stiffening
+hand for funeral expenses.
+
+"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I don't visit
+you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to make it square, and
+this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all. D'ye understand?" and from
+Manning, the greybearded storekeeper, to Rank Judge, the one-legged
+saddler, there was no one to say him nay, none to contest his right of
+authority.
+
+By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre. Under
+ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even aggressively, upheld by
+its representative, Marshal Jim Burton. Likewise there was no lack of
+pilgrims, who by devious and circuitous routes sought his residence on
+this occasion, with tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one
+and all departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
+not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an even more
+indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one regretted the
+mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who imparted the information,
+no one deplored the lost opportunity for distinction so much as she; but
+nevertheless the fact remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was
+thrown upon its own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as
+best it might.
+
+Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the beginning
+of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned, and that more than
+intermittently, all but continuously, the red liquor had flowed; to the
+alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins and his straw-haired Norwegian
+rival across the street--Gus Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were
+who fancied that ere this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity
+for absorption had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable
+intention of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
+themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town,
+all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where
+they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in
+peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master,
+had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of
+law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
+corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye
+and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of solid sustenance,
+was, to all visible indications, as fresh and aggressive as at the
+beginning.
+
+Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor down the
+single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its face. One and
+all had succumbed long before to the god of gunpowder. Not a stray dog,
+and Coyote Centre was plethoric of canines, raised its voice nor showed
+even a retreating tail near the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire
+for deepest obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden
+annihilation to the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a
+cyclone were imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They
+were a tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
+experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object lesson
+of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at last patience
+was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of the town hall a tiny
+group of men were gathered, a group who spoke scarcely above a whisper,
+who kept a sharp lookout all surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch
+of an eyelash to disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient.
+In the single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
+plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy bearded, had
+the floor.
+
+"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included indiscriminately. "You
+come here with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of
+you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand
+and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of
+the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including
+disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
+Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned
+cowards, I say."
+
+In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud Smith, the
+weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat hurt him.
+
+"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and agin p'raps
+you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new marshal, but as
+fer's I've been able to discover there's no one hereabouts hankerin' fer
+the job." He spat at a crack in the cottonwood floor meditatively,
+struck true, and seemed mildly pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin'
+comfortably rapidly as it is, without adding any marshals to the
+collection. I've known Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private
+advice is to let him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the
+river to supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
+feelin' as he's feelin' now."
+
+"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky Missourian,
+who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the first time he isn't
+looking."
+
+For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
+meditatively.
+
+"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he commented at
+last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of Pete not lookin'. I
+ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the feller who tackles that
+job to say his prayers before he starts. He won't have much time
+afterwards." With a swifter movement than he had yet made, the speaker
+slid from his place to the floor, involuntarily cast a glance into the
+street without. "I ain't perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and
+I ain't lookin' fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it
+ain't at all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound
+to peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better scatter
+and let it blow over."
+
+"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if you want
+to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying here as long as I
+see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."
+
+"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning with his
+deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well, maybe I've got
+something to say about that." He came out from behind the counter, faced
+the lanky figure before him, with deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty
+stiff-backed boy in the daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the
+dark--" He halted and his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if
+you're so anxious for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you
+take the job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth
+curled again.
+
+Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went white.
+Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered dog, and until
+it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.
+
+"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I might ask you
+the same question. I ain't no property interest here being destroyed
+like you have. Why don't you do the trick yourself, dad?"
+
+For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the old man
+stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to square his
+shoulders; but they remained round as before.
+
+"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand--minus the index and middle
+fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled with rheumatism.
+"Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny storeroom and back
+again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why don't I?" repeated for
+the third time. "Do you imagine for the fraction of a second, Walt
+Wagner, that if I was back twenty years and sound like you are, I'd be
+asking another man why he didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly,
+he stood there before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent,
+distorted senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
+and ask that question of me?"
+
+In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked nervously. His face
+went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud Smith it was, Bud Smith,
+five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie wind had made like a lobster
+display in a cafe window, who had halted at the door, but who now came
+back, he it was who spoke.
+
+"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested slowly, "you
+might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by intimatin' that I had cold
+feet. We'll listen to that, too, any time you see fit to explain,
+pardner."
+
+"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become normal
+again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his elbows back
+against the glass showcase, glancing the while down at the small man,
+almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your benefit, I was merely
+observing that you filled the bill of what dad here said a bit ago we
+all were." He smiled tantalisingly; again showing the vacancy in his
+dental arch. "You remember what that was, don't you?"
+
+"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit. To be dead
+sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."
+
+Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his place behind
+the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he moved. In it
+likewise there was an interruption from without; the subdued clatter of
+a horse's feet on the packed earth of the street, the straining of
+leather, as the man, its rider, alighted, a moment later the click of
+the door latch as the same man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered
+and halted abruptly at what he saw. But those within did not notice.
+Silent as the night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete
+Sweeney, they were staring at those two actors there before them.
+
+"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller of my own
+age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to hear you say it.
+I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt Wagner."
+
+Again within the room there was silence, and again from without there
+approached an interruption. From up the street, from out the door of Red
+Jenkins's joint it came; the patter, patter of many feet, leading it the
+heavy clump of mighty cowhide boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the
+jingle of spurs on those same boots at every step, the deep breathing of
+a cowman intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
+doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and nearer.
+Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had noticed. The
+arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In the depths of his
+pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly, nervously. His face had
+gone whiter than before. Once he had opened his lips to speak, revealing
+the blackness of the vacant tooth; but he had closed them again
+silently. Now at last he cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a
+long breath. Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew.
+What if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
+at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street swung
+open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it, blocking it,
+appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman, while upon their ears,
+like the menacing bellow of an enraged bull, burst a voice--the
+challenging, bullying voice of Pete Sweeney, inebriate.
+
+"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was no answer
+repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"
+
+For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction while
+every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker; at first
+almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the interruption
+came over them, with sensations as divergent as their various individual
+minds. There was no need to tell them who looked at that towering,
+intruding figure that tragedy lurked in the air, that death on the
+slightest provocation, at the twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in
+those big twin Colts lying menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic
+escaped was a pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with
+Pete Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god--bull
+mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
+hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad from the
+soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to the bulging
+holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt around his waist,
+to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red silk handkerchief about his
+throat, to the dark unshaven face, to the drink-reddened nose, to the
+mere slits of eyes, to the upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of
+wiry hair; bad in detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.
+
+"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence he came a
+step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart. "What've you got to say
+for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker meeting. Speak up. What're you all
+doin' here?"
+
+Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red Bud Smith.
+
+"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained evenly.
+
+"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes. "You lie by
+the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of skunks." From man to
+man he passed the look, halted at last at the figure of the lanky
+Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to pot me, and I'm lookin' to
+see the colour of his hair. Who was it, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as before Smith
+spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do. You can own the whole
+county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend to your knittin'. Dad here
+wants to close up, now."
+
+"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon as you
+name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted, dropped like
+claws on the figure of the little land man. "You know who it is I'm
+lookin' for. Tell me his name."
+
+"You don't know me very well, Pete."
+
+"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was inspecting
+the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its paws. "In other
+words, you mean you know, but won't tell me." Lingeringly, baitingly,
+almost exultingly, he was dragging the _dénouement_ on and on. "That's
+what you mean to imply, is it?"
+
+"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's body
+twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even tone.
+There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime, knowing as he
+knew that but one man present could interfere to prevent, that that man
+wouldn't, he spoke those four words: "You've guessed it, Pete." And but
+minutes before Manning had called this man coward!
+
+For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain
+failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal;
+then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension,
+came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible,
+unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took
+place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it
+was done. They only knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had
+reached the single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at
+the same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that the
+odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting slowly
+toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a curtain that once
+raised made them shudder, made their blood run cold, for it revealed
+there, stretched on the floor, huddled as it had dropped, lifeless,
+motionless, the figure of the man who had refused, the weazened face of
+Land Man Bud Smith! All this they realised in that first second; then
+something that was almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man
+who had done this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the
+only means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two great
+revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now. As swiftly
+as that horrible thing had been done he had gone sober. Yet no man who
+saw him that instant feared him one whit less. Not a man present,
+believer or scoffer, but breathed a silent prayer. And there was reason.
+If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete, had possessed a real friend on earth, he
+possessed that one no more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but
+friends--there had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant
+of oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend; murdered
+him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his tracks. Not another
+had done this thing but he himself, he, Cowman Pete. Small wonder that
+they who watched this man prayed, that surreptitious glances sought for
+an avenue of escape where there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner
+went whiter and whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon
+the floor, there would be a reckoning,--and what that reckoning would be
+God alone could tell!
+
+And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary movement, he
+had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the
+breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at
+that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably,
+with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have
+forgotten the others' presence, seemed at their mercy; and to the mind
+of Walt Wagner there came a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand
+came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his
+hip; advanced and halted and advanced again, reached almost--almost--.
+
+"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a snarl: the
+snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your breeches or by
+God--"
+
+No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as though
+drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.
+
+"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had known was
+but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's son of you. Step
+lively."
+
+They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them
+there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a
+trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge,
+stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat
+market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the
+tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall,
+smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed,
+at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up
+they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons
+to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another
+time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that
+mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other
+menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous. It
+was ghastly in its confession of impotence, in its mute acquiescence to
+another's will.
+
+The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete
+did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling
+from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids
+narrowing, moment by moment. A long half minute he waited, gloating on
+their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption. A
+step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless. A
+hand tried the knob of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on
+the panel.
+
+Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but the
+narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the unshaven jaws
+tightened.
+
+Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.
+
+This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's hand moved to
+the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands," snarled a voice.
+
+Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted in air.
+
+"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another followed, until
+there were not two but twelve.
+
+"Make a move, damn you,"--one of the revolvers had returned to its
+holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,--"and I'll drop you, every
+cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I swing the next
+second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand
+returned to the holster. "Come in, you idiot," he challenged into the
+darkness without, "come in and take your medicine with the rest."
+
+Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open doorway,
+peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw nothing; then of a
+sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily, noiselessly on moccasined
+feet, entered a brand new actor, advanced half across the room, while
+his eyes adjusted themselves to the light, halted curiously. Back of him
+that instant the door again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty
+bolt grating in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded
+the snarl the others knew so well.
+
+"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin' here?"
+
+Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer turned. From
+his height of six feet one, an inch below that of Pete himself, he
+returned the other's look fixedly, without answer. He wore a soft
+flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown corduroy trousers, supported by
+a belt. Unconsciously, as though he were alone, he hitched the corduroys
+up over his narrow hips, in the motion of one who has been riding. That
+was all.
+
+Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable disfigurement.
+Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.
+
+"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his voice was
+almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to you. What the
+devil are you here for?"
+
+No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or a muscle.
+
+Ten seconds passed, fifteen.
+
+"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with an
+effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of a rusty
+spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the habit of doin'
+that either, pard." He halted and his great chest heaved with the effort
+of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned a bit forward. "Tell me what
+you want here, and tell me quick, or by the eternal I'll fill you so
+full of holes your own mother wouldn't recognise you."
+
+One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed
+upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the
+flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."
+
+At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant in the
+career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded room. No need to
+tell seven of them at least that it was a moment of life or death. If
+something, something which seemed inevitable, happened, if one of those
+curling, itching fingers on the triggers tightened, if but once that
+took place, their lives were not worth the wording of a curse. If once
+again that black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there
+would be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
+cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and man by
+man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The jaws of Bob
+Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from beneath their
+sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling
+pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips
+as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved,
+but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted
+from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like
+an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
+uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
+before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a
+somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the
+line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world.
+Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he--but for his clothes, his
+most intimate friend would not have recognised him at that moment. In
+him, blind, racking terror was personified. To have saved his soul he
+could not keep still, and his heavy walking shoes grated as they
+shuffled on the rough floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood
+in his mouth and trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes,
+like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
+constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.
+If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
+hundred times over and over that second.
+
+Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
+no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
+that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
+kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
+thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
+doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
+blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
+was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
+soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
+unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
+Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
+fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
+took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
+from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
+Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
+mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
+Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
+he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
+that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
+but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
+better--
+
+But we anticipate.
+
+"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.
+
+But he heard nothing:--yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe, catlike figure
+straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw this same figure look
+at him fully, squarely; as though for the first time really conscious of
+his presence. He saw two unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek
+bones, out of a copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them;
+hold them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
+owner of those eyes move--he did not hear, there was no sound, not even
+a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw--and move toward him. He
+saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to pass a prostrate body on
+the floor; always silent, but always coming, always drawing nearer. He
+saw this thing, he, Pete Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was
+terror. He knew what it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had
+sworn to do; the muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but
+he made no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
+unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this man. As
+his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
+preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the message
+that would make the muscles tense; but he could not. Those two eyes were
+holding him and he could not. All this he knew; and all the while that
+other was coming nearer and nearer. He began to have a horror of that
+coming that he could not halt. The great unshaven jaw of him worked;
+worked spasmodically, involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a
+sudden felt cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands.
+Something he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
+others like those six in the background, began to grip him; something
+that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden weak--weak as he
+had never felt before. And still those eyes were upon him, still that
+dark face came closer and closer. Once more his brain sent the message
+to kill, once more he battled against the inevitable; and that message
+was the last. There was no more response than if he were clay, than if
+his muscles were the muscles of another man. In that instant, without
+the voicing of a word, the deed was done. That instant came the black
+chaotic abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence,
+his arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now, so
+near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace himself,
+tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming, which he read on the
+page of that other face. But he was too late. Watching, almost doubting
+their own eyes, the six saw the end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden
+clench, shoot out like a brown light. They heard an impact, and a second
+later the thud of a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter
+lift, stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
+for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck true.
+That was all.
+
+For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence, inaction. Then
+for the first time the victor turned, facing the spectators.
+Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an instant almost
+curiously,--but he did not smile. Twelve arms, that had forgotten to
+lower, were still in the air--but he did not smile. Instead he sought
+out the stranger in knickerbockers and blouse.
+
+"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to the B.B.
+ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this he?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+Well out upon the prairie, clear of the limits of the tiny town, two men
+were headed due west, into the night, apparently into the infinite.
+There was no moon, but here, with nothing to cast a shadow, it was not
+dark. The month was late October, and a suggestion of frost was in the
+air: on the grass blades of the low places, was actually present. As was
+all but usual at that day, the direction they were going bore no trace
+of a road; but the man astride the vicious-looking roan cayuse who led
+the way, the same copper-brown man with the corduroys of Bob Manning's
+store, showed no hesitation. Like a hound, he seemed to discern
+landmarks where none were visible to the eye. He rode without saddle or
+blanket, or spur, or quirt; yet, though he had not spoken a word from
+the moment they had started, the roan with the tiny ears had not broken
+its steady, swinging, seemingly interminable lope, had scarcely appeared
+conscious of his presence. Almost as unit seemed this beast and human.
+It was as though the man were born in his place, as though, like a
+sailor on a tiny boat, accustomed through a lifetime to a rolling,
+uncertain equilibrium, the adjustment thereto had become involuntary as
+a heart beat, instinctive as breathing. A splendid picture he made there
+in the starlight and the solitude; but of it the man who followed was
+oblivious. Of one thing alone he was conscious, and that was that he was
+very tired; weary from the effect of an unusual exercise, doubly
+exhausted in the reaction from excitement passed. With an effort he
+urged his own horse alongside the leader, drew rein meaningly.
+
+"Let's hold up a bit," he protested. "I've come twenty-five miles to-day
+already, and I'm about beat." He slapped the breast pocket of his coat a
+bit obviously, and as his companion slowed to a walk, produced a
+silver-mounted, seal-covered flask and proffered it at arm's length.
+"The cork unscrews to the left," he explained suggestively.
+
+The dark figure of the guide made no motion of acceptance, did not even
+glance around.
+
+"Thanks, but I never drink," he declined.
+
+"Not even to be sociable,"--the hand was still extended,--"not when I
+ask you as--a friend?"
+
+"I am a Sioux," simply. "I have found that liquor is not good for an
+Indian."
+
+For a second the white man hesitated; then with something akin to a
+flush on his face, he returned the flask to his pocket untasted.
+
+Again, without turning, the other observed the motion.
+
+"Pardon me, but I did not mean to prevent you."
+
+He spoke stiffly, almost diffidently, as on unused to speech with
+strangers, unused to speech at all; but without a trace of embarrassment
+or of affectation.
+
+"I do not judge others. I merely know my people--and myself."
+
+Again the stranger hesitated, and again his face betrayed him. He had
+scratched an aborigine, and to his surprise was finding indications of a
+man.
+
+"I guess I can get along without it," shortly. "I--" he caught himself
+just in time from framing a self-extenuation. "I didn't have time--back
+there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for what you did. I wish to
+do so now." He was looking at the other squarely, as the smart civilian
+observes the derelict who has saved his life in a runaway. Already,
+there under the stars, it was difficult to credit to the full that
+fantastic scene of an hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real
+man, of condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a
+nasty mess, and I appreciate it."
+
+No answer. No polite lie, no derogation of self or of what had been
+done. Just silence, attentive, but yet silence.
+
+For the third time the white man hesitated, and for the third time his
+face shaded red; consciously and against his will. Even the starlight
+could not alter the obtrusive fact that he had cut a sorry figure in the
+late drama, and his pride was sore. Extenuation, dissimulation even,
+would have been a distinct solace. Looking at the matter now, the
+excitement past, palliation for what he had done was easy, almost
+logical. He had not alone conformed. He had but done, without
+consideration, as the others with him had done. But even if it were not
+so, back in the land from which he had come, a spade was not always so
+called. His colour went normal at the recollection. The habitual, the
+condescending pressed anew to the fore.
+
+He inspected the silent figure at his side ingenuously, almost
+quizzically; as in his schoolboy days he had inspected his plodding
+master of physics before propounding a query no mortal could answer.
+
+"I know I waved the white flag back there as hard as any of them," he
+proffered easily. "I'm not trying to clear myself; but between you and
+me, don't you think that Pete was merely bluffing, there at the end when
+you came?" The speaker shifted sideways on the saddle, until his weight
+rested on one leg, until he faced the other fair. "The fellow was drunk,
+irresponsibly drunk, at first, when the little chap stirred him up; but
+afterwards, when he was sober.... On the square, what do you think he
+would have done if--if you hadn't happened in?"
+
+For so long that Craig fancied he had not given attention to the
+question, the guide did not respond, did not stir in his seat; then
+slowly, deliberately, he turned half about, turned and for the first
+time in the journey met the other's eyes. Even then he did not speak;
+but so long as he lived, times uncounted in his after life, Clayton
+Craig remembered that look; remembered it and was silent, remembered it
+with a tingling of hot blood and a mental imprecation--for as indelibly
+as a red-hot iron seals a brand on a maverick, that look left its
+impress. No voice could have spoken as that simple action spoke, no
+tongue thrust could have been so pointed. With no intent of discourtesy,
+no premeditated malice was it given; and therein lay the fine sting, the
+venom. It was unconscious as a breath, unconscious as nature's joy in
+springtime; yet in the light of after events, it stood out like a signal
+fire against the blackness of night, as the beginning of an enmity more
+deadly than death itself, that lasted into the grave and beyond. For
+that silent, unwavering look set them each, the red man and the white,
+in their niche; placed them with an assurance that was final. It was a
+questioning, analytic look, yet, unconcealed, it bore the tolerance of a
+strong man for a weak. Had that look been a voice, it would have spoken
+one word, and that word was "cad."
+
+For a moment the two men sat so, unconscious of time, unconscious of
+place; then of a sudden, to both alike, the present returned--and again
+that return was typical. As deliberately as he had moved previously, the
+Indian faced back. His left arm, free at his side, hung loose as before.
+His right, that held the reins, lay motionless on the pony's mane. In no
+detail did he alter, nor in a muscle. By his side, the white man
+stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit, until his
+horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation, sent the rowels of
+his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank, with a curse held the
+frightened beast down to a walk. That was all, a secondary lapse, a
+burst of flowing, irresponsible passion like a puff of burning
+gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was enough. In that second was told
+the tale of a human life. In that and in the surreptitious sidelong
+glance following, that searched for an expression in the boyishly soft
+face of his companion. But the Indian was looking straight before him,
+looking as one who has seen nothing, heard nothing; and, silent as
+before the interruption, they journeyed on.
+
+A half hour slipped by, a period wherein the horses walked and galloped,
+and walked again, ere the white man forgot, ere the instinct of
+companionship, the necessity of conversation, urban-fostered, gained
+mastery. Then as before, he looked at the other surreptitiously, through
+unconsciously narrowed lids.
+
+"I haven't yet asked your name?" he formalised baldly, curtly.
+
+The guide showed no surprise, no consciousness of the long silence
+preceding.
+
+"The Sioux call me Ma-wa-cha-sa: the ranchers, How Landor."
+
+Craig dropped the reins over his saddle and fumbled in his pockets.
+
+"The Indian word has a meaning, I presume?"
+
+"Translated into English, it would be 'the lost pappoose.'"
+
+The eyebrows of the Easterner lifted; but he made no comment.
+
+"You have been with my uncle, with Mr. Landor, I mean, long?"
+
+"Since I can remember--almost."
+
+The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor produced a
+pipe and lit it. It took three matches.
+
+"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting a girl.
+Bess he called her, was it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in getting it
+alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking out of doors.
+
+"Do you like this country, this--desert?" he digressed suddenly.
+
+"It is the only one I know."
+
+"You mean know well, doubtless?"
+
+"I have never been outside the State."
+
+Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was habitual.
+
+"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere that it
+were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern cemetery than
+to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning to believe it."
+
+No comment.
+
+"I suppose you will leave though, some time," pressed the visitor. "You
+certainly don't intend to vegetate here always?"
+
+"I never expect to leave. I was born here. I shall die here."
+
+Once more the shoulders of the Easterner lifted in mute thanksgiving of
+fundamental difference. Of a sudden, for some indefinite reason, he felt
+more at ease in his companion's presence. For the time being the sense
+of antagonism became passive. What use, after all, was mere physical
+courage, if one were to bury it in a houseless, treeless waste such as
+this? The sense of aloofness, of tranquil superiority, returned. He even
+felt a certain pleasure in questioning the other; as one is interested
+in questioning a child. Bob Manning's store and Pete Sweeney were
+temporarily in abeyance.
+
+"Pardon me, if I seem inquisitive," he prefaced, "but I'll probably be
+here a month or so, and we'll likely see a good deal of each other. Are
+you married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will be, though." It was the ultimatum of one unaccustomed to
+contradiction. "No man could live here alone. He'd go insane."
+
+"I eat at the ranch house sometimes, but I live alone."
+
+"You won't do so, though, always." Again it was the voice of finality.
+
+The Indian looked straight ahead into the indefinite distance where the
+earth and sky met.
+
+"No, I shall not do so always," he corroborated.
+
+"I thought so." It was the tolerant approval of the prophet verified.
+"I'd be doing the same thing myself if I lived here long. Conformity's
+in the air. I felt it the moment I left the railroad and struck
+this--wilderness." Once again the unconscious shoulder shrug. "It's an
+atavism, this life. I've reverted a generation already. It's only a
+question of time till one would be back among the cave-dwellers. The
+thing's in the air, I say."
+
+Again no comment. Again for any indication he gave, the Indian might not
+have heard.
+
+Craig straightened, as one conscious that he was talking over his
+companion's head.
+
+"When, if I may ask, is it to be, your marriage, I mean?" he returned.
+"While I am here?"
+
+For an instant the other's eyes dropped until they were hid beneath the
+long lashes, then they returned to the distance as before.
+
+"It will be soon. Three weeks from to-day."
+
+"And at the ranch, I presume? My uncle will see to that, of course."
+
+"Yes, it will be at the ranch."
+
+"Good! I was wondering if anything would be doing here while I was
+here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and adjusted
+the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do you--your
+people--celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a bit ignorant on
+the point."
+
+"Celebrate? I don't think I understand." The Easterner glanced at his
+companion suspiciously but the other man was still looking straight
+ahead into the distance.
+
+"You have a dance, or a barbecue or--or something of that sort, don't
+you? It's to be an Indian wedding, is it not?"
+
+Pat, pat went the horses' feet on the prairie sod. While one could count
+ten slowly there was no other sound.
+
+"No, there will be no dance or barbecue or anything out of the ordinary,
+so far as I know," said a low voice then. "It will not be an Indian
+wedding."
+
+Craig hesitated. An instinct told him he had gone far enough. Lurking
+indefinite in the depths of that last low-voiced answer was a warning, a
+challenge to a trespasser; but something else, a thing which a lifetime
+of indulgence had made almost an instinct, prevented his heeding. He was
+not accustomed to being denied, this man; and there was no contesting
+the obvious fact that now a confidence was being withheld. The latent
+antagonism aroused with a bound at the thought. Something more than mere
+curiosity was at stake, something which he magnified until it obscured
+his horizon, warped hopelessly his vision of right or wrong. He was of
+the conquering Anglo-Saxon race, and this other who refused him was an
+Indian. Racial supremacy itself hung in the balance: the old, old issue
+of the white man and the red. Back into the stirrup went the leg that
+hung over the saddle. Involuntarily as before he stiffened.
+
+"Why, is it not to be an Indian wedding?" he queried directly. "You
+seemed a bit ago rather proud of your pedigree." A trace of sarcasm
+crept into his voice at the thinly veiled allusion. "Have you forsaken
+entirely the customs of your people?"
+
+Pat, pat again sounded the horses' feet. The high places as well as the
+low bore their frost blanket now, and the dead turf cracked softly with
+every step.
+
+"No, I have not forsaken the customs of my people."
+
+"Why then in this instance?" insistently. "At least be consistent, man.
+Why in this single particular and no other?"
+
+The hand on the neck of the cayuse tightened, tightened until the tiny
+ears of the wicked little beast went flat to its head; then of a sudden
+the grip loosened.
+
+"Why? The answer is simple. The lady who is to be my wife is not an
+Indian."
+
+For an instant Craig was silent, for an instant the full meaning of that
+confession failed in its appeal; then of a sudden it came over him in a
+flood of comprehension. Very, very far away now, banished into remotest
+oblivion, was Pete Sweeney. Into the same grave went any remnants of
+gratitude to the other man that chanced to remain. Paramount, beckoning
+him on, one thought, one memory alone possessed his brain: the
+recollection of that look the other had given him, that look he could
+never forget nor forgive. "Since you have told me so much," he
+challenged "you will probably have no objection to telling me the lady's
+name. Who is it to be?"
+
+Silence fell upon them. Far in the distance, so far that had the white
+man seen he would have thought it a star, a light had come into being.
+Many a time before the little roan had made this journey. Many a time he
+had seen that light emerge from the surface of earth. To him it meant
+all that was good in life: warmth, food, rest. The tiny head shook
+impatiently, shifted sideways with an almost human question to his rider
+at the slowness of the pace, the delay.
+
+"That light you see there straight ahead is in the ranch house,"
+digressed the Indian. "It is four miles away."
+
+Again it was the warning, not a suggestion, but positive this time; and
+again it passed unheeded.
+
+"You have forgotten to answer my question," recalled Craig.
+
+Swift as thought the Indian shifted in his seat, shifted half about;
+then as suddenly he remembered.
+
+"No, I have not forgotten," he refuted. "You tell me you have already
+heard of Bess Landor. It is she I am to marry."
+
+At last he had spoken, had given his confidence to this hostile stranger
+man; not vauntingly or challengingly, but simply as he had spoken his
+name. Against his will he had done this thing, despite a reticence no
+one who did not understand Indian nature could appreciate. Then at
+least it would not have taken a wise man to hold aloof. Then at least
+common courtesy would have called a halt. But Clayton Craig was neither
+wise nor courteous this night. He was a great, weary, passionate child,
+whose pride had been stung, who but awaited an opportunity to retaliate.
+And that opportunity had been vouchsafed. Moreover, irony of fate, it
+came sugar coated. Until this night he had been unconscious as a babe of
+racial prejudice. Now of a sudden, it seemed a burning issue, and he its
+chosen champion. His blood tingled at the thought; tingled to the tips
+of his well-manicured fingers. His clean-shaven chin lifted in air until
+his lashes all but met.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me,"--his voice was a bit higher than normal and
+unnaturally tense,--"do you mean to tell me that you, an Indian, are to
+marry a white girl--and she my cousin by adoption? Is this what you
+mean?"
+
+Seconds passed.
+
+"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss the matter
+further."
+
+"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the family it is
+my right, and I demand an answer."
+
+Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would not be long
+until they were home now.
+
+"Yes," answered the Indian.
+
+"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again the
+silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."
+
+Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a red flood,
+that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about him.
+
+"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I live, and
+if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is white, you'll not
+marry her. If it's the last act of my life, I'll prevent you!"
+
+The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not. Beat, beat,
+beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until the hot blood fairly
+roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not until the challenge was spoken
+did he realise to the full what he had done, that inevitable as time
+there would be a reckoning. Now in a perfect inundation, the knowledge
+came over him, and unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move.
+Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
+reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's store,
+the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding thereto,
+recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now
+irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might against the feeling, a
+terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind,
+unreasoning, primitive terror. But one impulse possessed him: to be
+away, to escape the outburst he instinctively knew was but delayed. In
+an abandon he leaned far forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur
+dug viciously into his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan
+from the surprised beast, a forward leap--then a sudden jarring halt.
+As by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another hand.
+
+"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do that. It will
+only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the same hand, stopped
+there on the prairie. The riders were face to face. "I have tried to
+prevent this, for the sake of the future, I have tried; but you have
+made an understanding between us inevitable, and therefore it may as
+well be now." The voice halted and the speaker looked at his companion
+fixedly, minutely, almost unbelievingly. "I know I am not as you white
+men," went on the voice. "I have been raised with you, lived my life so
+far with you; yet I am different. No Indian would have done as you have
+done. I cannot understand it. Not three hours ago I saved your life. It
+was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and yet already you have
+forgotten, have done--what you have done." So far he had spoken slowly,
+haltingly; with the effort of one to whom words were difficult. Now the
+effort passed. "I say I cannot understand it," he repeated swiftly. "Mr.
+Landor has been very good to me. For his sake I would like to forgive
+what you have done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it;
+but I cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your people
+have conquered my people, have penned them up in reservations to die;
+but that is neither your doing nor mine. We are here as man to man. As
+man to man you have offered me insult--and without reason." For the
+first time a trace of passion came into the voice, into the soft brown
+face. "I ask you to take back what you have just said. I do not warn
+you. If you do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to
+take it back."
+
+He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips were
+twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.
+
+Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
+perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's mane.
+
+"Will you not take it back?" he asked.
+
+Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+That was all--and it was not all. For an instant after the Easterner had
+spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they were, face to face;
+then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a very different scene: one
+as old and as new as the history of man. Just what happened in that
+moment that intervened neither the white man nor the red could have
+told. It was a lapse, an oblivion; a period of primitive physical
+dominance, of primitive human hate. When they awoke--when the red man
+awoke--they were flat on earth, the dust of the prairie in their
+nostrils, the short catch of their breath in each other's ears, out one,
+the dark-skinned, was above. One, again the dark-skinned, had his
+fingers locked tight on the other's throat. This they knew when they
+awoke.
+
+A second thereafter they lay so, flaming eyes staring into their
+doubles; then suddenly the uppermost man broke free, arose. In his ears
+was the diminishing patter of their horses' hoofs. They were alone there
+on the prairie, under the smiling satiric stars. One more moment he
+stood so; he did not turn; he did not assist the other to rise; then he
+spoke.
+
+"I do not ask your pardon for this," he said. "You have brought it upon
+yourself. Neither do I ask a promise. Do as you please. Try what you
+have suggested if you wish. I am not afraid. Follow me," and,
+long-strided, impassive as though nothing had happened, he moved ahead
+into the distance where in the window of the Buffalo Butte ranch house
+glowed a light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+It was very late, so late that the sun entering at the south windows of
+the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of his bed when
+Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long been over, but
+throughout the unplastered ranch house the suggestion of coffee and the
+tang of bacon still lingered. At home those odours would have aroused
+slight sensations of pleasure in the man, even at this time of day; but
+now and here they were distinctly welcome, distinctly inviting. With the
+aid of a tin pail of water and a cracked queensware bowl, he made a
+hasty toilet, soliloquised an opinion of a dressing-room without a
+mirror, and descended the creaking stairs to the level below.
+
+The main floor of the ranch house contained but three rooms. Of these,
+it was the living-room which he entered. No one was about. The pipe
+which he had smoked with his uncle before retiring the night before
+remained exactly as he had put it down. His cap and gloves were still
+beside it. Obviously there was no possibility of breakfast here, and he
+moved toward the adjoining room. On his way he passed a hook where upon
+arrival he had hung his riding blouse. Telltale with its litter of dust
+and grass stems, it hung there now; and unconsciously he scowled at the
+recollection it suggested.
+
+Opening the door, he was face to face with a little fast-ticking cheaply
+ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven, and the man grimaced
+tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human was present, but here the
+indications for material sustenance were more hopeful. It was the
+dining-room, and, although in the main the table had been cleared, at
+one end a clean plate, flanked by a bone-handled knife and fork and an
+old-fashioned castor, still remained. Moreover, from the third room, the
+kitchen, he could now hear sounds of life. The fire in a cook-stove was
+crackling cheerily. Above it, distinct through the thin partition, came
+the sound of a girlish voice singing. There was no apparent effort at
+time or at tune; it was uncultivated as the grass land all about; yet in
+its freshness and unconsciousness it was withal distinctly pleasing. It
+was a happy voice, a contented voice. Instinctively it bore a suggestion
+of home and of quiet and of peace; like a kitten with drowsy eyes
+purring to itself in the sunshine. A moment the visitor stood silent,
+listening; then, his heavy shoes clumping on the uncarpeted floor, he
+moved toward it. Instantly the song ceased, but he kept on, pushed open
+the door gently, stepped inside.
+
+"Good-morning!" he began, and then halted in an uncertainty he seldom
+felt among women folk. He had met no one but his uncle the previous
+night. Inevitably the preceding incident with his guide had produced a
+mental picture. It was with the expectation of having this conception
+personified that he had entered, to it he had spoken; then had come the
+revelation, the halt.
+
+"Good-morning!" answered a voice, one neither abnormally high nor
+repressedly low, the kind of voice the man seldom heard in the society
+to which he was accustomed--one natural, unaffected, frankly interested.
+The owner thereof came forward, held out her hand. Two friendly brown
+eyes smiled up at him from the level of his shoulder. "I know without
+your introducing yourself that you're Mr. Craig," she welcomed. "Uncle
+Landor told me before he left what to expect. He and Aunt Mary had to go
+to town this morning. Meanwhile I'm the cook, and at your service," and
+she smiled again.
+
+For far longer than civility actually required, to the extreme limit of
+courtesy and a shade beyond, in, fact, until it unmistakably sought to
+be free, Clayton Craig retained that proffered hand. Against all the
+canons of good breeding he stared. Answering, a trace of colour,
+appearing at the brown throat, mounted higher and higher, reached the
+soft oval cheeks, journeyed on.
+
+"I beg your pardon," apologised the man. He met the accusing eyes
+fairly, with a return of his old confidence. "You had the advantage of
+me, you know. I was not forewarned what to expect."
+
+It was the breaking of the ice, and they laughed together. The girl had
+been working with arms bare to the elbow, and as now of a sudden she
+rolled the sleeves down Craig laughed again; and in unconscious echo a
+second later she joined. Almost before they knew it, there alone in the
+little whitewashed kitchen with the crackling cook-stove and the
+sunshine streaming in through the tiny-paned windows, they were friends.
+All the while the girl went about the task of preparing a belated
+breakfast they laughed and chatted--and drew nearer and nearer. Again
+while Craig ate and at his command the girl sat opposite to entertain
+him, they laughed and chatted. Still later, the slowly eaten meal
+finished, while Elizabeth Landor washed the dishes and put everything
+tidy and Craig from his seat on the bottom of an inverted basket
+reversed the position of entertainer, they laughed and chatted. And
+through it all, openly when possible, surreptitiously when it were wise,
+the man gave his companion inspection. And therein he at first but
+followed an instinct. Very, very human was Clayton Craig of Boston,
+Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and very, very good to look upon was
+brown-eyed, brown-skinned, brown-haired Elizabeth Landor. Neither had
+thought of evil, had other thought than the innocent pleasure of the
+moment that first morning while the tiny clock on the wall measured off
+the swift-moving minutes. Good it is to be alive in sun-blessed South
+Dakota on a frosty warm October day, doubly good when one is young; and
+these two, the man and the girl, were both young. Months it takes, years
+sometimes, in civilisation, with barriers of out on the prairie, alone,
+with the pulse of nature throbbing, throbbing, insistently all about,
+the process is very swift, so swift that an hour can suffice. No, not
+that first hour wherein unconsciously they became friends, did the angel
+with the big book record evil opposite the name of Clayton Craig; not
+until later, not until he had had time to think, not until--.
+
+But again we anticipate.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," the girl had ejaculated, "now when you have."
+At last the work was over, and in unconscious comradery they sat side by
+side on the broad south doorstep; the sun shining down full upon their
+uncovered heads--smiling an unconscious blessing more potent than
+formula of clergy. She was looking out as she spoke, out over the level
+earth dazzling with its dancing heat waves, mysterious in its suggestion
+of unfathomable silence, of limitless distance. "It's such a little time
+now before I am going away, and Uncle Landor has talked of you so much,
+particularly of late." A pause, a hesitating pause. "I suppose you'll
+laugh at me, but I hope you'll stay here, for a time, anyway, after I'm
+gone."
+
+Clayton Craig, the listener, was not gazing out over the prairie. The
+object at which he was looking was very near; so near that he had leaned
+a trifle back the better to see, to watch. He shifted now until his
+weight rested on his elbow, his face on his hand.
+
+"You are going away, you say?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes. I supposed you knew--that Uncle had told you." Despite an effort,
+the tiny ears were reddening. She was very human also, was Elizabeth
+Landor. "I am to be married soon."
+
+"Married?" A long pause. "And to whom, please?" The voice was very low.
+
+Redder than before burned the tiny ears. No more than she could keep
+from breathing could she prevent telling her secret, her happiness, this
+prairie girl; no more than she could prevent that accompanying telltale
+scarlet flood.
+
+"You didn't know it, but you've met him already," she confided. "You met
+him last night." To her at this time there was no need of antecedent.
+There was but one to whom the pronoun might refer. "It was he who showed
+you here--How Landor."
+
+For a long time--for he was thinking now, was Clayton Craig, and did not
+answer--there was silence. Likewise the girl, her confession voiced,
+said no more; but her colour came and went expectantly, tantalisingly,
+and the eyes that still looked into the distance were unconscious of
+what they saw. From his place the man watched the transparent pantomime,
+read its meaning, stored the picture in his memory; but he did not
+speak. A minute had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was
+thinking of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had
+received--and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl, but it
+was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big shaggy-haired
+collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his aimless wandering about
+the place to thrust a friendly muzzle into the stranger's hand; but even
+then he did not respond. For almost the first time in his irresolute
+life a definite purpose was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig,
+and little things passed him by. A third minute passed. The colour had
+ceased playing on the face he watched now. The silence had performed its
+mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was
+prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the volume and
+made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke.
+
+"I met him last, night, you say?" It was the hesitating voice of one
+whose memory is treacherous, "I have been trying to recall--Certainly
+you must be mistaken. I saw no one last night except Uncle Landor and an
+Indian cow-puncher with a comic opera name." He met the brown eyes that
+were of a sudden turned upon him, frankly, innocently. "You must be
+mistaken," he repeated.
+
+Searchingly, at first suspiciously, then hesitatingly, with a return of
+the colour that came as easily as a prairie wind stirs the down of a
+milk-weed plant, Elizabeth Landor returned his look. It was an instinct
+that at last caused her eyes to drop.
+
+"No, I was not mistaken," she voiced. "How Landor is an Indian. It is he
+I meant."
+
+For a carefully timed pause, the space in which one recovers from
+hearing the unbelievable, Craig was silent; then swiftly, contritely he
+roused. "I beg a thousand pardons," he apologised. "I meant no
+disrespect. I never dreamed--Forgive me." He had drawn very near. "I
+wouldn't hurt you for the world. I--Please forgive me." He was silent.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive." The girl's colour was normal again and she
+met his eyes frankly, gravely.
+
+"But there is," protested the man humbly. "Because he happened to be
+minus a collar and had a red skin--I was an ass; an egregious,
+blundering ass."
+
+"Don't talk that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know him, was all.
+If you had been acquainted all your life as I have--" Against her will
+she was lapsing into a defence, and she halted abruptly. "You were not
+at fault."
+
+Again for a carefully timed pause the man was silent. Then abruptly,
+obviously, he changed the subject.
+
+"You said you were going away," he recalled. "Is it to be a wedding
+journey?"
+
+"Yes," tensely.
+
+"Tell me of it, please; I wish to hear."
+
+"You would not be interested."
+
+"Elizabeth--" syllabalised, reproachfully. "Am I not your cousin?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Haven't you forgiven me yet?" The voice was very low. Its owner was
+again very near.
+
+"You'd laugh at me if I told you," repressedly. "You wouldn't
+understand."
+
+Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away--resumed the former position;
+the place from which, unobserved, he could himself watch.
+
+"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly, reluctantly.
+Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right. "Just the two of us
+are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse and a tent and How's camp
+kit and stay out there alone until winter comes." Against her will she
+was warming to the subject, was unconsciously painting a picture to
+please the solitary listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and
+plenty to read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never
+carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game whenever we
+want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when we please." Again
+unconsciously she glanced at the listener to see the effect of her art.
+"We'll be together, How and I, and free--free as sunshine. There'll be
+nothing but winter, and that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's
+what I've always wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes
+away every year, and he's promised this once to take me along."
+Suddenly, almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her
+companion. "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.
+
+"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of listlessness
+in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want anything at any time you
+can go to the nearest ranch house. One always does forget something you
+know."
+
+"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly. "That's the
+best of it all. The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch that way, to the
+west, until you get to the Hills. We probably won't see another human
+being while we're gone. We'll be as much alone as though we were the
+only two people in the world."
+
+Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.
+
+"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I was
+thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for breakfast.
+And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly if I were changing
+my residence so frequently." He lifted from his elbow. "Pardon me again,
+though," he added contritely. "I always do see the prosaic side of
+things." The smile vanished, and for the first time he looked away,
+absently, dreamily. As he looked his face altered, softened almost
+unbelievably. "It would be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be
+alone, absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for
+most, the single person who always had the same likes and dislikes, the
+same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of such a thing before; it
+would be wonderful, wonderful!"
+
+No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face and her
+eyes were bright.
+
+"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig. Warmer and
+warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always envy other
+people the things we haven't ourselves; and I--" He checked himself
+abruptly.
+
+"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate, sympathetic,
+unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land. Just this she was; and
+another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad. Inevitably
+she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird
+responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.
+
+"Maybe it's true now--you think it is," she halted; "but there'll be a
+time--"
+
+"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed shortly,
+unmusically. "It's merely my lot."
+
+The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly for her
+as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it
+altered now under the cloud of another's unhappiness. But one suggestion
+presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her
+child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.
+
+The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.
+
+"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought differently,
+when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl I
+understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter how well
+I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch, never become
+necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm the only one of my
+kind, that I must go through life so--alone."
+
+Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as one child
+presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her companion's hands
+lay listless on his knee, and instinctively, compellingly, she placed
+her own upon it, pressed it softly.
+
+"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my own love,
+my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply couldn't help it,
+it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so sorry."
+
+Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at her. When
+he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his voice; but that
+was all.
+
+"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't know how
+lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a bit ago, shows
+me the other side of life, the happy side; and I wish I were dead." A
+mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The future looks so blank, so
+hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to me. Anything else would be
+preferable, anything. It's so to-day, now." He halted and of a sudden
+turned away so that his face was concealed. "God forgive me, but I wish
+it were over with, that I were dead!"
+
+"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful entirely, the
+girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could not prevent were in
+the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so good to be alive. You
+can't mean it. You can't."
+
+"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up. "What's
+the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else cares, ever will
+care. What's the use--"
+
+"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all of us here
+care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear to hear you." She
+halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose hinderingly in her throat.
+"I feel somehow as though I was to blame, as though if you should mean
+what you said, should--should--" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes
+glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her fingers
+locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless; then of a
+sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had suggested came
+over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve. Not the faintest
+suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his honesty, occurred to her, not
+the remotest doubt. In all her life no one had ever lied to her; she had
+never consciously lied to another. The world of subterfuge was an unread
+book. This man had intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant
+it. He would do it, unless--unless--
+
+"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still lying idle
+on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it, held it prisoner
+between her own. It was not a suggestion she was combating now. It was a
+certainty. "Promise me you won't do this thing." She shook the hand
+insistently; at first gently, then, as there was no response, almost
+roughly. "Tell me you won't do it. Promise me; please, please!"
+
+"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless absolutely; I
+never realised before how useless. You didn't intend to do it, but
+you've made me see it all to-day. I don't blame you, but I can't
+promise. I can't."
+
+Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a mountain,
+as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the prairie. For
+seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out, distorted seconds;
+then, interrupting, something happened. There was not a cloud in the
+sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun still shone bright as before;
+yet distinctly, undeniably, the man felt a great wet spattering drop
+fall from above upon his hand--and a moment later another. He glanced
+up, hesitated; sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of
+the little woman already standing.
+
+"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe it." He took
+her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's length; and the
+angel who watched halted with pen in air, indecisive. "We've known each
+other such a ludicrously short time--but a few hours. Can it be possible
+that you really meant that, that at least to someone it does really
+matter?" It was his turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no
+answer came. "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess,
+tell me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained
+its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively sought
+that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his ancestors, had
+done to similar chins in their day, lifted it until their eyes met. Had
+he been facing his Maker that moment and the confession his last,
+Clayton Craig could not have told whether it were passion or art, that
+action. "Tell me, Bess girl, is it mere pity, or do you really care?"
+
+Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers, meeting by
+chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's mind in the glitter
+of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so fantastic, so unexpected
+that for a moment the girl did not realise, did not understand. For an
+instant she stood so, perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and
+wider, opening wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what
+she feared--and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking,
+ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength of a
+captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second longer she stood
+there, not her chin alone, but her whole body trembling; then without a
+word she turned, mounted the single step, fumbled at the knob of the
+door. "Bess," said the man softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not
+glance back nor speak, and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard
+her slowly climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close
+behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain
+the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois
+and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception
+to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made
+his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob
+Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the
+free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held
+true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
+soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked
+above the knob of the door before him.
+
+"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like a strip
+of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the entrance, found it
+locked, and in lieu of entering tested the badge of sorrow between thumb
+and finger. "Pant stuff, sure enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob
+himself, or they'd have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now
+what in thunder, I wonder--"
+
+He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house. Like the
+general store, the door was closed, and just above the catch, flapping
+languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the mate to the black rag
+dangling at his back. The spectator's shaggy eyebrows tightened in
+genuine surprise, and with near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts
+of the short row of other buildings along the street.
+
+"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
+evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse with
+carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted, indecisive, and
+for the first time became conscious that not a human being was in sight.
+In the street before him a pair of half-grown cockerels with ludicrously
+long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from
+amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's
+meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
+physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of
+the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the
+present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet.
+Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin
+prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had
+hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal
+recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the
+sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead--.
+
+"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though another were
+listening. "There must have been a general cleanup this time. I fear
+that the report of my respected nephew--" He checked himself suddenly, a
+bit guiltily. Even though no one was listening, he was loath to voice an
+inevitable conclusion. Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at
+last, and, leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud
+citizens denominated the residence quarter--a handful of unpainted
+weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
+surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now, and as
+he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious satisfaction at
+the relief. At the second domicile, a residence as nearly like the first
+as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he turned in at the lane leading
+to the house unhesitatingly, and without form of knocking opened the
+door and stepped inside.
+
+The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its uncarpeted
+cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished, smoke-tinted walls. In it,
+to the casual observer, there were visible but four objects: an
+old-fashioned walnut desk that had once borne a top, but which did so no
+longer; two cane-bottomed chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one
+thereof, a man. The latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing
+an unshaven chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of
+which the lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie,
+and scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair
+was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though he
+looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the scrutiny,
+there was no salutation, not even when, without form of invitation, the
+rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and tossed his broad felt
+hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk. A moment they sat so, while
+with an effort the newcomer recovered his breath.
+
+"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated eventually. "I've
+noticed that the last place to look for a doctor is in the proximity of
+a funeral." He fumbled in his pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that
+in the other's mouth. "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather
+from the appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than
+ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face was
+concealed.
+
+"Rather," laconically.
+
+"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze had
+cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion appreciatively.
+"I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I think she can be trusted
+to attend to such little matters."
+
+Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes were
+observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two men known
+each other these five years.
+
+"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family," commented
+Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper, any time." Again
+the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't decided yet to prove the
+fact for yourself, have you?"
+
+Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that had
+brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent. Only too
+well he knew the signs--the good-natured satire that ill concealed a
+tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of trivialities that cleared the
+way later of non-essentials. In silence he waited; and, as he had known
+the moment that big figure appeared in the doorway, it came.
+
+Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as deliberately
+flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his side, inspected the
+burning tuck critically.
+
+"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow--an old fellow like
+myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his business as
+an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with canvas curtains such
+as you've seen me drive sometimes." The speaker paused a second to clear
+his throat. "Supposing this old fellow was just riding through the
+country easy, taking his time and with nothing particular on his mind,
+and all of a sudden he should feel as though someone had sneaked up and
+stuck him from behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should
+happen, and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go
+black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much later,
+and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig and the team
+stock still out in the middle of the prairie." Deliberately as it had
+left, the cigar returned to the speaker's lips, was puffed hard until
+it glowed furiously; and was again critically examined. "Supposing such
+a fat old fellow as myself should tell you this. As a doc and a
+specialist, would you think there was something worth while the matter
+with him?"
+
+Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his fingers
+sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a goodly collection
+of its mates, and the drooping eyelid tightened.
+
+"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the second time,
+and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking, should be spilled out
+and have to foot it home three miles. What would you think then?"
+
+One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash off his
+vest absently.
+
+"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.
+
+"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my nephew when
+the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I sent How over
+instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy to come a couple of
+weeks ago--that's when it caught me first."
+
+"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"
+
+Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the ranch. Mary'd
+have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out to shoot at a coyote,
+and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at the other explanatorily,
+deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's son and the only real relative I
+have, you know. I just asked him to come on general principles."
+
+Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he fumbled amid a
+litter of articles useful and useless, and, extracting a battered
+stethoscope, shifted his chair forward until it was close to the other
+and stuck the tiny tubes to his ears. Still without comment he opened
+the rancher's shirt, applied the instrument, listened, shifted it,
+listened, shifted and listened the third time--slid his chair back to
+the former position.
+
+"What else do you know?" he asked.
+
+Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.
+
+"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father went that
+way when he was younger than I am, and his father the same." The stogie
+had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a fresh one steadily. "I've
+been expecting it to catch up with me for years."
+
+"Your father died of it, you say?"
+
+"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in
+sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I
+remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed
+sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and
+Frances--that's my sister--were waiting, and they sent me running to
+call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself up and
+work. I was starved hungry, and I remember I hot-footed it proper
+upstairs to his den and threw open the door." Puff! puff! went the big
+stogie. "An Irish plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I
+recollect," he completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that
+day to this."
+
+"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.
+
+"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing the opening
+anthem at the time."
+
+The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared impassively out
+the single window. It faced the main street of the town.
+
+"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed evenly. "I
+see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's place."
+
+Landor did not look around.
+
+"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he recalled in mock
+sarcasm. "What I want to know is your opinion."
+
+"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.
+
+Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal agony.
+
+"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be before--" he
+halted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"before Bob and the rest
+will be doing that to me?"
+
+Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes beneath the
+other's drooping lids.
+
+"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.
+
+Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws closed
+tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned the other's
+gaze.
+
+"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed. "Tell me,
+and let's have it over with."
+
+For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black eyes
+bored the other through and through, at first impersonally, as, scalpel
+in hand, he would have studied a patient before the first incision in a
+major operation; then, as against the other's will, a great drop of
+sweat gathered on the broad forehead, personally, intimately.
+
+"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated evenly. He
+did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was about to say, did
+not qualify in advance by intimating that his prognosis might be wrong.
+"I think the next attack will be the last. Moreover, I believe it will
+come soon, very soon." Impassively as he had spoken, he produced a book
+of rice paper from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long
+fingers were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a
+machine. Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame
+was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly smoke
+separated him from the other.
+
+With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, passed his sleeve
+across his forehead clumsily.
+
+"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I said, I
+expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For the second time
+his cigar was dead, but he did not light it again. There was no need of
+subterfuge now. "I want you to do me a favour." He looked at the other
+steadily through the diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"
+
+"No," said Chantry.
+
+Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.
+
+"No!" he interrogated.
+
+"I said so."
+
+A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as, with an
+effort, he got to his feet.
+
+"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly. "I was
+labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."
+
+The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long fingers had
+locked over his knee. He did not move.
+
+"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am your friend
+that I will not promise."
+
+Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.
+
+"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm dense."
+
+"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one thing I
+can't promise you."
+
+Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.
+
+"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of your
+affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"
+
+"Yes. But how in the world--" "Don't ask it then, please," swiftly. He
+ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else, someone you've known
+for a long time."
+
+"I've known you for a long time--five years."
+
+"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry scouted the
+obvious. "If there should be need she could get a lawyer from the
+city--"
+
+"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to avoid.
+Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of taking care of
+themselves as they have of speaking Chinese. They'd be on the county
+inside a year, with no one interested to look out for them."
+
+"But How--"
+
+"He's as bad. He can ride a broncho, or stalk a sandhill crane where
+there isn't cover to hide your hat, or manage cattle, or stretch out in
+the sun and: dream; but business--He wouldn't know a bank cheque if he
+saw one; and, what's worse, he doesn't want to know."
+
+"Craig, then, your nephew--" It was not natural for Chantry to be
+perfunctory, and he halted.
+
+For a moment the big rancher was silent. In his lap his fingers met
+unconsciously, tip to tip, in the instinctive habit of age.
+
+"I anticipated that," he said wearily. "I realise it's the obvious thing
+to do. I never adopted How as I did the girl--I was willing to, but he
+didn't see the use--and so Craig's the only man kin I have." The life
+and magnetism, usually so noticeable in Landor's great figure, had
+vanished. It was merely an old man facing the end who settled listlessly
+into his seat. "I had big hopes of the boy. I hadn't seen him since he
+was a youngster, and Frances, while she lived, was always bragging about
+his doings. That's why I sent for him." Pat, pat went the big fingers in
+his lap against each other. "I've always felt that if worst came to
+worst the women folks would have someone practical to rely on; but
+somehow, when I saw him last night, from what he said and what he didn't
+say, from the way he acted and the way he explained--what happened here
+last evening--" The speaker caught himself. A trace of the old
+shrewdness crept into the grey eyes as he inspected his companion
+steadily. "I know How pretty well, and when someone intimates to me that
+he is a grand-stand player, or goes out of his way to pick a quarrel, or
+meddles with someone else's affairs--" Again the big man caught himself.
+The scrutiny became almost a petition. "I cut you off short about what
+went on here yesterday," he digressed. "I didn't want to hear. I guess I
+was afraid to hear. It's been foolish, I know, but I've depended a good
+deal upon the boy, and I'm afraid he's going to be a--disappointment."
+
+With the old machine-like precision Chantry rolled another cigarette,
+lit it, sent a great cloud of smoke tumbling up toward the ceiling. That
+was all.
+
+"You see for yourself how it is," said the rancher. "I wouldn't ask you
+again if there was anyone else I could go to; but there isn't. Maybe I'm
+only borrowing trouble, maybe there won't be anything for you or anyone
+to do; but it would be a big load off my mind to know that if anything
+should happen.--" He halted abruptly. It was not easy for this man to
+discuss his trouble, even to a friend. "It isn't such a big thing I'm
+asking," he hurried. "I'm sure if positions were reversed and you were
+to request me--"
+
+"I know you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I--" Of a sudden,
+interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin, ungainly figure in
+shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the point of caricature.
+Unconsciously he started pacing back and forth across the room,
+restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the years he had previously known
+the man had Landor seen him so, seen him other than the impassive,
+almost forbidding practitioner of a minute ago. For the time being his
+own trouble was forgotten in surprise, and he stared at the
+transformation almost unbelievingly. Back and forth, back and forth went
+the thin, ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved,
+paused at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a
+silhouette looking out over the desolate town. Watching, Landor shifted
+uncomfortably in his seat. Once he cleared his throat as if to speak. An
+instinct told him he should say something; but he was in the dark
+absolutely, and words would not come. Reaching over to the desk he took
+up his broad felt hat and sat twirling it in his fingers, waiting.
+
+As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his seat. His
+face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid drooped even more
+than normally.
+
+"I feel I owe you an apology," he said swiftly. "In a way we've been
+friends, and as you say, it's not a big thing you ask of me; but
+nevertheless I can't grant it. Please don't ask me."
+
+The hat in Landor's hands became still, significantly still.
+
+"I admit I don't understand," he accepted, "but of course if you feel
+that way, I shall not ask you again." Unconsciously a trace of the
+former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose heavily. "I think
+I'd better be going." His mouth twitched in an effort at pleasantry.
+"Mary'll be dying to give me the details."
+
+Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume his seat.
+Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest squarely.
+
+"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said repressedly.
+"Would you like to hear?"
+
+"Yes--if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to, however--"
+
+"No, I'd rather you--understood than to go that way." The doctor cleared
+his throat in the manner of one who smokes overmuch. "We all have our
+skeleton hid away somewhere, I suppose. At least I have mine, and it
+keeps bobbing out at times like this when I most wish--" He caught
+himself, met his companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you
+wondered why I ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried
+suddenly. "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
+don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there was
+something peculiar about it all?"
+
+"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving again. He
+had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it tolerantly, with a
+vague sense of commiseration--an attitude very similar to that with
+which the uninitiated observe a player at golf; but that there might be
+another, a sinister meaning--.
+
+"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem peculiar, now that
+you consider it?" The question came swiftly, tensely, with a
+significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell me, please."
+
+"Yes, perhaps; but--"
+
+"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but see." The
+speaker started anew the restless, aimless pace. "The country is full of
+us; all new countries are." He was still speaking hurriedly, tensely, as
+we tell of a murder or a ghastly tragedy; something which in duty we
+must confide, but which we hasten to have over. "It's easier to get here
+than to Mexico or to Canada, and until the country is settled, until
+people begin to suspect--" He halted suddenly opposite the other, his
+face deathly pale, deathly tortured. "In God's name, don't you
+understand now?" he questioned passionately. "Must I tell you in so many
+words why I refused, why I don't dare do anything else but refuse?"
+
+"No, you don't need to tell me." Absently, unconsciously, the rancher
+produced a red bandana handkerchief and wiped his face; then thrust it
+back into his pocket. "I think I understand at last." His eyes had
+dropped and he did not raise them again to his companion. "I'm sorry,
+very sorry, that I asked you; sorry most of all that--" He halted
+diffidently, his great hands hanging loose at his side, his broad
+shoulders drooping wearily. He was not glib of speech, at best, and this
+second blow was hard to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant,
+searching for words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the
+door. "I really must be going," he concluded.
+
+Chantry did not ask him to stay, made no motion to prevent his going.
+Tense, motionless, he stood where he had last paused, waited in silence
+until the visitor's hand was upon the knob.
+
+"Good-bye Landor," he said then simply.
+
+Not the words themselves, but something in the tone caused the rancher
+to halt, to look back.
+
+"Good-day, you mean, rather," he corrected.
+
+"No, good-bye. You will not see me again."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"No. I'm too much of a coward for that, or I should have done so long
+ago. I merely mean I'll move on to-morrow."
+
+Face to face the two men stood staring at each other. Seconds drifted
+by. It was the doctor who spoke at last.
+
+"God knows that if I could, I'd change with you even now, Landor," he
+said repressedly. "I'd change with you gladly." A moment he stood so,
+tense as a wire drawn to the point of breaking, ghastly tense; then of a
+sudden he went lax. Instinctively his fingers sought his pockets, and
+there where he stood he started swiftly to roll a cigarette.
+
+"Go, please," he requested. "Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+Eight miles out on the prairie, out of sight of the Buffalo Butte ranch
+house--save for a scattering herd of grazing cattle in the distance, and
+a hobbled mouse-coloured broncho feeding near at hand, out of sight of
+every living thing--a man lay stretched full length upon the ground. It
+was the time of day that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's
+store, and the broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to
+keep the glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket;
+an Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a blot
+of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his moccasined
+feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would have thought him
+asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes that looked forth
+motionless from beneath the hat brim, that apparently never for an
+instant left that scattering blot where, distorted, fantastic from
+distance and through the curling heat waves the herd grazed, were very
+wide awake indeed. They were not even drowsy or off guard. They were
+merely passive, absolutely passive. The whole body was passive,
+motionless, relaxed in every muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the
+marvel--to all save the thousandth human in this restless age, the
+impossibility. To be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely
+nothing, not even sleep--seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one
+of the most difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need
+is sufficient; but man, modern man--Here and there one retains the
+faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth; but
+here and there only. Yet it was such an one that lay alone out there on
+the Dakota prairie that October day; one who, as Craig had said, hinted
+unfortunately of comic opera, but who never, even in remotest
+conception, fancied that comic opera existed, a dreamer and yet,
+notwithstanding, a doer, an Indian, and still not an Indian;
+Ma-wa-cha-sa by name.
+
+With the approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now, wandering
+northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane and tail, set each
+individual hair of the little beast vibrating in unjustified ferocity;
+and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the brittle grass stalks at the
+man's feet with the muffled crackling of a far-distant prairie fire. The
+herd, a great machine cutting clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in
+its path, moved on and on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling
+country, and passed slowly from view; then, still moving forward, took
+shape on the summit of the next rise, more distinct than before.
+
+Time passed as the man lay there, time that to another would have been
+interminable, that to him was apparently unnoted. Gradually, as the full
+heat of the day approached, the breeze became stronger, set the heat
+waves dancing to swifter measure, sang audibly in the listener's ears
+its siren song of prairie and of peace. The broncho, its appetite
+temporarily satisfied, lay down fair in its tracks, groaned lazily in
+the action, and shut its eyes. It was the rest time of the wild, and the
+same instinct appealed to the leader of the distant herd. Down it went
+where it stood as the pony had done, disappeared absolutely from view. A
+moment later another followed, and another, and another. It was almost
+uncanny, there in the fantastic glimmer, that disappearance. In the
+space of minutes, look where one would, the horizon was blank. Where the
+herd had been there was nothing, not even a blot. It was as the desert,
+and the vanished herd a mirage. It was like the far northland tight in
+the grip of winter, like the ocean at night. It was the Dakota frontier
+at midday.
+
+Again time passed and, motionless as at first, wide eyed, the man lay
+looking out. The pony was sound asleep now. Its nostrils widened and
+narrowed rhythmically and it snored at intervals. Save for this and the
+soft crackle of the grass and the aeolian song of the wind the earth was
+still; still as death; so still that, indescribably soft as it was
+immeasurably distant, the man detected of a sudden against it a new
+sound. But he did not stir. The black eyes looked out motionless as at
+first. He merely waited a minute, two--and it came again; a bit louder
+this time, more distinct, unmistakable.
+
+This time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy
+blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his
+body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning
+back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the
+sky, motionless as a prairie boulder.
+
+Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley, a chorus.
+It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance; but nearer than
+before and approaching closer second by second. Not from the earth did
+it come, but from the air. Not by any stretch of the imagination was it
+an earthly sound, but aërial. It was an alien note and still it was not
+alien. There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
+distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote was the
+keynote of the time and place, its message was their message, the thrill
+it bore to the listener the thrill of the whole. It was not a musical
+call, that steadily approaching sound. No human being has ever been able
+to locate it in pitch or metre; yet to such as the listening man upon
+the ground, to those who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless
+the sweetest, most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note
+which will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
+the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
+impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the man heard
+drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was the swelling,
+diminishing note of the migrant on its way south, of the grey Canada
+honker en route from the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within a half
+mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its
+makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys,
+louder and louder, confused as children's voices at play; then in turn
+diminishing, retreating. Very mystifying to one who did not understand
+would have been that augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting
+human boulder it was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he
+knew every movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
+broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
+sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To all wild
+things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile high in the air as
+inevitably as to the beast on earth instinct had said "halt." They were
+still going southward, still drawing nearer and nearer; but it would not
+be for long. Already they were circling, descending, searching here and
+there for a place to alight, to rest. Suspicious even here, they were
+taking their time; but distinct now amid the confusion was the sound of
+their great wings against the denser air, and the "Honk! honk! honk!"
+was a continuous chatter.
+
+Circle after circle made the flock. Once their noise all but ceased, and
+the listener fancied for an instant they were down, but in a moment it
+was resumed louder than before, and he knew they were still a-wing.
+"Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" They were very near indeed, so
+near that the sleeping pony was aroused at the clamour and, lifting its
+head, looked about curiously.
+
+"Honk! honk! honk! Flap! flap! Swish!" Between the sun and the watcher
+there fell a moving shadow and another--then a multitude. The clamour
+was all-surrounding, the flap of great wings a continuous beating, the
+whistle of air like that in a room with a myriad buzzing electric fans.
+Temporarily the prairie breeze was lost; swallowed up in the greater
+movement. Surprised, for the moment frightened, the broncho sprang to
+his feet--paused irresolute. For an instant the sky was hid. Overhead,
+to right, to left, all-obscuring, was nothing but a blot of great grey
+bodies, of wide wings lighter on the under surface, of long, curious
+necks, of dangling feet; then, swiftly as it had come it passed; the sun
+shone anew; the cloud and the shadow thereof, going straight in the face
+of the wind, wandered on. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" they
+repeated; but it was the voice of departure. The thing was done. There
+on the level earth, fair in view, they had passed overhead within twenty
+feet of their arch-enemy, man; and had not known. Now less than a
+quarter of a mile away they were circling for the last time. One big
+gander was already down and stretching his long neck from side to side.
+Another, with a great flapping of wings, was beside him; and another,
+and another. The prairie wind carried along the sound of their chatter;
+but it was subdued now, entirely different from the clamour of a bit
+ago. Against the blue of the sky where they had been a blot only, the
+curling, dancing heat waves arose. One and all had answered the siesta
+call.
+
+Up to this time the man who watched had not stirred. As they had gone
+over, the wide-open eyes had stared up at them; but not in the twitching
+of a muscle had the long body betrayed him. Not even now that it was
+over did he move. Instead, low at first, then louder, a whistle sounded.
+The pony, wide awake now, was grazing contentedly; but he paused. The
+whistle sounded for the third time, and reluctantly he drew near, halted
+obediently. Then at last there was action. With one motion the Indian
+was on his feet. Swiftly as it was spread the blanket was rolled and
+replaced in the waterproof pouch with the remnants of the lunch and a
+book of odds and ends which he carried always with him. The whole was
+strapped to the pony's bare back. As swiftly the hobble was removed and,
+not a minute from the time the last bird was down, the man and the
+beast, the latter only visible from the direction in which they were
+going, were moving on a zigzag, circuitous trail toward the resting yet
+ever-watchful flock before them.
+
+On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his body even
+with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through the wind-tossed
+mane. First to the right, then to the left they tacked, halting at
+intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will halt now and then to feed;
+but never losing the general direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer
+and nearer. A half hour passed by and in it they covered forty
+rods--half the distance. Thirty minutes more elapsed and they had
+crossed an equal portion of the remaining space. Then it was they halted
+and a peculiar thing happened.
+
+The wind had gradually risen during the day, and now, the middle of the
+afternoon, was blowing steadily. Light objects unattached move easily
+across the level prairie at this time of year, and here and there under
+its touch one after another of a particular kind were already in motion.
+Fluffy, unsubstantial objects they were, as large as a bushel measure
+and rudely circular. Looking out over the level earth often a half dozen
+at a time were visible, rolling and halting and rolling again on an
+endless journey from nowhere to nowhere. They were the well-named tumble
+weeds of the prairie; as distinctive as the resting flock of late
+autumn, of approaching winter. One of these it was now that came
+tumbling in lazily from the south and, barely missing the indifferent
+birds themselves, dawdled languidly on toward the pony beyond. On it
+came, would have passed to the right; but, under an impulse he in no way
+understood, the broncho moved to intercept it. Fair in its path, the
+little beast would still have shifted to give it right of way, for the
+weed is very prickly; but again the authority he did not question held
+him in his place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came
+together. Then it was the _finale_ began, the real test, the matching of
+human cunning and animal watchfulness.
+
+Left alone there upon the prairie, the indifferent broncho resumed its
+feeding. Away from it, foot by foot, so slowly that a careful observer
+could barely have seen it stir, moved the great weed. No animal on the
+face of earth save man himself would have been suspicious of that
+natural blind; even he would have overlooked it had he not by chance
+noted that while every other of its kind was moving with the wind, it
+slowly but surely was advancing against it. The scene where the drama
+was taking place was level as a floor, the grazed grass that covered it
+scarcely higher than a man's hand; yet from in front not an inch of the
+Indian's long body was visible, not a sound marked its advance. In
+comparison with its movement time passed swiftly; a third half hour
+while it was advancing ten rods. Already the short autumn afternoon was
+drawing to a close. The sun was no longer uncomfortably hot. The heat
+waves had ceased dancing. In sympathy the prairie breeze, torn of the
+sun, was becoming appreciably milder. As certainly as it had come, the
+brief rest period was drawing to a close.
+
+But the long figure that gave the blind motion showed no haste. Inch by
+inch it advanced, never still, yet never hurrying. The great
+unsuspicious birds were very near now, so near that a white hunter
+would have lost his equanimity in anticipation. Through the meshwork of
+the blind the stalker counted them. Twenty-seven there were together,
+and near to him another, a sentinel. He was within half the distance of
+a city block of the latter, so close that he could see the beady,
+watchful eyes, the pencillings of the plumage, the billowing of feathers
+as the long neck shifted from side to side. Verily it was a moment to
+make a sportsman's blood leap--to make him forget; but not even then did
+the Indian show a sign of excitement, not for a minute did the lithe
+body cease in its soundless serpentine motion. It was splendid, that
+patient, stealthy approach, splendid in its mastery of the still hunt;
+but beyond this it was more, it was fearful. Had an observer been where
+no observer was, it would inevitably have carried with it another
+suggestion--the possibilities of such a man were a real object, one
+vital to his life, and not a mere pastime, at stake. What would this
+patient, tireless, splendid animal do then? What if another man, his
+enemy, were the object, the quarry?
+
+The rest time at last was over. Insidiously into the air had crept a
+suggestion of coolness, of approaching night. In the background the pony
+ceased feeding, stood patiently awaiting the return of its rider. Far in
+the distance, the herd, a darker blot against the brown earth, were once
+more upon their feet. The flock, that heretofore like a group of
+barnyard fowls in the dust and the sun had remained indolently resting
+and preening their plumage, grew alert. One after the other they began
+wandering here and there aimlessly, restlessly. The subdued chatter
+became positive. Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a
+challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings tentatively,
+and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The cycle was all but
+complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them south, that
+had for this brief time sent them to earth, was calling again. In
+sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went still. Another minute,
+another second even, perhaps, and they would be gone. Through the filmy
+screen the stalker saw it all, read the meaning. He had ere this drawn
+unbelievably near. Barely the width of a narrow street separated him
+from the main flock--less than the breadth of a goodly sized room the
+motionless sentinel. It was the moment for action.
+
+And action followed. Like a mighty spring the slim muscular body
+contracted in its length. Toes and fingers dug into the earth like a
+sprinter awaiting the starting pistol. He drew a long breath. Then of a
+sudden, straight over the now useless blind, unexpected, startling as a
+thunderclap out of a cloudless sky, directly toward the nearest bird
+bounded a tall brown figure, silent as a phantom. For a second the
+entire flock stared in dumb paralytic surprise; then following there
+came a note of terror from eight and twenty throats that rose as one
+voice, that over the now silent prairie could have been heard for
+miles. It was the signal for action, for escape, and, terror-mad, they
+broke into motion. But a flock of great Canada geese cannot, like quail,
+spring directly a-wing. They must first gather momentum. This they
+attempted to gain--in its accomplishment all but one succeeded. That
+one, the leader, the sentinel, was too near. Almost before that first
+note of terror had left his throat the man was upon him. Ere he could
+rise two relentless hands had fastened upon his beating wings and held
+him prisoner. Hissing, struggling, he put up the best fight he could;
+but it was useless. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" shrilled the
+flock now safe in the air. "Honk! honk! honk!" as with wings and feet
+they climbed into the sky. "Honk! honk! honk!" softer and softer. "Honk!
+honk! honk!" for the last time, faint as an echo; and they were gone.
+Behind them the human and the wild thing his prisoner stood staring at
+each other alone.
+
+For a long, long time neither moved. Its first desperate effort to
+escape past, the bird ceased to struggle, stood passive in its place;
+passive as the man himself had remained there on the ground a few hours
+before. Its long neck swayed here and there continuously, restlessly,
+and its throat was a-throb; but no muscle of the body stirred. It had
+made its fight--and lost. For the time being resistance was fatuous, and
+it accepted the inevitable. Silent as its captor, it awaited the move of
+the conqueror. It would resist again when the move came, resist to the
+last ounce of its strength; but until then in instinctive wisdom it
+would husband its energy.
+
+Yet that move was very slow in coming. It was the time of day when
+ordinarily the herder collected his drove and returned toward the home
+corral; still he showed no intention of haste. The broncho was shaking
+his head at intervals restlessly; too well trained to leave, yet
+impatient as a hungry child for the return--and was ignored. For the
+time being the man seemed to have forgotten all external considerations.
+Not savagely nor cruelly, but with a sort of fascination he stood gazing
+at this wild thing in his power. For a long, long time he did nothing
+more, merely looked at it; looked admiringly, intimately. No trace of
+blood hunger was in his face, no lust to kill; but pure
+appreciation--and something more; something that made the two almost
+kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike. Each was
+graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of its kind physical
+perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of the wild; of solitude,
+of magnificent distances. Each was a part of its setting; as much so as
+the all-surrounding silence. Last of all, each stood for one quality
+dominant, one desire overtowering all others; and that was freedom,
+unqualified, absolute.
+
+Long as it was they stood there so, the bird was true to its instinct of
+passive inaction. It was the human that made the first move. Gently,
+slowly, one hand freed itself, stroked the silky soft plumage; stroked
+it intimately, almost lovingly--as an animal mother caresses its young.
+The man did not speak, made no sound, merely repeated the motion again
+and again. Under the touch the restless head became still, the watchful
+black eyes more watchful. That was all. Slowly as it had moved before,
+the man's hand shifted anew, passed down, down, the glossy throat to the
+breast--paused over the heart of the wild thing. There it remained, and
+for the first time a definite expression came into the mask-like face; a
+look of pity, of genuine contrition. A moment the hand lay there; then,
+childish as it may seem, absurd, if you please, the man spoke aloud.
+
+"You're afraid of me, deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he queried
+softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a cannibal, I'm going
+to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into the black eyes--deep,
+mysterious as the wild itself. "You think this, and still you don't
+grovel, don't make a sound. You're brave, birdie, braver than most men."
+He paused, and one by one his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of
+you; so proud that I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his
+full height. Unconsciously his arms folded across his chest. "Go,
+birdie; you're free."
+
+A moment longer there was inaction. Unbelieving, still a captive, the
+great bird stood there motionless as before; then of a sudden it
+understood; it was free. By some chance, some Providence, this great
+animal, its captor, had lost the mastery, and it was free.
+Simultaneously with the knowledge the pent-up energy of the last minutes
+went active, fairly explosive. With a mighty rush it was away; feet and
+wings beating the earth, the air. Swifter and swifter it went, gaining
+momentum with each second. It barely touched the frost-brown prairie; it
+cleared it entirely, it rose, rose, with mighty sweeps of mighty wings.
+Oh, it was free! free! free! "Honk! honk!" Free! free! "Honk! honk!
+honk!"
+
+Like a statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot
+on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at last into the
+all-surrounding brown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor returned that
+evening. The herd safely corralled for the night, he rode slowly toward
+the ranch house, and, without leaving the pony's back, opened and closed
+the gate of the barb wire fence surrounding the yard and approached the
+house. There was a bright light in the living-room, and, still without
+dismounting, he paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs.
+Landor, looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her
+hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his feet
+on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking a cigarette,
+and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the room looked blue.
+Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not finding conversation easy,
+and the former appeared distinctly bored. Neither Landor himself nor the
+girl was anywhere visible, and, after a moment, the spectator moved on
+around the corner. The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the
+kitchen, and the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing
+at last under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It
+was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim light was
+burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the barebacked broncho
+hesitated, looking up; then rolling his wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder
+he moved very close to the weather-boarded wall. The building was low,
+and, by stretching a bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the
+second story. He tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.
+
+No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.
+
+Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.
+
+Still no answer.
+
+Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit frosty, the pony
+stamped impatiently.
+
+"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me good-night?"
+
+This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash was
+opened; a face appeared, very white against the black background.
+
+"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.
+
+The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was unrolled.
+
+"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not sick?"
+
+"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired, is all."
+
+For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his black head
+bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed human that he was,
+there seemed to him nothing now to say, nothing adequate. Meanwhile the
+pony was growing more and more impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the
+half-frozen ground rhythmically.
+
+"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit there in the
+window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."
+
+The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.
+
+"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade closed as
+before.
+
+For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of head,
+motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a sound, and
+at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own quarters.
+
+The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the Buffalo Butte
+ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room shack, grudgingly
+built according to government requirements to prove up on a homestead,
+it had recently been enlarged by the addition of a second larger room,
+and as a whole the place further improved by the building of a sod and
+weather-board barn. The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted
+with the tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had
+remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor himself
+could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for years, and in
+all that time, even in the coldest weather, the voluntary exile had
+never lived under a roof. Primitive or evolved as it might be, as youth
+and as man, the Indian was a tent-dweller. Just now the little house was
+being fitted up for occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of
+the day and at evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under
+eight by ten feet of canvas near at hand.
+
+A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against a dark
+horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house yard the man on
+the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that he had company; yet,
+characteristic in his every action, he did not hurry. Methodically he
+put up the pony in the new barn, fed and bedded him for the night. From
+the adjoining stall, out of the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish
+whine and the protest of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an
+observer would have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a
+pair of sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two
+gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible. It was
+to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps from his lunch
+remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the pony, he made a bed;
+then--though the little beast was only a grey prairie wolf, it was a
+baby and lonely--he knelt down and for a moment laid his own face
+against the other's softly shaggy face.
+
+When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there was a moist
+spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had inscribed its
+affection.
+
+On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man with his
+back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap and stepped
+inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the manner of one
+whose thoughts had been far away.
+
+"You're late to-night," he commented.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or expected,
+and the subject dropped.
+
+There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in silence the
+Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging opposite was burning
+low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the tin reflector so that the
+light would play on the scene of operations. Leaving the tent for a
+moment, he returned with a young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put
+it in a skillet to fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he
+produced a couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the
+opposite side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be
+dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that supper
+was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey red cloth was
+set, the odour of coffee--cheap coffee, yet surprisingly fragrant--was
+in the air, and the bird and potatoes were temptingly brown. It was
+almost uncanny the way this man accomplished things. Landor himself
+never ceased to marvel. How always seemed unconscious of what he was
+doing, seemed always thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a
+motion, and when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was
+so in small things. It was identical in large.
+
+Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a word had
+been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted hospitably.
+
+"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an early supper.
+I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."
+
+"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his seat
+wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."
+
+In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not press his
+invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's admission. Either
+would have been superfluous. Instead he ate with the hearty appetite of
+a healthy human, and thereafter, swiftly and methodically as he had
+prepared the meal, cleared the table and put all in order. Then at last,
+the fire replenished and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown
+within the radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the
+perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and awaited
+the something he knew had brought the other to him at this unusual hour.
+"There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of the little table at your
+right," he assisted.
+
+Landor roused with a trace of surprise.
+
+"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.
+
+"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the superfluous, the
+obvious explanation.
+
+Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and pressed the
+brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match he lit crackled
+explosively, and he started at the unexpected sound as one whose nerves
+were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still sat for a moment puffing hard.
+
+"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a favour.
+Will you promise me?"
+
+The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my power,
+yes, sir," he said.
+
+That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the relation of
+the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the younger, the trace of
+almost patriarchal respect that never left his manner when, addressing
+the elder. "If in my power, yes, sir."
+
+"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly. "It's
+simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of waiting until the
+day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though the speaker were uncertain
+whether or no to say more. "I have a particular reason for wishing it,"
+he completed inadequately.
+
+For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question was voiced;
+there was no probing of the confidence the other preferred not to give.
+
+"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.
+
+Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already glowing
+bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had done.
+
+"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong now, but
+nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day while I was in
+town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form, but I feel
+better to have things settled." With forced matter of factness he
+knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the grate and filled the
+bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any responsibility, so I left
+practically everything to Bess. I know that if anything should happen to
+me you'd take care of her mother."
+
+No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.
+
+"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very different
+from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher to-night, very
+obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear natural. "I know you'll
+make her happy, my boy."
+
+Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted uncomfortably.
+As well as he knew his own name he knew that his secret was secret no
+longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild thing that hides itself to die
+alone he avoided direct mention of the fact, direct wording of the
+inevitable. But something in the attitude of the motionless figure
+before him prevented further dissimulation. Some influence urged him to
+hasten the _dénouement_ which he knew was but postponed. With an effort
+he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the other's black
+eyes steadily.
+
+"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned directly.
+
+"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is that I'm
+sorry you did as you did."
+
+"Sorry, How?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Very sorry."
+
+"And why?"
+
+No answer.
+
+The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon the Indian's
+face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the corner by the stove was
+in shadow.
+
+"I will tell you why." He returned to his place and stretched himself as
+before, his hands locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr.
+Landor, and Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you
+will compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have
+seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."
+
+For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with a
+fragment of coal from the grate.
+
+"I don't see why, How," he refuted.
+
+"You do, though, sir."
+
+"No. Tell me."
+
+There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other would not
+answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black eyes fixed upon him
+unshiftingly.
+
+"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As we are now
+I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because--I love her." He
+paused, and into the tent there came the long-drawn-out wail of the baby
+prisoner. Silence returned. "As surely as that little wolf is lonely,
+Bess will know the trouble money brings if you do as you intend. Not
+myself, but other men will teach her."
+
+Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his fingers.
+
+"Once more I ask why, How?"
+
+The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.
+
+"Because she is white and they are white, and I--am an Indian."
+
+At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto
+succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no
+longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true.
+Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing--as they would
+do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a
+child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make
+it possible!
+
+Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move
+about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by
+inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been
+dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great
+hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last
+he turned.
+
+"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and understand the way
+you feel. God knows I wish it were different, wish I did not believe
+what you say true; but things are as the are. What we have to do now is
+the best thing possible under the circumstances." He sat down in the
+chair again heavily, his hands still locked in his lap. "If wrong has
+been done I am to blame, I myself, in raising you and Bess together. I
+might have known that it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for
+each other; but I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess--"
+
+"Mr. Landor--"
+
+The big man halted. For the first time he realised the admission of what
+he had been saying, the inevitable implication--and he was silent. For
+seconds likewise the Indian was still; but in them he was looking at the
+other steadily, in a way he had never looked at him before, with an
+intensity that was haunting.
+
+"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There was no anger
+in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes, pathos--terrible,
+gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else felt so--everyone except
+Bess herself; but you--you--I did not know that before, Mr. Landor."
+
+Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the bottom of
+his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in self-defence; but
+he could not. There was nothing to say.
+
+"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the repressed voice,
+"not even when at first you were slow to give your consent to our
+marriage. I fancied it was merely because you thought me impractical,
+because I cared nothing for a life that was different, was not my own.
+Nor again, even a bit ago when you asked me to promise--what I did
+promise--I did not suspicion such a thing. I thought it a compliment,
+the sincerest compliment I had ever received in my life: the fact that
+you should trust me so, with all that was dear to you in the world."
+Just perceptibly he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's
+face. "But I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You
+are like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that we've
+lived together for half a generation makes no difference. You're square,
+square to the end. You even like me in a way. You've given your word and
+won't go back on it; but nevertheless you're sorry. Even while you urge
+us to marry, to have the thing over, to have a responsibility off your
+mind, you feel you are sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a
+second, and even at this time Landor was conscious that it was
+infinitely the longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't
+blame you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
+race; but nevertheless, nevertheless--"
+
+The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes were of a
+sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at the roof of the
+tent. No power on earth could have made him complete that sentence, made
+him admit the deadly hurt it suggested. From the unusual confidence of a
+bit ago he merely lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive
+self. Yet as plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the
+difference, realised as well that while outwardly there would be no
+change, from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
+the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to exist. He
+had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the knowledge for the
+first time in the years they two had lived together he realised how much
+after all he had grown to depend upon this laconic human, how much he
+had lost. It was the last drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing
+straw. His great ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in
+his hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
+marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with his
+deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them, silence that by
+word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from the stable there
+sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a moment later, muffled,
+echo-like from the distance, the answering call of one of its own kind
+free upon the infinite prairie; but apparently neither man noticed,
+neither man cared--and the silence returned. Long minutes passed. The
+fire in the stove burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a
+suggestion of the coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without
+a word he put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were
+unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a moment
+he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of attempting an
+explanation where none was possible; but he realised it would but make
+matters worse, and desisted. The Indian, too, had arisen, and
+repressedly courteous, stood ready to open the flap of the tent for the
+other to pass. For a moment, the last moment they were ever to see each
+other alive, they stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each
+knowing that the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly,
+Landor took a step forward.
+
+The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he passed; then
+closed again, shutting him out.
+
+For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man remained
+as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an inanimate thing. The
+kerosene lamp was burning low now and sputtered dismally; but he did not
+notice, did not hear. For the third time, tremulous against the
+background of night and of silence, came the wail of the lonely little
+captive. It was a kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the
+figure responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute
+later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey, bright-eyed
+something, happy as a puppy at release and companionship. Methodically
+the man banked the coal fire and put out the lantern. He did not make a
+bed, did not undress. Instead, weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid
+the buffalo robes, lay still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed,
+inquiring nose in the darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no
+response, and becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the
+silent being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly--and likewise
+became still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+The darkness that precedes morning had the prairie country in its grip
+when Howard, the gaunt foreman of the B.B. ranch, drew rein before the
+silent tent, and with the butt end of his quirt tapped on the heavy
+canvas.
+
+"Wake up," he called laconically. "You're wanted at the ranch house."
+
+Echo-like, startling in its suddenness, an inverted V opened in the
+white wall and in it, fully dressed, vigilant, appeared the figure of
+its owner.
+
+"What is it?" asked a voice insistently.
+
+The Texan stared in unconcealed surprise.
+
+"In Heaven's name, man, don't you ever sleep?" he drawled. "The boss is
+dead," he added baldly at second thought.
+
+The black V closed again, and distinct in outline against the white
+background appeared the silhouette of the listener. His arms were folded
+across his chest in a way that was characteristic, and his moccasined
+feet were set close together. He spoke no word of surprise, asked no
+question; merely stood there in the silence and the semi-darkness
+waiting.
+
+The foreman was by no means a responsive soul, yet, watching, there
+instinctively crept over him a feeling akin to awe of this other silent
+human. There was the mystery of death itself in that motionless,
+listening shadow.
+
+"It was just before I came over to tell you that Mrs. Landor raised the
+house," he explained. "She woke up in the night and found the boss
+so--and cold already." Unconsciously his voice had lowered. "She
+screamed like a mad woman, and ran down-stairs in her nightdress,
+chattering so we could hardly understand her." He slapped at his baggy
+chaperajos with his quirt absently. "That's all I know, except there's
+no particular use to hurry. It's all over now, and he never knew what
+took him."
+
+Silently as before the aperture in the tent opened and closed and the
+listener disappeared; to reappear a moment later with a curled-up woolly
+bundle in his arms. Without a word of explanation he strode toward the
+barn, leaving Howard staring after him uncertainly. Listening, the
+latter heard a suppressed little puppyish protest, as though its maker
+were very sleepy, a moment later the soft, recognising whinny of a
+broncho, and then, startlingly sudden as the figure had first emerged
+from the tent, it appeared again, mounted, by his side.
+
+For half the distance to the ranch house not a word was said; then of a
+sudden Howard drew his horse to a walk meaningly.
+
+"I suppose it's none of my business," he commented without preface, "but
+unless I'm badly mistaken there'll be hell to pay around the Buffalo
+Butte now."
+
+Again, as at the tent door, his companion made no answer; merely waited
+for the something he knew was on the other's mind. The east was
+beginning to lighten now, and against the reddening sky his dark face
+appeared almost pale.
+
+Howard shifted in his saddle seat and inspected the ground at his right
+as intently as though there might be jewels scattered about.
+
+"The boss's relative--Craig," he added, "has taken possession there as
+completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead of been a
+visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the man's face an
+unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted characteristically. "I like you,
+How, or I wouldn't stick my bill into your affairs. That boy is going to
+make you trouble, take my word for it."
+
+Even then there was no response; but the overseer did not seem surprised
+or offended. Instead, the load he had to impart off his mind, his manner
+indicated distinct relief. But one thing more was necessary to his
+material comfort--and that solace was at hand. Taking a great bite of
+plug tobacco, a chew that swelled one of his thin cheeks like a wen, he
+lapsed into his normal attitude of disinterested reverie.
+
+The ranch house was lighted from top to bottom, abnormally brilliant,
+and as the Indian entered the odour of kerosene was strong in his
+nostrils. In the kitchen as he passed through were the other two
+herders. They sat side by side in uncomfortable inaction, their big
+sombreros in their hands; and with the suppression of those unused to
+death nodded him silent recognition. The dining-room was empty, likewise
+the living-room; but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled
+catch of a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative,
+the voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
+even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of the
+three who were already present knew that he was there.
+
+Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one corner of
+the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She did not look up
+as he entered, apparently did not see him, did not see anything. The
+first wild passion of grief past, she had lapsed into a sort of passive
+lethargy. Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the loose dressing
+sack she had put on, and now and then her thin lips trembled; but that
+was all.
+
+Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to the bed;
+shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done when Howard first
+broke the news, his feet came close together and his arms folded across
+his chest in characteristic, all-observing attention. Not a muscle
+moved, he scarcely seemed to breathe. He merely watched.
+
+And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at first
+beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised until the face
+was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as she had thrown herself
+down, her head all but buried from view, was the girl Bess. She was
+sobbing as though her heart would break: sobbing as though unconscious
+of another human being in the world. Above her, leaning over her, was
+the form of a man: Craig. His uncle had brought his belongings from the
+tiny town the day before, and even at this time his linen and cravat
+were immaculate. He was looking down at the little woman before him,
+looking and hesitating as one choosing between good and evil.
+
+"Bess," he was saying, "you must not. You'll make yourself sick.
+Besides, it's nearly morning and people will be coming. Don't do so;
+please!"
+
+No answer, no indication that he had been heard; only the muffled,
+racking, piteous sobs.
+
+"Bess," insistently, "Bess! Listen to me. I can't have you do so. Uncle
+Landor wouldn't like it, I know he wouldn't. He'd be sorry if he knew.
+Be brave, girlie. You're not alone yet."
+
+Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty, curved
+shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.
+
+The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face went very
+close.
+
+"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't let you
+cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl; infinitely too
+much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly, hurts me more than I
+can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated, and like an inexperienced
+gambler his face went tense and white. "You must listen to me,
+Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are others who will take care of
+you. I myself will take care of you, girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's
+something I must tell you, something you make me tell you now." Swiftly,
+unhesitatingly, he leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed
+about her and he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle,
+could not prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you
+two days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is
+why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love you!"
+
+This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the roof,
+came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living actors
+remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the
+tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting
+before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking
+at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in
+bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him
+tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the
+climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself
+into a man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the
+close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a sound,
+one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate--and again the first.
+Unexpected as death itself would have been at that instant, Craig felt
+two mighty irresistible hands close on his shoulders; close with a grip
+that all but paralysed. Irresistibly again he felt himself turned about,
+put upon his feet; realised of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly
+even to admit of a cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot
+distant, he was staring into the face of the one being on earth from
+whom he had most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully
+intervening, a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came
+between. The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.
+
+"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he didn't.
+Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive him--for my
+sake."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test kerosene still
+hung about the closed living-room where the same four people sat in
+council. No effort had as yet been made to put the place to rights, and
+in consequence it was stuffy and disordered and proportionately
+depressing. The mound of cigarette stumps which Craig had builded the
+night before lay unsightly and evil of odour on the table. The faded rag
+carpet was littered with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding
+blouse and cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat,
+which he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a
+chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences of
+his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two days'
+residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete possession.
+Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority in the past,
+concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That voice was speaking
+now.
+
+"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is buried in
+Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's father." The voice
+halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his other sister, who died
+years and years ago, are both there." Obviously, too obviously, he
+turned away until his face was hid. Into the voice there crept a throb
+that was almost convincing. "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure,
+even though he wouldn't have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned
+it the first night I came, but of course I didn't realise--then--" The
+voice was silent.
+
+As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no emotion, did
+not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain awakened, had she
+grasped the full meaning of the thing which had happened to her. Later,
+indefinitely later, the knowledge would come, and with it the hour of
+reckoning; but for the present she was a mere puppet in the play. Craig,
+the dominant, had told her to dress, and she had dressed. He had
+summoned her to the council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her
+now that he had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had
+entered, stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had
+spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.
+
+"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who cares for him
+or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was becoming unmanageable
+and the girl halted, winking hard. "It seems cruel."
+
+"Not if he would have wished it, Bess."
+
+"But if he hadn't wished it--"
+
+"I repeat I think he would." Craig shifted until his back was toward the
+other man. "I think that his mentioning the possibility at all, the
+first night I came, proves that he wished it."
+
+"Perhaps.... I don't know." ... A long pause; then of a sudden the girl
+arose and walked to the window. But subterfuge was from her a thing
+apart, and she merely leaned her face against the casement. "I can't
+bear to think of it," she trembled.
+
+Craig moved half way toward her; then remembered, and halted.
+
+"Yes, let's decide, and not talk about it," he returned swiftly. "You
+agree with me after all, don't you, Bess?"
+
+The girl did not look up.
+
+"Don't ask me. You and How and Aunt Mary decide." With an effort she
+resumed her former place; but even yet she did not glance at him.
+"Wherever you take him I shall go along, is all."
+
+Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.
+
+"Yes, I think he would have liked that. I ... You agree with me too,
+don't you, Aunt Mary?"
+
+The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up vacantly.
+"What?" she queried absently.
+
+Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.
+
+"Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me," she returned
+monotonously.
+
+In sympathy, the girl's brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig turned away
+almost impatiently. "Let's consider it settled then," he said.
+
+For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at Craig that she
+looked. It was at that other figure in the background, the figure that
+not once through it all had stirred or made a sound. "What shall we do,
+How? what ought we to do?" she asked.
+
+For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig recognise
+the other's presence by so much as a glance. Only the look of exultation
+left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids tightened perceptibly.
+
+"Don't consider what I think, Bess," said a low voice at last. "Do what
+you feel is right."
+
+It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who brought the
+decision to pass. How Landor, the Indian, it was who, alone in the
+dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man out decently, and for
+five dragging minutes thereafter, before the others had come, stood like
+a statue gazing down at the kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own
+that no living human had ever seen or would ever see. How Landor, the
+Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with the closely drawn
+canvas curtains, drove all that day and half the night to the nearest
+undertaker at the railroad terminus beyond the river, seventy-five miles
+away. How Landor, the Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses,
+but barely a pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail,
+and ere it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre,
+knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of Mary
+Landor he knew. How Landor it was once more who, before twenty-four
+hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the unwilling visitor
+by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch yard. Last of all, How
+Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the old surrey once more to the
+east, and with still another team before him and a cold lunch in his
+pocket, sat waiting within the hour to take the departing ones away.
+
+Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was superfluous.
+What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew. That he had expected
+what had taken place in his absence, his bringing Mrs. Burton proved. At
+last realisation had come, and Mary Landor was paying the price of the
+brief lethargic respite; paying it with usury, paying it with the
+helpless abandon of the dependent. The dreary weather-coloured ranch
+house was not a pleasant place to be in that day. Craig left it
+thankfully, with a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting
+topcoat, as the door closed behind him. The other passenger, the one who
+should have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth--.
+
+How Landor it was again who, when minutes of waiting had passed, minutes
+wherein Craig consumed cigarettes successively, tied the team and
+disappeared within doors. What he said none save the girl herself knew;
+but when he returned he was not alone, and though the eyes of his
+companion were red, there was in her manner no longer a trace of
+hesitation.
+
+The two passengers comfortably muffled in the robes of the rear seat,
+the driver buttoned the curtains tight about them methodically. The day
+was very still, not a sound came to them from over the prairie, and of a
+sudden, startlingly clear, from the house itself there came an
+interruption: the piteous, hopeless wail of a woman in a paroxysm of
+grief, and a moment later the voice of another woman in unemotional,
+comforting monotone.
+
+"How," said a choking, answering voice, "I can't go after all, I can't!"
+
+Within the carriage, safe from observation, her companion took her hand
+authoritatively, pressed it within his own.
+
+"Yes, you can, Bess," he said low. "Aunt Mary will have to fight it out
+for herself. You couldn't help her any by staying."
+
+But already the Indian was gone. Within the house as before, even
+keen-eared Mattie Burton failed to catch what he said. Had she done so,
+she would have been no wiser, for apparently that moment a miracle took
+place. Of a sudden, the hysterical voice was silent. The man spoke again
+and--the watcher stared in pure unbelief--her own hand in her
+companion's hand, Mary Landor followed him obediently out to the surrey.
+
+"We haven't any time to lose," he said evenly, as he drew back the flap
+of the curtain. "You'd better say good-bye now."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Bessie, girl. Bessie!"
+
+Again within the ranch house, Mary Landor sank into a seat with the
+utter weariness of a somnambulist awakened. Fully a half minute the
+Indian stood looking down at her. For one of the few times in his life
+his manner indicated indecision. His long arms hung loose from his
+shoulders. His wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes. The watcher thought he
+looked very, very weary. Then of a sudden he roused. Bending over--did
+he foresee what was to come, that moment?--he did something he had never
+done before.
+
+"Good-bye, mother," he said, and kissed her on the lips.
+
+The door closed behind him noiselessly, and a half minute later the
+loose-wheeled old surrey went rumbling past the door. Mrs. Burton was
+feminine and curious, and she went to the window to watch it from sight.
+The Indian, alone on the front seat, sat looking straight ahead. The
+bronchos, fresh from the stall, and but a few weeks before wild on the
+prairie, tugged at the bit wickedly, tried to bolt; but the driver did
+not stir in his place. The left hand, that held the reins, rose and fell
+with their motion, as an angler takes up slack in his line; that was
+all. The woman had lived long on the frontier. She was appreciative and
+pressed her face against the pane the better to see. They were through
+the gate now, well out on the prairie. The clatter of the waggon had
+ceased, the figure of the driver was concealed by the curtains; but the
+bronchos were still tugging at the bit, still--.
+
+"Mary! In heaven's name!" The sound of a falling body had caught her ear
+and she had turned. "Mary Landor!" The dishes in the cupboard against
+the wall shook as something heavy met the floor. "Mary!" A pause and a
+tongue-tied examination. "My God! The woman is dead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was ten minutes before starting time. The old-fashioned engine,
+contemptuously relegated to the frontier before going to the junk heap,
+was puffing at the side of the low sanded station platform. The rough
+cottonwood box was already in the baggage car. How himself had assisted
+in putting it there, had previously settled for its transportation.
+Likewise he had bought the girl's ticket, and checked her scanty
+baggage. The usual crowd of loafers was about the place, and his every
+action was observed with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the
+spectators followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels
+for his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the
+vanquished--and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing upon
+the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop sounded; and
+when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was repeated intrepidly
+near at hand. They put themselves elaborately in his way, to move at his
+approach with grunts of guttural protestation. Already, even here on the
+frontier, the Sioux and his kind were becoming a novelty. Verily they
+were rare sportsmen, those mimicking loafers; and for Indians it was
+ever the open season. All about sounded the popping of their artillery;
+to be, when exhausted, as often reloaded and fired again.
+
+But through it all, apparently unseeing, unconscious, the man had gone
+about his business. Now as he left the ticket window and approached the
+single coach, it was nearly starting time. The girl had already entered
+and sat motionless in her seat watching him through the dusty window
+glass. Craig, his feet wide apart, stood on the platform smoking a last
+cigarette. He shrugged in silence as the other passed him and mounted
+the steps.
+
+Save for the girl, the coach was empty; but, destitute of courtesy, the
+spectators without stared with redoubled interest. Without a word the
+man handed over the ticket and checks. Still in silence he slipped a
+roll of bills into her passive hand. Until that moment the girl had not
+thought of money; but even now as she accepted it, there never occurred
+the wonder from whence it had come. Had she known how those few dollars
+had been stored up, bit by bit, month by month--But she did not know.
+Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless, was
+Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on the
+threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was entering,
+she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was merely passive,
+trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down from the prairie
+milkweed plant, she was to be the sport of every breath of wind that
+blew. And already that wind was blowing. She had watched the scene on
+the platform, had understood the intent of the mimicry, had seen the
+winks and nudges, had heard the mocking war whoop. All this she had
+seen, all this had been stored away in her consciousness to recur again
+and again in the future. Even now her cheeks had burned at the
+knowledge, and at last she had watched the man's coming with a feeling
+of repression she had never known before, whose significance she did not
+try to analyse, did not in the least understand. She did not thank him
+for the money. To do so never occurred to her. It was the moment for
+parting, but she did not throw her arms about his neck in abandon, as
+she would have done a week before. Something, she knew not what,
+prevented. She merely sat there, repressed, passive, waiting. A moment,
+by her side, the Indian paused. He did not speak, he did not move. He
+merely looked at her; and in his dark eyes there was mirrored a
+reflection of the look there had been in the eyes of the wild thing he
+had stalked and captured that day alone on the prairie. But the girl was
+not looking at him, did not see. A moment he stood so, unconsciously as
+so many, many times before, in pose; then deliberately, gently, ignoring
+the row of curious observant eyes, he took her hand and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said low. "Come back as soon as you can; and don't
+worry. Everything will come right." Gently as he had lifted the hand, he
+released it. A smile--who but he could have smiled at that
+moment?--played for an instant over his face. Then, almost before the
+girl realised the fact, before the repressive something that held her in
+its grip gave release, he was gone.
+
+As he left the coach, Craig, who was waiting, started without a word or
+a hint of recognition to enter. His foot was already on the step, when
+he felt a hand upon his arm; a hand with a grip whose meaning there was
+no misinterpreting. Against his will he drew back. Against his will he
+met the other, face to face, eye to eye. For what seemed to him minutes,
+but which in reality was only a second, they stood so. Not a word was
+spoken, of warning or of commonplace. There was no polite farce for the
+benefit of the spectators. The Indian merely looked at him; but as once
+before, alone under the stars, that look was to remain burned on the
+white man's memory until he went to his grave.
+
+"A'board," bawled the conductor, and as though worked by the same wire,
+the engineer's waiting head disappeared within the cab window.
+
+Side by side, Clayton Craig and Elizabeth Landor sat watching the
+weather-stained station and the curious assembled group, as apparently
+they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the alien figure of an
+Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless after them; and by his side,
+in baiting pantomime, one gawky urchin engaged in the labour of scalping
+a mate. The last sound that reached their ears was the ironic note of a
+war whoop repeated again and again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the girl had
+left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the bare lot
+adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith, the twelfth since
+How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny railway terminus. The one train
+from the East was due at 8:10 of the morning. It was now eight o'clock.
+Within the shambling, ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior
+and its wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and
+freshly dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the
+single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed according
+to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey, recently oiled and
+tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn up conveniently to the
+door. In a tiny room, designated the study, of the Methodist parsonage,
+on the straggling outskirts of the town, the only minister the
+settlement boasted sat staring at the unpapered wall opposite. He was a
+mild-featured young man of the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from
+a school of theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the
+frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared marriage
+licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time to time he
+glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to the tiny
+fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and frowned
+unconsciously.
+
+At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the arrival or
+departure of a train were congregated. In some way suggestions of the
+unusual had passed about, and this day their number was greatly
+augmented. Just what they anticipated they did not know; they did not
+care. Restless, athirst for excitement, they had dumbly responded to the
+influence in the air and come. In the foreground, where a solitary
+Indian stood motionless, waiting, there was being repeated the same
+puerile pantomime and horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals,
+from the rear, sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as
+that afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar
+even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily into the
+sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and lighter, became
+denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy, the humorists on the
+platform redoubled their efforts. The instinct of anticipation, of
+Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that had brought them there, urged them
+on. Not one throat but many underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection.
+A half dozen voices caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to
+throat. Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing
+became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before, who had
+come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd pressed closer and
+closer about the alien, the centre of attraction. When he moved farther
+along the platform to avoid them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the
+innate racial hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air
+jostled him--and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no
+retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion redoubled,
+drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators in the rear began
+mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to see. Within the station
+itself the shirt-sleeved agent surreptitiously locked the door to the
+ticket-room and sprung the combination of the safe. Beginning
+harmlessly, the incident was taking on a sinister aspect, and he had
+lived too long in this semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning
+to his place of observation at the window, he was just in time to see a
+decayed turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with
+enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear. Simultaneously, with
+a roar and a puff of displaced air, the light train drew into the
+station, on time.
+
+Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move twice
+farther away along the platform, he had not stirred. Unbelievable as it
+may seem, even when the missile had struck him, though it had left a
+great red welt, he gave no sign of feeling. For a space following the
+arrival of the train there was a lull, and in it, as though nothing had
+happened, he approached the single coach and stood waiting.
+
+It was the last of the week and travel was very light.
+
+A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip descended
+first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared with speed. A
+big rancher with great curling moustaches and a vest open save at the
+bottom button followed. He likewise took stock of the surroundings, and
+discreetly withdrew. Following him there was a pause; then of a sudden
+onto the platform, fair into view of the crowd, appeared one for whom
+apparently they had been looking, one who on the instant caused the
+confusion, temporarily stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a
+dainty brown girl with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth
+Landor returned alone!
+
+"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the refound voice
+of the expectant crowd.
+
+"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had introduced the
+jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her; we don't mind."
+
+A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far up the
+single street, and that brought curious faces to a half score of doors.
+
+"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!"
+
+Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had appeared. Her
+great eyes opened wider than before, her face shaded paler momentarily,
+the soft oval chin trembled. Another minute, another second even.
+
+"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll take
+care of you."
+
+It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure curiosity the
+crowd went silent, listening--silent until he was silent; then with the
+lack of originality ever manifest in a mob, they caught up his words
+themselves.
+
+"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't keep him
+waiting."
+
+But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that moment, she
+could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the chin had at first
+presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but she was beyond the reach
+of tears now. The complete meaning of the scene had come to her at last,
+the realisation of personal menace; and a fear such as she had never
+before known, gripped her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word;
+but her muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old
+telescope satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes,
+wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now rapidly
+accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.
+
+"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't stand there,
+come."
+
+At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly, with
+trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then of a sudden
+she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted defensively. But she was
+not quick enough, had seen too late; and that instant came the
+_dénouement._ A second turnip, decayed like its predecessor, aimed
+likewise unerringly, caught her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke
+into fragments that fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain
+after a thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down
+her face.
+
+Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still prairie about
+them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had themselves wittingly or
+unwittingly done. Save one, not a human being stirred. That one, no need
+to tell whom, transformed visibly; transformed as they had never seen a
+human being alter before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself
+on the platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from
+sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically. In the
+stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear distinctly. For
+an instant after he had reached her the Indian stood so, his left arm
+about her, his back toward them. He did not say a word, he did not move.
+For the first time in his life he dared not. He did not see red that
+moment, this man; he saw black--black as prairie loam. Every savage
+instinct in his brain was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his
+free hand was clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind
+his right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone, it
+was nothing, he could forgive; but now--now--He stared away from them,
+stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky; but, listening, they,
+who almost with fascination watched, could hear beneath the catch of the
+girl's sobs the sound of his breathing.
+
+Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second or a
+minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell. What they
+did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them. All their lives
+they had seen passion, seen it in every phase, seen it until it was
+commonplace. It was in the very air of the frontier, to be expected,
+life of the life; but as this man shifted they saw a kind of which they
+had never dreamed. For How Landor was master of himself again, master,
+as well--they knew it, every man and youth who saw,--of them. For
+another indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them;
+looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face within the
+surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a drunken cowman, had
+seen that identical look. Now not one but a score saw it, felt a
+terrible ice-cold menace creep from his brain into their brains. Even
+yet he did not speak, did not make a sound; nor did they. Explain it as
+you will, he did this thing. Another thing he did as well; and that was
+the end. Slowly, deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out
+his hand. Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes
+were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but she had
+grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully calm--almost as much so
+as the man. Deliberately as he had stepped down into the spectators'
+midst, the Indian took the old telescope from the girl's hand and, she
+following by his side, moved a step forward. He did not touch her again
+nor did she him. They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up
+the single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were
+alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed;
+through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by magic
+closed behind them, until they were within a solid human square. But of
+all the assembled spectators that day, an aggregation irresponsible,
+unchivalrous as no other rabble on earth--a mob of the frontier,--not
+one spoke to challenge their action, not one attempted to bar their way.
+The complete length of the platform they went so, turned the corner by
+the station--and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view, hid
+by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl weakened.
+Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it fast.
+
+"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this with you and
+me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"
+
+But the man said never a word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire crackled
+cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room where the same two
+people sat alone. Already the world had taken on a different aspect. Not
+that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten that recent incident at the depot.
+She would never forget it. It had merely passed into temporary
+abeyance, taken its proper place in the eternal scheme of things.
+Another consideration, paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded
+it from the stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent
+far longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that at
+last prompted speech.
+
+"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried suddenly.
+
+"How did _you_ know I would be at the train to meet you?" echoed a
+voice.
+
+The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.
+
+"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow when you
+wrote as if I--I--" A swiftly gathered shower called a halt. Tear drops,
+ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell me," she completed.
+
+The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic life, so there
+was little to record of the death of Mary Landor. "It was best that you
+were away," he ended. "It was best for her that she went when she did."
+
+"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious query.
+"You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"
+
+"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."
+
+A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something more.
+
+"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would--go while I was
+away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me away on
+purpose."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How. I want to know."
+
+"I thought so, Bess," simply.
+
+For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new understanding
+of this solitary human stole over her, an appreciation that drowned the
+sadness of a moment ago. "How you must care for me," she voiced almost
+unconsciously. "How you must care for me!"
+
+She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again a silence
+fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she was thinking.
+Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were passively waiting. At the
+parsonage the young minister still sat scowling in his study. No time
+had been set for the visit he expected. There was no apparent reason why
+he should not have gone about his work; but for some reason he could
+not. Angry with himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket
+and, placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked
+over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.
+
+Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl shifted, dropped
+to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged slowly red.
+
+"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me to-day that
+I would come alone?"
+
+The Indian showed no surprise.
+
+"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."
+
+"Why, How?" The question was just audible.
+
+"Because I trusted you, Bess."
+
+Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes glanced
+up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance fell. A longer
+pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not have spoken if she
+would. A great preventing lump was in her throat, an obstacle that
+precluded speech. Many things had happened in the short time since she
+had last been with this man, some things of which she was not proud; and
+beside such a trust as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition
+upon her part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise
+without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The memory of
+that draught was with her now. Under its influence she spoke.
+
+"You are better than I am, How," she said.
+
+If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He did not
+even look at her. Time was passing, time which should have found them
+upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It was his day, his moment,
+his by right; but no one looking at him would have doubted that he
+himself would never first suggest the fact. Conditions had changed very
+rapidly in the recent past, altered until, from his view-point, it was
+impossible for him to make the move toward the old relation, to even
+intimate its desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In
+the fulness of time he was rewarded.
+
+"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed voice, "will
+you do me a favour?"
+
+"What is it, Bess?"
+
+The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the recall
+had come, and for the first time he was looking at her steadily.
+
+"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.
+
+"I promise."
+
+Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she wished to
+say.
+
+"You won't be--offended or angry, How?"
+
+"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me angry."
+
+"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you humour
+me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married to-day you'll
+be dressed--well, not the way you usually dress." Her colour came and
+went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed like--You understand, How."
+
+Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he checked
+himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the immaterial, went, as
+ever, straight to fundamentals without preface or delay. Scarce one
+human in a generation would have held aloof at that moment. It was his,
+his by every right; but even yet he would not take it, not until--.
+
+"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to
+answer me--as you would answer your mother were she alive." Once again,
+unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms across his breast, his great
+shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr. Landor's will. He has left you
+nearly everything. You are rich, Bess; I won't tell you how rich because
+you wouldn't understand. You are young and can live any life you wish.
+You know what marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You
+know what others, people of your own race, think when you are with me.
+They have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all
+this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish to come?
+Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer. Don't do it, or
+we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as you know I love you,
+whether you have thought of all this and still wish to marry me. Tell
+me." He was silent. Once again it was a climax, and once again came
+oblivion of passing time. For minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide
+open eyes, the girl made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision
+made, not as before in ignorance of what that decision meant.
+Deliberately, with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight
+of future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.
+
+"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I wish to
+marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's no one in the
+world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry you to-day, How."
+
+Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until then, he
+accepted his reward.
+
+"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise. "Bess!" That
+was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled with
+portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was gathered; only
+now it was not at the station, but at a place of far more sinister
+import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope" saloon. Again in
+personnel it was different, notably different from that of the first
+occasion. The same irresponsibles were there, as ever they are present
+at times of storm; but added to the aggregation now, outnumbering them,
+were others ordinarily responsible, men typical in every way of the time
+and place. A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
+gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had
+brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last, these
+dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously. Rumour,
+inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story
+buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to
+haunt the station at the time of the incoming train. The incident of the
+morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had
+followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become
+certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the
+point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its
+place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the
+girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street
+through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
+prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the
+ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet
+well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as
+on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet
+call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous
+familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an
+instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace. Not once did
+he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his
+side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when
+he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor
+realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as
+surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise--and
+that soon, very, very soon.
+
+Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever
+garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously
+grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and
+the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable
+unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying
+dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not
+the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the
+alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they
+went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them,
+at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and
+noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope
+saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
+William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where
+the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in
+sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to
+the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed--for they were
+in the residence section now--had its pair or multiple pairs peering out
+through the slats of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a
+performance, at the side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had
+spread; like turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their
+shells; yet everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to
+take a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the pedestrians
+were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding across the lawn to
+pause at a safe distance and growl a menace; and again the all-noting
+Indian had observed the cause of the unwonted bravery, had heard the low
+voice from the kitchen that had urged the beast on.
+
+Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm approached.
+Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the girl not been
+living in the future instead of the present, she would have recognised
+its coming. For the pursuers were gaining rapidly now. They had crossed
+onto the same street, the principal residence thoroughfare, and were
+coming as a crowd ever moves: swiftly, those in the rear exerting
+themselves to get to the fore, and so again. Far from silent by this
+time, the man ahead, the man who never deigned a backward glance, could
+hear their voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
+interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
+seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a commander, a
+directing spirit--and as well as he knew his own name he knew who that
+leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in the ways of the world was this
+man; but in the reading of his fellows he was a master.
+
+Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had congregated at
+the train, he had nevertheless observed them individual by individual;
+and in his own consciousness had known that the moment, his moment, had
+not come: for a leader, the leader, was not there. Again when the train
+had pulled in he had watched--and still the leader did not appear. But
+he was not deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had
+trusted in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that
+one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been right. For
+the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained on them so
+rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in those brief hours the
+Indian and the girl had been alone in the tiny room at the hotel had
+vitalised the lukewarm racial hostility into a thing of menace, was the
+same man whose life he had once saved, the same man about whose throat
+ere the identical night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig
+by name, one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master
+of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!
+
+Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was again
+looking out the single window. Time and time again he had tried to
+work--and as often failed. At last he had conformed to the inevitable
+and was merely waiting. The house was on the outskirts of the town and
+the window faced the open prairie; bare and rolling as far as the eye
+could reach. He was city bred, this mild-faced servant of God, and as
+yet the prairie country was a thing at which to marvel. He was looking
+out upon it now, absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and
+its silence--when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no longer
+silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by moment,
+penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an indistinct roar; rising,
+lowering, yet ever constant: a sound unlike any other on earth,
+distinctive as the silence preceding had been typical--the clamour of
+angry, menacing human voices _en masse._ Once, not long before, in a
+city street the listener had heard that identical sound; and
+recognition was instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike
+that had been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden
+appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate figure of
+the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment only, for life, in
+their midst. Swift as memory came that picture; and swift upon its
+heels, blotting it out, the present returned. Clifford Mitchell had not
+been among this people long; yet already he had caught the spirit of the
+place, and as he listened he knew full well what a similar gathering
+among them would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor;
+not a drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after
+moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first real
+terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind was there a
+doubt as to the destination of that oncoming multitude. Premonition had
+been too electric in the air that day for him to question its meaning.
+They were coming to him, to him, Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible
+menacing humans. It might be another for whom they had gathered; but he
+as well would share in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he
+was a party to the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from
+the time the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours
+of trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
+anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a certainty.
+Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring out on his
+forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand.
+Following came a purely physical weakness; and stumbling across the room
+he took the seat beside the desk. Unconsciously nervous, restless, his
+fingers fumbled with the pile of papers before him until they came to a
+certain one he had buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to
+do so he spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
+waiting.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
+cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by it
+alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He could hear
+them down the street at the other end of the block before the residence
+of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a certainty because part of those who
+came were on the sidewalk, and that was the only piece of cement in
+town. Again, by the same token, he knew when they passed the only other
+house in the block besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk
+there, and when the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps
+went suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in a
+moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own yard, the
+roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could even distinguish
+what they were saying now, could catch names, his own name.
+
+Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed before
+his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously faces, not a few
+but as many as could crowd into the space, appeared outside the panes,
+staring curiously in. Involuntarily he arose to draw the shade; and at
+that moment, interrupting, startlingly loud, there came a knock at his
+front door.
+
+Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood irresolute;
+and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of curious faces
+multiplied.
+
+The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but deliberately
+and with an insistence there was no misunderstanding.
+
+This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out the faces
+of the curious. The licence he had been absently holding was still in
+his hand; but he did not delay to put it down. There was something
+compelling in that knock; something that demanded instant obedience, and
+he obeyed. The living-room through which he passed on his way had two
+windows and, identical with that of his study, each was black with
+humanity; but he did not even glance at them. His legs trembled
+involuntarily and his throat was dry as though he had been speaking for
+hours; yet, nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly
+he turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto the
+street, looked out.
+
+While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the uncounted
+throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that October day, they
+remembered that moment, the moments that followed. As real life is ever
+stranger than fiction, so off the stage occur incidents more stirring
+than at the play. Standing there in the narrow doorway, white-faced,
+hesitant, awaiting a command, the minister himself exemplified the fact
+beyond question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had
+thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his consciousness for
+but one impression; and that was for the drama ready there before him.
+And small wonder, for, looking out, this was what he saw:
+
+An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass
+and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on
+fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In
+the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of
+his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was
+a solid zone of motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and
+untrimmed beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation
+and passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously aping
+their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments; all ages and
+conditions of the human frontier male were there--but in that zone not a
+single woman. Ranchers there were in corduroys and denims, cowboys in
+buckskin and flannel, gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of
+their kind, business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in
+anything and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the
+surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to bay.
+
+In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple of paces
+of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them, a rather small
+brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of ready-made clothes
+and a derby hat of the model of the year before, were nearest; so near
+that the door, which swung outward, all but touched them. The other, a
+well-built, smooth-faced Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands,
+was opposite. His dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat
+and patent leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his
+linen was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin.
+Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to prevent, as
+he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and left. One look told his
+story. He had been drinking, drinking for days; and, worst of all, he
+had been drinking this day, drinking in anticipation of this very
+moment, swallowing courage against the necessity of the now. All this
+the stage and its setting, upon which the white-faced minister raised
+the curtain. Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the
+real play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used
+front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not a
+sound marked the opening of the drama.
+
+A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could feel; then
+of a sudden it was broken--not by words, but by action. One step the
+white-skinned man took forward; a step toward the girl. A second step he
+advanced, and halted; for, preventing, the hand of the other man was
+upon his own.
+
+"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for
+congratulations yet. Stand back, please."
+
+Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a curse, a
+challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical terrified little
+cry the girl shrank back into the doorway itself. But none other, not
+even the minister, stirred.
+
+"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in the
+stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to stand back. I
+don't warn you, I merely request--but I shall not ask it again." Of a
+sudden the speaker's hand left the other's arm, dropped by his own side.
+"Stand back, please."
+
+Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working, passionate,
+menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky overhead. A moment they
+remained so while the breathless onlookers expected anything, while from
+the doorstep the minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then
+slowly, lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took
+silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still another, and
+was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first time he found voice.
+
+"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd have let
+you go if you'd given up the girl; but now--now--May God have mercy on
+your soul now, How Landor!"
+
+Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first meeting on
+the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It was the crisis,
+and as before an instinct which she did not understand, which she merely
+obeyed, brought her to the Indian's side; held her there motionless,
+passive, mysteriously unafraid. Her usually brown face was very pale and
+her eyes were unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably
+calm--calm as a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that
+solid zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or
+no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that motionless,
+dominant human by her side.
+
+A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear each other
+breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the minister's lips
+became audible; then came the end. Incredible after it was over was that
+_dénouement_, inexplicable to a legion of old men, then among the boys,
+who witnessed it, to this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take
+place in this world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate
+other men it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first
+challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken. The
+only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life found
+voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that listening,
+expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion his arms folded
+across his chest.
+
+"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done my best to
+avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything at your hands,
+every insult which you could conceive, things which no white man would
+have permitted for a second; and so far without resentment. But I shall
+stand it no more. I'm one to a hundred; but that makes no difference.
+Bess Landor and I are to be married now and here; here before you all. I
+shall not talk to you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace;
+but as surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to
+me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I shall
+kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing." A
+moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms;
+then, still facing, he moved back a step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we
+are ready."
+
+And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred
+curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night
+itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married. The
+minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close
+before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the
+pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet it was done, and, save
+one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent
+stayed and listened to the end. That one, a tall, modish alien with a
+red, flushed face covered with a two-days' growth of bread, was likewise
+watching when it began. But when it was over he was not there; and not
+one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling,
+sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl
+of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of
+them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a
+straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling
+brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall,
+the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
+mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after
+three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though
+the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey
+flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the
+ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the
+ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at
+intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of
+the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried
+grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was
+no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny
+town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
+behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
+followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he
+was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce visible landmarks he
+alone distinguished was returning to his own, to the wild that lay in
+the distance beyond.
+
+Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went; and back of
+them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built terminus grew
+dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as completely as though it
+had never been. Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot
+against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three
+miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious
+motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind
+them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue
+surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there
+with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
+alone.
+
+As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From
+horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion
+of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or
+hate--and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she
+could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift
+her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of
+fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have
+been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so,
+did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch
+her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the
+last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something
+which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing
+taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of
+darkness. But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had
+awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they
+had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
+panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations,
+thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been
+hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare
+on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the
+experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events
+had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but _en masse_ the
+effect had been definite--startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may
+seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
+consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
+metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an
+adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place.
+Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself
+to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as
+existence itself, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back
+there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not,
+mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came
+to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing
+that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear
+again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
+taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the
+woman.
+
+Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the
+swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the
+personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into
+abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the
+hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent
+dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain
+itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by
+minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
+impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming
+bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it
+blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had
+done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that
+the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite
+loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a
+child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
+intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future
+endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied
+a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony
+would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature
+impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration
+intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
+distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled
+the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for
+worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was
+no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge
+overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born,
+became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first
+time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable.
+Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she
+sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her
+eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.
+
+"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"
+
+The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not
+yet completely returned.
+
+"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."
+
+"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a
+walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close.
+"I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."
+
+"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has
+never hurt it. It merely is."
+
+At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not
+move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change
+had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful
+as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The
+high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made
+a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious.
+Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a
+colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The
+black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
+of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of
+exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a
+standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour
+had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the
+truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was
+almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it
+should prove a myth.
+
+Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
+worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his
+God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus
+the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been
+eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his
+again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork,
+watched to the end; and then, observing that _finale_, laughed--and with
+the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
+understand, and I can't tell you."
+
+She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture
+she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly
+with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all
+right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She
+laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
+"It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
+someone else; even though that property were a girl."
+
+Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On
+his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that
+something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true
+to his instincts, waited.
+
+"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl,
+"even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
+anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to
+do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to
+you; not even as possibility."
+
+Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light
+came.
+
+"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never
+occur to me to do so."
+
+More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of
+Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the
+vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I
+hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than
+you; but now--now--" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap
+the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a
+sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"
+
+More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to
+fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled
+with the reins impotently.
+
+"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell
+me what it is, won't you?"
+
+"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?"
+Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is
+wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as
+you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone?
+Wrong: the preposterous idea!"
+
+She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to
+be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking
+at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible
+in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He
+did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the
+seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace
+of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
+the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab
+she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and
+contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood
+changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears.
+In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed
+close to his face.
+
+"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous
+and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the
+map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere
+to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.
+
+Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when,
+far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had
+seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short
+fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn,
+was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low
+sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the
+old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the
+tall frost-cured grass to feed.
+
+"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it
+face north, south, east, or west?"
+
+"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the
+morning."
+
+With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set
+about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box.
+The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More
+quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take
+shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself
+was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and
+swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed
+and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by
+legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed
+the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the
+frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task
+was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
+and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that
+light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole.
+Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless
+earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for
+her to descend.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a
+time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook
+supper and all. Come, girlie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel
+William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the
+same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light
+from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face.
+In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo
+robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was
+toward her. His eyes--eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature
+man--were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was
+living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was
+at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
+made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
+worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a
+devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they
+had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence
+at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had
+apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said,
+"we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day--" he had
+looked down as he had spoken--"to-day I felt somehow as though I could
+not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."
+
+Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time;
+and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing
+at her--and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return
+that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning,
+her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was
+afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
+gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths
+of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such
+confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it--and still she did
+not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save
+the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason
+therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to
+shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively,
+almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the
+way.
+
+"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly.
+"It makes me afraid of myself--afraid of dropping. Supposing I should
+fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you,
+could ever put the pieces together."
+
+"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be
+there to catch you."
+
+"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth,
+you know."
+
+"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in
+the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated,
+too, then."
+
+The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon,
+very carefully.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm
+perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very--bad at times."
+
+The other smiled; that was all.
+
+"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I
+don't like you and run away."
+
+"If you did you'd return very soon."
+
+"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"
+
+"I know so."
+
+"Why, How?"
+
+"Because you care for me."
+
+"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."
+
+"You'd find your mistake and come back."
+
+The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.
+
+"And when I did--come back--you'd forgive me, How?"
+
+"There'd be nothing to forgive."
+
+"It wouldn't be wrong--to leave you that way?"
+
+"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."
+
+"Not if I did anything, if I--ran away with another man?"
+
+The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.
+
+"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."
+
+"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no
+matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"
+
+For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the
+man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since
+they had been speaking his eyes dropped.
+
+"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have
+everything go on as before--I am human. I could not."
+
+A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of
+a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.
+
+"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say
+it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry
+a mortal, you know."
+
+The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
+
+"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the
+girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me
+anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run
+away? Would you forgive him, too?"
+
+Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
+
+"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't
+give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
+
+Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted
+in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood
+out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
+
+"Forgive _him_, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
+
+That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking
+at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no
+human being could have misread the answer. With the same little
+hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense
+hands went lax.
+
+"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day,
+you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things
+lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed
+before that I possessed them."
+
+Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man
+arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the
+girl to her feet.
+
+"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something
+you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now,
+girlie?"
+
+Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look
+up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long
+lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow
+of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.
+
+"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She
+smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for
+me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How,
+man; absolutely nothing."
+
+For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but,
+still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip
+that was a caress his hands dropped.
+
+"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel
+that you are unhappy, is all."
+
+"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so
+easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm
+very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't
+you?"
+
+"Forgive you!--Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast,
+the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as
+the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only
+realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you
+could only realise!"
+
+Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes,
+sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
+
+"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that
+you love me. Tell me! tell me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read
+and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth
+of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were
+left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only
+nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a
+tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once
+"unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the
+aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate
+not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had
+builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city
+bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
+could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my
+adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of
+greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned
+laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but
+incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other
+names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called
+How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred
+words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet
+was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
+who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William
+Landor of the Buffalo Butte.
+
+Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution.
+Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated
+manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that
+score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather
+case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a
+kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence
+he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
+Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took
+possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo
+Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place
+upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked
+to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
+
+Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a
+memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and
+wife--and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back
+from the land of nothingness they came--and again no one was at hand to
+welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that
+plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration
+of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced.
+Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay
+for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
+Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle
+against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew
+not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks
+she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The
+very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of
+change on the morrow. The next day it was the same--and the next. When
+they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
+time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her
+companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and
+the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day
+by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was
+struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way
+they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days
+that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the
+change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she
+lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
+precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it
+was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly.
+What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever
+know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man
+and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had
+there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another.
+That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could
+have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
+which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have
+questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed.
+The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown
+sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics.
+Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the
+first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had
+shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit
+the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this
+newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the
+prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
+returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.
+
+One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that
+was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax
+boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had
+intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch,
+and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its
+furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up
+in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable,
+in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that
+frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he
+led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he
+threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
+her.
+
+"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said,
+and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.
+
+A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and
+cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never
+before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl
+realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive
+human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his
+own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the
+knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms
+flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.
+
+"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"
+
+"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.
+
+For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening
+the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.
+The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision
+of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection
+of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch
+for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left
+astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark
+or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever
+considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and
+the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl
+stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into
+the darkness.
+
+"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone
+about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and
+that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.
+
+Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his
+manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a
+blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the
+obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by
+nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable.
+Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne
+what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;
+but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched
+linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant
+town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he
+polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly
+an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who
+knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from
+humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing
+at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in
+this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How
+Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it
+all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of
+a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered
+his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish
+undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes
+to observe, to pity perchance, then--But let it pass what he did then.
+It is another tale and extraneous.
+
+Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew
+shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No
+human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on
+pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had
+both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the
+execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a
+distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They
+accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further
+than that--they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
+whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on--whither no
+one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old
+Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had
+been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the
+olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor
+was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were
+gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did
+a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when
+by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His
+reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again,
+they were white and he was red--and between them the chasm yawned.
+
+Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It
+was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was
+one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and
+there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal
+white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights
+the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh
+layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more
+into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
+migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or
+at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the
+booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this
+impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God
+is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally
+manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite
+bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon
+beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of
+words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the
+girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
+at a time did not glance without.
+
+Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long
+before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its
+advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the
+range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound
+was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and
+frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page
+appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and _en masse_,
+wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of
+an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of
+prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies
+branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on
+the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were
+changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though
+soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
+white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day,
+as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they,
+and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky
+now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of
+his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed
+through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.
+After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
+in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks;
+flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not
+only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white
+blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long
+absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on
+motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their
+five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders,
+appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and
+grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last,
+the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable,
+with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
+whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
+following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in
+their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with
+their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's
+advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical
+as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie
+and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
+that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive,
+alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and
+re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it
+repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each
+to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung
+slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the
+stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no
+sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the
+newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable,
+did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway,
+he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his
+long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.
+
+The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in approved riding
+togs, halted likewise and returned the look; equally minutely, equally
+suspiciously. The horse he rode was one of a kind seldom seen on the
+ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider
+sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another
+life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance
+they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective
+"smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness
+of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general
+youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there,
+have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so, taking in every detail
+of the commonplace surroundings. Then, apparently satisfied, he
+dismounted and, tying the animal to the wheel of an old surrey drawn up
+in the yard, he approached the single entrance of the house and rapped.
+
+To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a
+frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a plain gingham gown.
+A moment they looked at each other; then the man's riding cap came off
+with a sweep and he held out his hand.
+
+"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was all. Then he
+looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see your husband," he
+exclaimed. "Is he at home?"
+
+The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched hand.
+
+"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that you had
+returned."
+
+A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his hand
+dropped; but his eyes held their place.
+
+"Yes. I only came yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to
+talk over with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"
+
+Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.
+
+"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man. "Aren't we to
+be even neighbourly?"
+
+"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be otherwise."
+
+"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming positive
+now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."
+
+"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately. "Answer?" She
+undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by courtesy, that after
+I've lived the last four months I'm still such a child as that? Do you
+really wish me to answer, Neighbour Craig?"
+
+For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins in his
+trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously. Then again he
+looked up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave an hour
+ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It was you I came
+to see. May I stay?"
+
+Again the girl ignored the question.
+
+"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you wouldn't have
+come, that nothing you know of could have made you come? Let's
+understand each other in the beginning. You admit this?"
+
+"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"
+
+The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the eyes;
+silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could not fathom,
+could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as deliberately she released
+him, looked away.
+
+"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."
+
+"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an obvious effort
+he checked himself "Thank you," he completed repressedly.
+
+This time the girl did not smile.
+
+"Don't you realise yet that sort of thing is useless?" she queried
+unemotionally.
+
+It was the man this time who was silent.
+
+"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so; but for
+once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us good, we're both
+living a lie; but at least we understand each other. Let's not waste
+energy in pretending--when there's no one to be deceived."
+
+Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too much a part
+of his life to shake off instantly. Then he laughed.
+
+"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway be it so.
+And now, that I'm to stay--" A meaning glance through the open door.
+"You were working, weren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch. You
+remember another morning once before, don't you--a morning before you
+grew up--"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."
+
+"I am quite deficient in imagination."
+
+"At least, though, dishes must be washed."
+
+"Not necessarily--this moment at least. They have waited before."
+
+"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or interfere."
+
+"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and enjoy the
+sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated? They're clean, I
+know. I scrubbed them this very morning myself."
+
+The man hesitated. Then he sat down.
+
+"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm going to
+return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit--the way you are now.
+You've changed terribly."
+
+"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely as I am
+this moment for--a lifetime."
+
+"For--how long, Bess?"
+
+"A lifetime, I think."
+
+"For four months, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps--it's all the same."
+
+"Since you did a foolish thing?"
+
+"I have done many such."
+
+"Since the last, I mean."
+
+"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened. "The last
+was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in the smallest
+possible manner since then."
+
+The man inspected his boots.
+
+"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at length.
+
+"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took a place
+beside him. "I had forgotten."
+
+They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real perplexity.
+
+"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."
+
+"I have not denied it," evenly.
+
+The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for anything;
+but he was finding his mistake.
+
+"This life you've--selected, is wearing on you," he added. "Frankly, I
+hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and happy."
+
+"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin mine. You're
+dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the signs."
+
+The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank criticism
+than to receive it.
+
+"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said intimately, "nor
+attempt to deny it. There is a reason, however."
+
+"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually is an
+explanation for everything we do in this life."
+
+"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."
+
+"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."
+
+"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."
+
+The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back against the
+lintel of the door. She looked very young that moment--and very old.
+
+"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my explanation for
+being--as I am. What is yours?"
+
+"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"
+
+"I wish to know the reason."
+
+"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be here."
+
+"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you have
+married?"
+
+"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life, and--the man you
+have named."
+
+"I don't believe I understand, Bess."
+
+"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence I
+possessed, for two weeks."
+
+"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.
+
+"I repeat you have the compliment--if you consider it such."
+
+Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all the time,
+the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them now, steadily,
+immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without, against the background
+of the dark interior his eyes shone as though they were afire.
+
+"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I have
+made you unhappy."
+
+"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a voice.
+
+"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"
+
+"No. I merely understand you--now. You're not sorry, because otherwise
+you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be here--even though my
+husband were away."
+
+Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly a novelty
+in his life to be treated as he was being treated this day. Ordinarily
+glib of speech, for some reason in the face of this newfound emotionless
+characterisation, he had nothing to say. It is difficult to appear what
+one is not in the blaze of one's own fireside. It was impossible under
+the scrutiny of this wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events
+gone by.
+
+"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've got other
+things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway." He looked at her
+openly, significantly. "Your own self, for instance."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I'm listening. Tell me everything."
+
+"You really fancy I will after--the past?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And why, please?"
+
+"You've already told me why."
+
+"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to be
+ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."
+
+"I'm still listening."
+
+"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"
+
+"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your husband?
+You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"
+
+The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively, impassively.
+Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an untrained eye, a black dot
+stood out above the horizon line. Her eyes paused upon it.
+
+"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Never, Bess."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"I swear."
+
+Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.
+
+"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still perjure
+yourself. To answer your question, I really don't know."
+
+"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll stand a lot
+from you, but there's a limit--"
+
+"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's not a soul
+but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be seated."
+
+From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily,
+resentfully--then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were
+mingled. He sat down.
+
+The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and on.
+
+"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my soul, if I
+have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make the exchange, no
+one who can give me light. Does that answer your question?"
+
+Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.
+
+"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"
+
+"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are why."
+
+No answer, only silence.
+
+"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl. "A little
+tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit? You're not plural,
+but nevertheless you personified that pack. You and the unknown things
+you represented were pressing me close. I was confused and afraid. I was
+a babe four months ago. I was not afraid of How, I had loved him--at
+least I thought I had, I'm sure of nothing now--and, as I say, I was
+afraid of you--then."
+
+"And now--"
+
+Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she looked
+away.
+
+"I'm not in the least afraid of you now--or of anything."
+
+"Not even of your husband?"
+
+"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."
+
+Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.
+
+"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I made a
+mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am afraid of
+something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are of death, of this
+infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip deep, unconsciously. "I
+sometimes think the old fear of everything were preferable, were the
+lesser of the two evils."
+
+Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose skin under
+his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.
+
+"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think you've
+gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked away; but
+unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the landscape that
+spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you realise what a mess
+you've made of your life."
+
+The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.
+
+"Yes, I think I do," she said.
+
+"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a brute after
+all in attempting to prevent your doing as you did."
+
+"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't been a
+brute."
+
+Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.
+
+"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then, Bess? Cared
+for me myself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that I frightened you back here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.
+
+"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it now?"
+
+The girl looked away in silence.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"
+
+"I can't tell you. I don't know."
+
+"Don't know?"
+
+"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days--anything except
+that I'm afraid."
+
+"Of the future?"
+
+"Yes--and of myself."
+
+For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said nothing. A
+long silence fell between them. It was the girl herself who broke it.
+
+"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and the voice
+was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with Uncle Landor."
+
+"Was I to blame, Bess?"
+
+"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."
+
+"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."
+
+The girl said nothing.
+
+"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can restore
+the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making you unhappy?"
+
+"Yes. I admit it."
+
+The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.
+
+"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.
+
+"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't. You're too
+selfish."
+
+"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.
+
+"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.
+
+The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.
+
+"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively maddening!"
+
+"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be ourselves
+to-day. I merely told you things as they are."
+
+Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in silence. One of
+his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay in his lap. Against
+his will now and then a muscle contracted nervously; and of a sudden he
+thrust the telltale member deep into his trousers pocket.
+
+"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't go on
+this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Haven't you ever thought of it?"
+
+"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else--for an age."
+
+"And you've decided nothing?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing."
+
+Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his voice
+trembled.
+
+"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.
+
+"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By what right
+should you be permitted to decide?"
+
+The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His eyes were
+steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that he would win,
+that the moment was his moment.
+
+"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said simply.
+
+"Love me, after what you have done?"
+
+"Yes. I have been mad--and done mad things. But I've discovered my
+fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you so--and to make amends."
+
+Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look; but the
+man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure that he voiced a
+challenge.
+
+"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you ran away,
+in spite of the fact that you are married, you love me!"
+
+Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her lips
+parted, but she said no word.
+
+"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't--because it is true."
+
+A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second time that day
+Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise. While yet he was
+master of the situation, while yet the time was his, he arose.
+
+"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He looked at her
+deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say, for I've told you
+that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember this: If I've stolen
+your happiness, I'll give it all back. As God is my witness, I'll give
+it all back with interest." Swiftly, before she could answer, he turned
+away and strode toward the impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he
+undid the tie strap and mounted. Without another word, or a backward
+glance, he rode away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the
+damp spring earth.
+
+Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not move. She
+did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at the C-C ranch
+house, until the buildings hid the owner from view, did her eyes leave
+him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she looked away over the
+prairie, away where the last time she had glanced a tiny black dot stood
+out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not
+find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not.
+Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the
+unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes.
+With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable
+doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening, and as he
+came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled his feet as one
+unconsciously will when very weary. He was wearing his ready-made
+clothes and starched collar; but the trousers were deplorably baggy at
+the knees from much riding, and his linen and polished shoes were soiled
+with the dust of the prairie.
+
+Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared. Serving
+it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the
+slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and
+throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek. A
+young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his
+hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the
+buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace
+just outside the ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly,
+continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year
+before. To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her
+companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned,
+unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a
+note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted
+colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every
+motion. Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing
+human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation:
+yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the
+unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never
+was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive,
+sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not remarkable.
+He had never done so except when she had not. When he looked at her
+there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that
+also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery in the depths of his
+steady black eyes. Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious
+was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the
+girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring
+night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes
+intimately close.
+
+Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south
+breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears;
+about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the
+subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing
+things. But not even then could the girl be still. Far too full of this
+day's revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be
+silent. The mood of her merely changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless,
+ceased. In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a
+definite question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed
+arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown,
+when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she did not alter her
+position.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "whether if one has made a mistake, it were better
+to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to
+admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay
+the penalty?" She paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do
+you think, How?"
+
+In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the lighter sky her
+face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a silhouette.
+
+"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he answered.
+
+"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from suffering?"
+
+"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."
+
+The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.
+
+"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the truth makes
+one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any difference, How?"
+
+The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with his steady
+eyes.
+
+"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he said. "I
+think this is one of them."
+
+Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.
+
+"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.
+
+"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with
+ourselves or not."
+
+"You think that, really?"
+
+"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."
+
+Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last,
+abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new
+query.
+
+"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
+
+"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no
+irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain.
+"How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at
+all?"
+
+Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words
+themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
+
+"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
+
+This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where
+the running might read.
+
+"Yes, I have an idea--and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness,
+has always been the first thing in my life."
+
+Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by
+step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she
+was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched
+her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he
+made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately
+from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was
+filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke
+no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not
+but have admired her child that night.
+
+One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had
+walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no
+hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.
+
+"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I
+haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She
+paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been
+watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become
+restless week by week. Last night,--you didn't notice, but I did,--I
+heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see
+what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and
+I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn.
+It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost
+as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but
+all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere
+away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing
+there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that
+second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he
+could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He
+didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he
+couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the
+chain stretched across his back--" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat
+up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she
+pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me
+you'll let him go!"
+
+Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.
+
+"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save Shaggy's
+life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out of her den and
+shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when I found him."
+
+"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't make any
+difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him here."
+
+Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with the
+argument.
+
+"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't live
+through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will shoot him on
+sight."
+
+"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the girl. "We
+all have to take our chances in this life."
+
+For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.
+
+"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill the first
+animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of that?"
+
+The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.
+
+"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I made him as
+he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to be; and if he's bad,
+God alone is to blame." Her glance returned, met the other fair. "I wish
+you'd let him go, How."
+
+The man made no answer.
+
+"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"
+
+"You really wish it, Bess?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a sudden he
+arose.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said.
+
+Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more, followed his
+lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But
+there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung
+from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the
+way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep,
+but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise
+there was no move. Look where one would within the building, there was
+no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the Indian led the way
+outside, made the circuit of the stable, paused at the south end where
+a chain hung loose from a peg driven into the wall. A moment he stood
+there, holding the light so the girl could see; then, impassive as
+before, he extinguished the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.
+
+They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke; then,
+detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.
+
+"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."
+
+They walked on so.
+
+"You wanted him to go?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.
+
+"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.
+
+For the second time there was no answer.
+
+"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.
+
+"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I thought
+I--understood."
+
+For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither
+stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the hand dropped.
+
+"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.
+
+Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his chest.
+That was all.
+
+The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.
+
+"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.
+
+"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.
+
+"No, Bess," repeated.
+
+"But still you're not coming?"
+
+"No."
+
+Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.
+
+"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She scarcely
+recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with me again?"
+
+"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that, Bess." A
+second halt. "Not until things between us are different, at least."
+
+"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped the casing
+of the door. "Oh, How! How!"
+
+No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a breath;
+just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl stood it, hoping
+against hope, praying for a miracle; then she could stand it no longer.
+Gropingly clutching at every object within reach, she made her way into
+the dark interior; flung herself full dressed onto the bed, her face
+buried desperately among the covers.
+
+All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth in front
+of the ranch house door; back and forth like an automaton, back and
+forth in a motion that seemed perpetual. Within the tiny low-ceiled
+room, in the fulness of time, the girl sobbed herself into a fitful
+sleep; but not once did the sentinel pause to rest, not once in those
+dragging hours before day did he relax. With the coming of the first
+trace of light he halted, and on silent moccasined feet stole within.
+But again he only remained for moments, and when he returned it was
+merely to stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before
+the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did everything, he
+rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into the darkness to the
+west.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague sense of
+depression and of impending evil. The door was open and the bright
+morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance stretched the open
+prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny brown island, her own
+dooryard, in the foreground. With dull listlessness, the girl propped
+herself up in bed and sat looking about her. Absently, aimlessly, her
+eyes passed from one familiar object to another. Without any definite
+conception of why or of where, she was conscious of an impression of
+change in the material world about her, a change that corresponded to
+the mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the
+sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering joy.
+Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message passed her by.
+Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a haunting memory of
+the past night and of what it had meant. As a traveller lost in this
+fog, she lay staring about, indecisive which way to move, idly waiting
+for light. Ordinarily action itself would have offered a solution of the
+problem, would have served at least as a diversion; but this morning she
+was strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no
+adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything more
+than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow higher and,
+lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her palm and lay with
+wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.
+
+Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The doorway faced
+south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had entered therein began
+moving to the left across the floor. Unconsciously, for the lack of
+anything better to do, she watched its advance. It fell upon a tiny
+shelf against the wall, littered with a collection of papers and
+magazines; and the reflected light from the white sheets glared in her
+eyes. It came to the supper table of the night before, the table she had
+not cleared, and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of
+her own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on;
+crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live thing,
+began climbing the wall beyond.
+
+Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched its
+advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its relentless
+stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny. Like a hostile
+alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in the tiny room for
+something definite, something it did not find. Fatuous as it may seem,
+the impression grew upon her, augmented until in its own turn it became
+a dominant influence. Her glance, heretofore absent, perfunctory, became
+intense. The glare was well above the floor by this time and climbing
+higher and higher. Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat
+up free in bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her
+fairly.
+
+The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light was
+mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from rough-fashioned wooden
+pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant wardrobe. At first glance
+there seemed to the girl nothing unusual revealed thereon, nothing
+significant; and, restlessly observant, the inspection advanced. Then,
+ere the mental picture could vanish, ere a new impression could take its
+place, in a flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came
+realisation complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute
+thereafter she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and
+wider, her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a
+minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of weariness
+and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place, and covered her
+face from sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+SACRIFICE
+
+A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the
+slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren
+dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition
+the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was
+perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long
+waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he
+had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully
+concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
+litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had
+grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the
+visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer
+present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had
+come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever
+rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.
+
+For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been
+invited to enter, yet he had entered--and the girl had spoken no word to
+prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a
+peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged,
+they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging
+intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the
+bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was
+present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids,
+whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour
+of putting the place to rights.
+
+"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that
+unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching.
+Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"
+
+The girl did not smile.
+
+"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were
+tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer--" She drew another
+chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.
+
+A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the
+whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had
+grown to assume in her presence took its place.
+
+"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm
+when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible
+offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
+
+"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of
+punishment?"
+
+The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the
+past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed
+plain.
+
+"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held
+me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
+
+"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that
+I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
+
+For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that
+the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to
+abandon at once.
+
+"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he
+objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all.
+Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
+
+"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to
+appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten
+immeasurably farther away from another."
+
+"Your husband you mean?"
+
+"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
+
+The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to
+each other not to know everything there is to know."
+
+"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The
+inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly--and she herself had
+chosen. "He's merely given me up."
+
+"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something
+else as well, something akin to exultation.
+
+"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
+
+"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
+
+Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old
+pride, broke forth.
+
+"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before
+this if he objected?" she flamed.
+
+"Bess!"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had
+died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean
+to."
+
+The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the
+last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon
+blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive,
+conscious conformity such as this--The thing was unbelievable,
+providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic
+moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a
+change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to
+permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he
+had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to
+avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not
+alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to
+himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not
+the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the
+girl--particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be
+gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He
+merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
+that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.
+
+"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"
+
+"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."
+
+"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any
+longer. It's intolerable for both of us."
+
+"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."
+
+Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had
+imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now
+that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He
+hardly knew how to begin.
+
+"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very
+dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided
+the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in
+keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any
+longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the
+responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that
+before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from
+this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad--at least leave for a
+time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we
+wish; but for the present--I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
+another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.
+
+"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we
+can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He
+cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've
+arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last
+week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses
+waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the
+ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before
+morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again,
+nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say,
+not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been
+enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
+the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at
+the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.
+Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.
+There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on
+her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows
+you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to
+live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess;
+happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"
+
+He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the
+dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat
+looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As
+she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.
+Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an
+evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden,
+within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
+instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than
+life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading,
+distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her
+ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn
+philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she
+had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full
+knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him
+so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
+wife--.
+
+The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face
+drew nearer.
+
+"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense.
+Will you go?"
+
+With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back
+until she was free.
+
+"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to
+think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes;
+but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must
+consent--"
+
+"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I
+can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you
+must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not
+insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"
+
+The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.
+
+"I can't now, as things are."
+
+"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"
+
+For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.
+
+The man came a step forward, and another.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"
+
+"I have told you," said a low voice.
+
+Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human
+being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move
+or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he
+commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily,
+irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."
+
+"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent
+effort to be free. "You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but
+not wholly. Please let me go."
+
+Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the
+moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to
+escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out
+of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.
+
+But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His
+back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in.
+Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out
+the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same
+all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the
+doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first
+woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might
+have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.
+
+"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten
+you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and
+not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could
+no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you
+go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're
+mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--"
+
+The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible
+muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the
+shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside
+them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the
+invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent
+poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent
+passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder
+in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count,
+the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical
+spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction
+had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure,
+there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense,
+desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.
+
+"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips
+and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I
+guess. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the
+two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his
+presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once
+more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful,
+he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More
+maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that
+passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot
+blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
+his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband,
+tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward
+menacingly.
+
+"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps,
+not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word
+his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost,
+lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"
+
+From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that
+instant the room became deathly still.
+
+A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then,
+white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so,
+motionless:--for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was
+speaking.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step
+the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the
+white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice,
+unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was
+even as before.
+
+"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said.
+"I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I
+expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may
+listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but
+now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a
+moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the
+old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they
+rested on the face of the girl.
+
+But for still another moment--he was as deliberate as nature herself,
+this man--he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more
+so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death.
+His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands,
+folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but
+look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath
+the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now,
+very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
+expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite
+in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in
+the low-pitched voice.
+
+"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a
+request to make--and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly,
+to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came
+because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had
+reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the
+folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned
+abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon
+for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to
+do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into
+it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the
+girl's recollection while memory lasted.
+
+"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on.
+"Things are as they are--and final. I don't judge you, I--understand.
+Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now
+I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At
+least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to
+tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he
+stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment,
+please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to
+say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.
+
+"I said I had a request to make. This is it--that you don't leave until
+you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have
+inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you
+will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned
+anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he
+halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise
+me this, Bess?" he asked.
+
+Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened
+through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent,
+and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever
+in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was
+no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A
+myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was
+gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed
+nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was
+expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.
+
+"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently.
+"I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall
+again."
+
+At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips
+were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.
+
+"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."
+
+Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality;
+but the girl did not break it, said no more--and forever the moment, her
+moment, vanished into the past.
+
+"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely
+different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room.
+"There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he
+explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."
+
+With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope
+satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly
+here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No
+one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence,
+except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the
+satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army
+greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap
+which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered
+in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
+there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small,
+and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood
+beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover
+and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes
+large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At
+last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and
+the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the
+last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from
+nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
+heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his
+burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out
+his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her
+very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but
+I don't, so I'll only say good-bye--and--I wish you happiness." Just a
+moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her
+hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.
+
+"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it--as you cared for me once.
+Don't make things any harder--make them impossible!" Desperately,
+without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door.
+Beside the entrance--for he was not watching these last minutes--stood
+the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted.
+Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant,
+wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did
+everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those
+words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
+grave.
+
+"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say.
+Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so,
+if you will. If you do not--" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace--"if
+you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not
+a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall
+know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times
+better, if you do as I say."
+
+Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then,
+similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there
+broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+REWARD
+
+The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch
+house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the
+supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The
+vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained
+likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
+powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried.
+Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking
+permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a
+convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the
+eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the
+house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking
+permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
+
+Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were
+eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one
+corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
+
+Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor,
+Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy
+queensware proceeded.
+
+"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his
+chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to,
+stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
+
+In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his
+work.
+
+Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete
+was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had
+filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on
+the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
+
+"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
+
+The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of
+cigars.
+
+"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
+
+Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter--for cigars were a rarity on
+the frontier--puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content.
+The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and
+washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a
+cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue,
+disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor
+introduced himself.
+
+"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the
+Centre."
+
+The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
+
+"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at
+last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now.
+You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up
+the two kids."
+
+It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
+
+"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you
+were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look
+reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other
+side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over
+here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
+
+The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he
+glanced up.
+
+"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and--" Hawkins
+laughed peculiarly--"made a fizzle of it."
+
+"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
+
+"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even
+heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with
+his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl
+went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud
+of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
+
+"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing
+the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they
+hit it off well together?"
+
+Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands
+fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
+
+"While the money lasted, yes."
+
+"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
+
+"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
+
+"And then--"
+
+"It's the old story."
+
+"They went to pieces?"
+
+"Craig left her--for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter
+and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he
+was supporting the other woman all the time."
+
+Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the
+cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the
+mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
+
+"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
+
+"Bess came back."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed
+by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes
+were blazing.
+
+"Yes, she was alone," he said.
+
+The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The
+blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
+
+"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
+
+"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday,
+just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
+
+The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
+
+"Back at the ranch--with the Indian?"
+
+Equally directly Manning returned the look.
+
+"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not
+there."
+
+"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
+
+Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
+
+"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came
+here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to
+tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
+
+Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the
+lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing.
+For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face
+incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
+
+"Know where he is? Of course I do--now." He leaned back in his chair.
+"To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here,
+or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
+
+He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
+
+"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last
+week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for
+me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We
+never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a
+sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the
+board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm
+with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a
+two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
+
+For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand
+on the chair arm loosened its grip.
+
+"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think
+we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two
+fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its
+mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the
+morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded
+things a bit on the way up."
+
+For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
+unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
+
+"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty
+miles, and there's plenty of time."
+
+Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old
+storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
+
+"Yes, there's plenty of time--after How Landor knows," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny
+dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a
+shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam.
+In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized
+pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little
+altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was
+very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near
+and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet,
+they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in
+flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
+been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was
+pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking
+mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho
+had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and
+grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were
+unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened,
+something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror
+they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this
+something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and
+invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the
+confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had
+been interrupted.
+
+Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late
+September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy
+brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish
+speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all
+the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as
+irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while
+time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within
+the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
+
+Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On
+soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing,
+he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than
+once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did
+not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within
+stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an
+Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that
+object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he
+peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
+instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its
+revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken
+prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely
+beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent
+human in their midst this autumn day.
+
+How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could
+have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last,
+interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great
+quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost
+before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had
+ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up
+beside the tent.
+
+Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched
+himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was
+waiting.
+
+They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat
+eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
+
+"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be
+enough around when I came."
+
+The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
+
+"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
+
+A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he
+dismounted.
+
+"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed
+abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before
+I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to
+dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind
+I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
+
+In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the
+flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
+
+Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew
+on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then,
+however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now
+at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was
+intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of
+a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old
+storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The
+message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
+begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with
+a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite
+care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man
+himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the
+sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the
+impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied,
+well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him
+at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a
+measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
+that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
+emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
+inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white
+he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an
+inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice,
+with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's
+sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence
+calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless
+savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken
+for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
+realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine
+punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal,
+with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that
+had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his
+interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances
+unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling
+suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a
+readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the
+dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came
+fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal--if the other wished;
+but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the
+decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit
+it afresh suggestively.
+
+"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not
+Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
+
+The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
+
+"I thought so," it said simply.
+
+Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight,
+the glow lit up his face.
+
+"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service--and
+I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
+
+Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless,
+smiling infinite.
+
+"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I
+should know."
+
+The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
+
+"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
+
+Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his
+heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved.
+Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe
+opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground--his
+long fingers locked across his knees.
+
+"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
+
+For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white
+man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit
+now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering
+outside the bowl onto his knee.
+
+"About a month ago"--the speaker cleared his throat raspingly--"on
+August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started
+from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It
+wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one
+was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp
+crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker.
+"It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
+
+Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
+
+"Go on, please," requested a voice.
+
+"Early yesterday morning"--again the narrator halted perforce, to clear
+his throat--"just before I left three men went through town on their way
+to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man
+who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water
+their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch
+house closing the bargain now."
+
+"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
+
+The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged
+when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted
+physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness
+and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set
+eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when
+telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was
+all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by
+request.
+
+"I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old
+formula.
+
+For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a
+match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the
+sound, came a question.
+
+"Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they
+looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the
+mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
+
+"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two
+days old."
+
+"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
+
+"Yes. Several weeks."
+
+"She returned alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to stay?"
+
+Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the
+inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the
+other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
+
+"Yes," answered Manning.
+
+"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
+
+"No, Craig had left her."
+
+Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither
+man noticed the change.
+
+"There was a reason?"
+
+"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
+
+The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as
+the sunlight without.
+
+"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
+
+"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
+
+"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had
+done? You mean to tell me this?"
+
+Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white
+man got to his feet, stood so silent.
+
+"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear
+against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
+
+"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
+
+"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the
+third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come.
+"There could be but one other way!"
+
+Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face
+opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the
+moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so
+was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big
+game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the
+expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the
+end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted,
+waiting, postponing the inevitable.
+
+"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
+repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
+
+To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow
+fell.
+
+"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to the east
+whither he had taken his way not even a dot now indicated his former
+presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon the wheels of the old road
+waggon had temporarily blazed a trail had returned normally erect.
+Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over the parched earth, the storm had
+gathered and broken; and passed on as though it had not been. All about
+smiled the sunshine; sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing,
+heard nothing. On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned,
+swam and splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal
+breeze of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
+song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had nature, the
+serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her
+customary course. Man alone it is who changes to conform with the
+passing mood. Man alone it was amid this primitive setting who had
+altered now.
+
+For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming. Instead, his
+every action was that of one with a definite purpose. Yet even then he
+did not hurry. At first he seemed merely to be going about the ordinary
+routine of his life. Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself
+a generous meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for
+the first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
+unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or even
+touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward the tent and
+disappeared inside.
+
+For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to place; and
+when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing indeed. In his arms
+were several articles of clothing rolled into a bulky bundle. Without a
+halt he made his way back to the place where he had eaten. The fire
+which he had builded had burned low ere this; and, standing there beside
+it, he scraped away the ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until
+the glowing embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had
+opened with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which
+it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a
+battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A moment the
+Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely; then gently as
+though they were a lost child he was returning to its mother's arms he
+laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool is slow to catch ablaze and
+for the moment they lay there black against the brown earth; then of a
+sudden, like the first lifting of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column
+of blue went trailing upward. Second by second it grew until with a
+muffled explosion the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood
+watching; now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned
+to the tent.
+
+This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with an armful
+of books--and something more. The fire was crackling merrily now, and
+volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for the first time he
+hesitated. There was still something to destroy, something which he had
+gathered in the old felt hat from off his own head; yet he hesitated.
+Greedy as a hungry animal deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept
+sending out spurts of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he
+delayed. Like the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into
+passive waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
+this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But this
+time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head glistening
+in the sunlight, he started away toward the now expectant broncho; and
+back of him the pathetic little gathering of useless trinkets, bearing
+indelibly the mark of a woman's handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with
+the ashes of the things which had gone before.
+
+Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking cayuse
+following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back; waiting
+impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a land where
+prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever leaves fire alive
+when out of his sight; and to this instinct the Indian was true. Minute
+after minute he waited; until the flame vanished and in its stead there
+lay a mass of blazing coals. Then with a practical hand he banked the
+whole with a layer of earth until, look where one would, not a dot of
+red was visible. The act was the last, the culmination of preparation.
+At its end, with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his
+head high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in anticipation. Well
+he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was there of a
+second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost ere the taking of
+the single leap that put the rider in his seat the little beast was
+away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing deep of the prairie air, the
+patter of his tiny hoofs a continuous song upon the close-cropped sod.
+As two human beings living side by side grow to know each other, so this
+dumb menial had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to
+the dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He did
+so now; and as time passed and the miles flowed monotonously beneath his
+galloping feet the relentless determination of the man himself was
+repeated in that undeviating pace.
+
+Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the dragging hours of
+the September afternoon it continued. Many a time before the little
+beast had followed the trail from sun to sun. As well as the rider knew
+his own endurance he knew the possibilities of his mount, knew that now
+he would not fail. He did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he
+check it. He spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual
+drouth of fall, and as time passed on the dust the pony raised collected
+upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he noticed
+it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the broncho grew
+darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on the diminutive
+beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was unconscious. Silent
+as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his place; his lithe body
+conforming involuntarily to the motion, to the play of muscles beneath
+his legs; yet as unconsciously as one breathes in sleep. Not until the
+sun was red in the west, until of its own accord the broncho had drawn
+up at the first bit of water they had met on the way--a shallow marshy
+pond--did he move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the
+man washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition,
+shook the dust from his clothing.
+
+For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by side the man
+and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved and ever southward.
+Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but the sky was clear as it
+had been during the day, and the man needed no guide but the stars to
+show him the way. As he moved the hand of the Indian remained on the
+broncho's neck; and bit by bit as the time passed he felt the moist hair
+grow stiff and dry. Then, and not until then, came the final move, the
+beginning of the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion,
+apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and again
+as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly, that instant
+the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent as before, a
+ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into the night and the
+solitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch had
+changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer had driven
+about the place. One by one the cowboys had given testimony of the
+fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At first resignedly
+complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had grown cumulatively
+impatient at the inevitably dragging inventory. Nothing but necessity
+absolute in the shape of an imminent foreclosure had brought him back to
+this land at all. Delay had followed delay until at last immediate
+action was imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in
+a fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since they
+had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had been upon him.
+The team that had brought them out could not move fast enough. The
+preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had been, nevertheless
+dragged interminably. Strive as he might to combat the impression, to
+ignore it, this land had of a sudden become to him a land of terror.
+Every object which met his eye called forth a recollection. Every minute
+that passed whispered a menace. In a measure it had been so a half year
+ago ere he had tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had
+occurred in that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented
+immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a minute
+since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had he been
+without a revolver at hand. All the previous night, despite the
+grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had bunked, a lamp had
+burned beside the bed; yet even then he could not sleep. Whether or no
+he felt contrition for the past, this man, he could not have told, he
+never paused to consider. All he knew was that he had a deathly fear of
+this silent waste and of a certain human who dwelt somewhere therein.
+Repugnant as consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing
+compared with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual
+experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of money,
+badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence. Now that he
+was here he must needs see the transaction through; he could not well do
+otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a close and the necessity of
+tarrying a second night became assured, the premonition of retribution,
+that had before lowered merely as a possibility, loomed into the
+proportions of certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink;
+not at stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but
+continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged glances
+of understanding.
+
+To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal was
+complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with tobacco smoke, by
+the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene lamp Craig had accomplished
+a sprawling signature and received in return a check on a Chicago bank.
+It was already late, and very soon the new owner, with a significant
+look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt
+"Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a thinly
+veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself, and Craig and
+his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes thereafter the two
+men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite his muddled brain, the
+former realised that the big Irishman was observing him with a
+concentration that was significant. Ever short of temper, the man's
+nerves were stretched to the jangling point this night, and the look
+irritated him. Responsive, he scowled prodigiously.
+
+"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"
+
+No answer; only, if possible, the look became more analytic than before.
+
+"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous staring that
+way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't you like my selling
+and putting you out of a job?"
+
+"No, it's not that," refuted the Hibernian. "There are plenty of other
+places I can get. I could stay right here for that matter if I wanted
+to--but I don't. I wouldn't live in this house any longer if my pay were
+doubled." As he spoke he had looked away. Now of a sudden his glance
+returned. "I meant to quit anyway, whether you sold or not."
+
+"Why so?" queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was repeated. "You
+seemed glad enough to come."
+
+"I was--then," shortly.
+
+"And why not now? Talk up, if you've any grievance. Don't sit there like
+a chimpanzee, hugging it."
+
+"You know why well enough," ignored the other. He passed a knotty hand
+through his shock of red whiskers absently. "I've expected the devil or
+worse here every night these last weeks."
+
+Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.
+
+"God," he satirised, "who'd ever imagined you were the superstitious
+sort! Weren't you ever in a place where anyone died before?"
+
+"I never was where a woman and her child were murdered," deliberately.
+
+Quick as thought Craig's red face whitened.
+
+"Damn you, O'Reilly," he challenged, "you're free with your tongue." He
+checked himself. "I don't wish to quarrel with you to-night, though," he
+conciliated.
+
+"Nor I with you," returned the other impassively. "I was merely telling
+you the truth. Besides, it's none of my affair; and even if it were, I'm
+thinking you'll pay for it dear enough before you're through."
+
+Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude
+supercilious.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean, O'Reilly? You keep suggesting things, but
+that is all. Talk plain if you know anything."
+
+"I don't know anything," impassively; "unless it is that I wouldn't be
+in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you've made out of this
+cursed business."
+
+Bit by bit Craig's face whitened. If anything the air of conciliation
+augmented.
+
+"You think circumstances weren't to blame?" he queried. "That, in other
+words, I've brought things about as they are deliberately?"
+
+"I don't think anything. I know what you've done--and what you've got to
+answer for."
+
+Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about him.
+
+The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he arose
+unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a jerk.
+
+"You're beastly hard on me," he commented, "but let that pass. It's
+probably the last time we'll ever see each other, and we may as well
+part friends." He was back in his place again with the flask before him,
+and with a propitiatory motion he extended the liquor toward the other
+man. "Come, let's forget it," he insinuated. "Have a drink with me."
+
+"Not a drop."
+
+"Not if I requested it?"
+
+"Not if you got down on your knees and begged."
+
+"All right." The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little laugh. "I'll
+have to spoil it all myself, then."
+
+The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down swallow
+after swallow. The hand of the drinker trembled uncontrollably, and a
+tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven chin to the starched linen
+beneath.
+
+"If you'll take a word of advice," commented the spectator at last,
+"you'll cut that--for the time being at least." He hesitated; then went
+on reluctantly. "I've been in your pay and I'll try to be square with
+you. If you've got an atom of presentiment you'll realise that this is
+no place for you to get into the shape you're getting." Again he halted,
+and again with an effort he gave the warning direct. "If I were you I
+wouldn't be at this ranch a second longer than it took me to leave; not
+as long as I had a broncho or a leg or a crutch to go on."
+
+Slowly and more slowly came the words. Then followed silence, with the
+two men staring each other face to face. Breaking it, the overseer
+arose.
+
+"I've said more than I intended already," he added, "and now I wash my
+hands of you. Do as you please. I'm going to bed."
+
+Preventing, of a sudden sobered, Craig was likewise on his feet.
+
+"In common decency, even if you're no friend of mine, don't go,
+O'Reilly," he pleaded. He had no thought of superiority now, no thought
+of malice; only of companionship and of protection. "I know what you
+mean. I'm no fool, and what you suggest is exactly what's been driving
+me insane these last two days. I'm going in the morning, as soon as it's
+daylight; the team is all ordered; but to-night, now--" instinctively he
+glanced at the window where recollection pictured the darkness
+without--"I haven't nerve to face it now. I'd go plumb mad out there
+alone."
+
+The Irishman shrugged in silence and attempted to pass.
+
+"Please don't go," repeated Craig swiftly. "I know I'm acting like a
+child, but this cursed country's to blame. Stay with me this last night.
+I couldn't sleep, and it's madness to be alone. See me through this and
+I swear you'll not regret it. I swear it!"
+
+Just for a second O'Reilly paused; then of a sudden his face flamed red
+through his untrimmed beard.
+
+"To hell with your money!" he blazed. "I wouldn't lift my finger for you
+if How Landor were to come this second." He checked himself and took a
+step forward meaningly. "Besides, I couldn't help you any if I would.
+God himself couldn't protect you now unless He performed a miracle. Out
+of my way. I tell you I'm done with you."
+
+Craig had not stirred. He did not now; and of a sudden the overseer
+turned to pass around. As he did so for the first time he faced the
+single window that looked north toward the second ranch house: the house
+which How Landor had builded to receive his bride. The curtain was still
+down, but to the Irishman's quick eye there rested upon it now a dull
+glow that was not a reflection of the light within. A second after he
+noticed the man halted, looking at it, speculating as to its meaning.
+Then of a sudden he realised; and in two steps he was across the room
+and simultaneously the obscuring shade shot up with a crash. Instantly
+following, startlingly unexpected, the red glow without sprang through
+the glass and filled the room.
+
+"Fire!" announced the observer involuntarily to the sleepers above. "The
+other ranch house is afire!" Then, as they were slow in awakening, the
+cry was repeated more loudly: "Fire! Fire!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A conflagration is the universal contagion, the one excitement that
+never palls. Forth into the night, forgetful of his companion, forgetful
+of all save the interest of the moment, rushed O'Reilly. Half dressed,
+hatless, working with buttons as they went, Parker, the new owner, and
+Mead, the lawyer, descended the rickety stairs like an avalanche and
+without pausing to more than look followed running in his wake. The
+unused ranch house was dry as cardboard and was burning fiercely. Though
+there was still no moon and the overseer had several minutes the start,
+against the light they could see his running figure distinctly. Standing
+in the living-room as they rushed through, white faced, hesitant, was
+Clayton Craig; but though he had spoken to them--they both recalled that
+fact afterward--neither had paused to listen or to answer. That he would
+not follow never occurred to them until minutes thereafter. Not until,
+panting, struggling for breath after the unusual effort, they had
+covered the intervening mile, and the heat of the already diminishing
+fire was on their faces, did they think of him at all. Even then it was
+not the first thought which occurred; for the moment they arrived
+O'Reilly, who was waiting, turned, facing them excitedly.
+
+"Do you see that?" he queried, pointing to a black band that surrounded
+the building in a complete circle.
+
+Parker nodded understandingly; but Mead, who was city bred, looked
+mystified. "What is it?" he returned.
+
+"A firebreak," explained the Irishman. "Someone didn't want the blaze to
+spread and scattered earth clear around the place, with a spade."
+Leaning over he picked up a clod and thumbed it significantly. "It
+hasn't been done a half hour. The dirt isn't even dry."
+
+Brief as the time had been, already the frail walls were settling to
+embers. There was nothing to do; and standing there the three men looked
+understandingly into each other's faces. The same thought stood clear on
+all; for all alike knew every detail of the story.
+
+"The Indian, How Landor," suggested Mead adequately.
+
+"Yes," corroborated Parker, "and I'm glad of it. I'm not squeamish, but
+the Lord knows I'd never have used the place myself."
+
+Of a sudden, O'Reilly, who had turned and was staring into the blaze,
+faced about. That second he had remembered.
+
+"Where's Craig?" he queried swiftly, glancing back the way they had
+come. "Didn't he follow?"
+
+Until that moment none of the three had thought of the other man. Now
+they realised that they were alone. But even then two of the trio did
+not understand.
+
+"Evidently he didn't start," said Mead. "He couldn't have missed the
+light if he did."
+
+"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left," added Parker.
+
+"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly. "As
+there's a Heaven and a Hell he's not standing there now, I'll wager!"
+
+Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of that meaning
+black band, the three spectators there beneath the stars stood staring
+at each other. It was O'Reilly again who broke the silence.
+
+"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's happened?"
+he interrogated unbelievingly.
+
+"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no doubt
+about that," said Mead.
+
+"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor, and he's
+been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone back there in the
+ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you see now? At last the
+Indian has found out!"
+
+For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home, not a man
+stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and started back into
+the night.
+
+"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We can't get
+there a second too quick."
+
+"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We couldn't get
+there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over before this, take my
+word for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back they were too
+late. As O'Reilly had anticipated, the ranch house was empty, deserted.
+Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the adjoining tool shed. Though
+they searched every nook, until a mouse could not have escaped
+detection, they found not a trace of him for whom they looked, nor a
+clue to his disappearance. Though they shouted his name until they were
+hoarse not an answer came back from the surrounding darkness. Within the
+ranch house itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a
+struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it had
+been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap and topcoat
+were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the stable every horse
+was within its own stall: every piece of saddlery was intact. While the
+three men were looking, attracted by the blaze, the distant cowboys one
+by one began drifting in; and when they had heard the tale joined in
+the search. All through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns,
+like giant fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a
+radius of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming
+of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches
+appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on the
+prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was assembled.
+Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of riders scoured the
+country for miles and miles. And once more, from all, the testimony was
+as before. There was not a clue to the disappearance, nor the semblance
+of a clue. As out of the darkness of night surrounding, a great horned
+owl swoops down upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the
+Indian had come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as
+well into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the
+ranchers dispersed--and the search was over.
+
+And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery unsurmountable. One
+morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly had gone, when the new
+master of the ranch arose it was to find a wicked-looking mouse-coloured
+cayuse standing motionless by the stable door. Upon him was neither
+saddle nor bridle nor mark of any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless
+waste he had been released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he
+had returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He
+could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out there
+amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to pass; but what it
+was only Nature and Nature's God, who alone were witness, could ever
+know.
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Where the Trail Divides</p>
+<p>Author: Will Lillibridge</p>
+<p>Release Date: March 23, 2004  [eBook #11683]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: iso-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES***</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><b>E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Jeremy Eble,<br>
+           and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</b></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+  <center>
+    <hr>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>Where the Trail Divides</h1>
+
+    <h2>By WILL LILLIBRIDGE</h2>
+
+    <p>Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.</p>
+
+    <p><img src="cover.png"
+         border="0"
+         alt="Knot from Title Page"></p>With Frontispiece in
+         Colors<br>
+    By The Kinneys<br>
+
+    <p>1907</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr width="50%">
+
+  </center>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <table border="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+    <tr>
+      <td></td>
+
+      <td>
+        <h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+      </td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">I.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#I">PRESENTIMENT</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">II.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#II">FULFILMENT</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">III.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#III">DISCOVERY</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">IV.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#IV">RECONSTRUCTION</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">V.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#V">THE LAND OF LICENCE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">VI.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#VI">THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">VII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#VII">A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">VIII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#VIII">THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">IX.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#IX">THE VOICE OF THE WILD</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">X.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#X">THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XI.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XI">THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XII">WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN
+      COUNTRY</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XIII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XIII">THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XIV.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XIV">FATE, THE SATIRIST</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XV.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XV">THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XVI.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XVI">THE RECKONING</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XVII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XVII">SACRIFICE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XVIII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XVIII">REWARD</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XIX.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XIX">IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+  </table><a name="I"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+  <p>PRESENTIMENT</p>
+
+  <p>The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard
+  line. In addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now
+  he moved with a limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue
+  flannel shirt, open at the throat, exposed a broad hairy chest
+  that rose and fell mightily with the effort he was making. And
+  therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot&mdash;with the heat of a
+  cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The country
+  he was traversing was wild, unbroken&mdash;uninhabited apparently of
+  man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the
+  dancing heat rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe
+  of green trees. To his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a
+  tree nor a shrub nor a rock the height of a man's head; only
+  ungrazed, yellowish-green sun-dried prairie grass. The silence
+  was complete. Not even a breath of wind rustled the grass; yet
+  ever and anon the man paused glanced back the way he had come,
+  listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of repressed
+  breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
+  then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand
+  gripping the butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his
+  shoulder, the other, big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a
+  pendulum at his side.</p>
+
+  <p>Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in
+  civilisation, humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it
+  here, solitary, exotic, no observer would have laughed. Fear,
+  mortal dogging fear, impersonate, supreme, was in every look,
+  every action. Somewhere back of that curved line where met the
+  earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have been
+  adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused.
+  The sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop
+  by drop from the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but
+  apparently he never noticed it. Now and then he attempted to
+  moisten his lips; but his tongue was dry as powder, and they
+  closed again, parched as before.</p>
+
+  <p>No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the
+  way he was going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his
+  only landmark; yet as hour after hour went by and the sun sank
+  lower and lower he never halted, never seemed in doubt as to his
+  destination. The country was growing more rolling now, almost
+  hilly, and he approached each rise cautiously, vigilantly. Once,
+  almost at his feet a covey of frightened prairie chickens sprang
+  a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped like a stone in
+  his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall grass; then,
+  reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
+  on.</p>
+
+  <p>It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from
+  absolute physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at
+  last rebelled, and not even fear could suffice longer to
+  stimulate him. The grass was wet with dew, and prone on his knees
+  he moistened his lips therefrom as drinks many another of the
+  fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back, not sleeping, but
+  very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the return of
+  strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat the
+  sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and
+  thicker, dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day
+  had appeared the fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost
+  brightened; until at last, like a curious face, the full moon,
+  peeping above the horizon, lit up the surface of prairie.</p>
+
+  <p>At last&mdash;and ere this the moon was well in the sky&mdash;the man
+  arose, stretched his stiffened muscles profanely&mdash;before he had
+  not spoken a syllable&mdash;listened a moment almost involuntarily,
+  sent a swift, searching glance all about; then moved ahead,
+  straight south, at the old relentless pace.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls
+  vacillated between vexation and solicitude.</p>
+
+  <p>"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or
+  not," he announced in ultimatum.</p>
+
+  <p>Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid,
+  folded his arms across his chest with an air of finality.</p>
+
+  <p>"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the
+  warning. I know your intentions are good, but you people are
+  afraid of your own shadows. I know as well as you do that there
+  are Indians in this part of the world, some odd thousands of them
+  between here and the Hills, but they were here when I came and
+  when you came, and we knew they were here. You expect to hear
+  from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,' don't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>The other made a motion of annoyance.</p>
+
+  <p>"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he
+  returned swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you
+  were alone, Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine
+  without another word; but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord
+  she's down in Sioux City where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should
+  be, and for her sake&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon."</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned
+  back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for
+  little niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge
+  Amidon and his son, murdered in their own hayfield not three
+  miles from here, the boy as full of arrows as a cushion of pins.
+  This isn't ancient history, man, but took place this very day.
+  It's Indian massacre, and at our own throats. The boys are down
+  below the falls getting ready to go right now. By night there
+  won't be another white man or woman within twenty-five miles of
+  you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here arguing. If you will
+  stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and the girl. I'll
+  take care of them myself and bring them back when the government
+  sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
+  reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should
+  jump it there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come
+  on."</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the
+  tone of vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had
+  appeared upon the scene.</p>
+
+  <p>"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed.
+  "Take my advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we
+  leave you behind."</p>
+
+  <p>"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked
+  unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared.
+  "Danger, with Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail!
+  Is it possible you two don't realise things as they are?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the
+  Tetons are hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us
+  would rebel if we were hustled away into a corner like naughty
+  little boys, as they are; but actual danger&mdash;" The woman threw a
+  comprehensive, almost amused glance at the big man, her husband.
+  "We've been here almost two years now; long before you and the
+  others came. Half the hunters who pass this way stop here. It
+  wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a whole
+  antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
+  those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would
+  be in Sioux City."</p>
+
+  <p>"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the
+  other. "I don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own
+  eyes."</p>
+
+  <p>"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland
+  glanced at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost
+  superciliously. "Indians are like white people. They have their
+  loves and hates the same as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran
+  once before when everyone was going, and when we got back not a
+  thing had been touched; but the weeds had choked our corn and the
+  rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good to the Indians, and
+  they appreciate it."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came
+  forward swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to
+  the other.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and
+  it's pure madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a
+  big-eyed, solemn-faced mite of humanity, had come up now and
+  stood staring the stranger silently from the side of her mother's
+  skirts. "I hope for the best, but before God I never expect to
+  see any of you again."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right&mdash;when you return,"
+  commented Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and
+  without a backward glance started at a rapid jog trot for the
+  tiny settlement on the river two miles away.</p>
+
+  <p>Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the
+  departing frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes
+  accentuated by the tightened lids.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there
+  ever was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual
+  disturbance somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down
+  at the settlement leaving&mdash;they'd go if they heard a coyote
+  whistle; but Brown tells me there've been three different
+  trappers from Big Stone gone through south in the last week, and
+  when they leave it means something. If you say the word we'll
+  leave everything and go yet." "If we do we'll never come
+  back."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not necessarily."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not.
+  We went before because the others went. If we left now it would
+  be different. We'd be tortured day and night if we really
+  feared&mdash;what happens now and then to some. We came here with our
+  eyes wide open. We can't start again in civilisation. We're too
+  old, and there's the past&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"You still blame me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned
+  toward the rough log shanty unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's
+  hungry."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its
+  feet, one hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the
+  dishes on the rough pine dining table clattering with the
+  suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who are you, man, and what's the
+  trouble? Speak up&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced
+  about the interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but
+  protruded.</p>
+
+  <p>"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.</p>
+
+  <p>"But who are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Water!" fiercely, insistently.</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner,
+  and without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made
+  for it,</p>
+
+  <p>grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after
+  measure, the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping
+  onto the sanded floor.</p>
+
+  <p>"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"</p>
+
+  <p>After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir;
+  but at his side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering
+  around the fortress of her skirts as when before she had argued
+  with Frontiersman Brown, stood the little wide-eyed girl, type of
+  the repressed frontier child.</p>
+
+  <p>Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working
+  unconsciously.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly,</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Why do you ask?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
+  Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you;
+  you live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop
+  to save anything."</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of
+  perspiration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk
+  so I can understand you."</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of
+  the massacre along the Minnesota River?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a
+  trapper." Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive
+  questioner doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell
+  you along the way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw
+  their signal smokes this very morning. They're murdering
+  everyone&mdash;men, women, and children. It's Little Crow who started
+  it, and God knows how many settlers they've killed. They chased
+  me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave out yesterday;
+  and since then&mdash;But come. It's suicide to chatter like this." He
+  turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
+  minute."</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a
+  word; but at last the woman shook her head slowly.</p>
+
+  <p>Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin
+  folding over his soft flannel shirt.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of
+  amusement.</p>
+
+  <p>"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed
+  almost to roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."</p>
+
+  <p>"There is no settlement."</p>
+
+  <p>"What?"</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland repeated his statement impassively.</p>
+
+  <p>"They've&mdash;gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of
+  scorn.</p>
+
+  <p>For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite
+  tan and dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller
+  whitened. The same expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all
+  but insane, that had been with him alone out on the prairie
+  returned, augmented. Heedless of appearances, all but unconscious
+  of the presence of spectators, he glanced about the single room
+  like a beaten rabbit with the hounds close on its trail. No
+  avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope of
+  protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his
+  forehead, at the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he
+  mopped it away with the back of a fat, grimy hand.</p>
+
+  <p>In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated
+  another vacant beside the board.</p>
+
+  <p>"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be
+  hungry as a coyote."</p>
+
+  <p>"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless
+  mood returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He
+  started shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you
+  think I lie. We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught
+  like a beaver in a trap." Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did
+  they go!"</p>
+
+  <p>Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.</p>
+
+  <p>"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City;
+  part west toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the
+  inevitable contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak.
+  "You'd better take a lunch along. It's something of a journey to
+  either place."</p>
+
+  <p>Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous
+  hospitality of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint
+  Indian basket of coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely
+  touched, from the table. A loaf of bread followed: a bottle of
+  water from the wooden pail in the corner. "You're welcome,
+  friend," she proffered.</p>
+
+  <p>Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm
+  sorry&mdash;" He lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the
+  doorway. "Good-bye."</p>
+
+  <p>Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected
+  dinner.</p>
+
+  <p>"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think
+  we'll run at sight of them," he commented.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through
+  which Mueller had gone, did not answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few
+  mouthfuls, pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak,
+  and, rising, the man made his way across the room to put an arm
+  with rough affection around his wife's waist.</p>
+
+  <p>"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.</p>
+
+  <p>The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable
+  after her former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his
+  shoulder.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd
+  gone too; but now,"&mdash;her arms crept around his neck,
+  closed,&mdash;"but now&mdash;now it's too late!"</p>
+
+  <p>For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but
+  involuntarily his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the
+  woman could not have turned. He had been looking absently out the
+  door, south over the rolling country leading to the deserted
+  settlement.</p>
+
+  <p>In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans
+  Mueller was still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline.
+  Through the trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark
+  spot; like an ant or a spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at
+  the base of the rise was rank and heavy, reaching almost to the
+  waist of the moving figure. Rowland watched it all absently,
+  meditatively; as he would have watched the movement of a coyote
+  or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was the only
+  visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life responds
+  to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late,"
+  with the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the
+  first time, to his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of
+  fear, but near akin, as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and
+  the red man its child. In a hazy way came the question whether
+  after all it were not foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that
+  invisible, intangible something before which, almost in panic,
+  the others had fled. To be sure, precedent was with him, logic;
+  but&mdash;of a sudden&mdash;but a minute had passed&mdash;his arms tightened;
+  involuntarily he held his breath. Hans Mueller had been moving on
+  and on; another half minute and he would have been behind the
+  base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf at one's
+  feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
+  tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm
+  of other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score&mdash;in front,
+  behind, all about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had
+  come, autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked
+  his eyes; then, as came swift understanding, instinctively he
+  shielded the woman in his arms from the sight, from the
+  knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears from over the prairie:
+  not a single call for help. That black swarm simply arose, there
+  was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic through the curling
+  heat waves; then one and all, the original dark figure, the score
+  of others, disappeare d&mdash;as suddenly as though the earth from
+  which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
+  spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
+  green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as
+  pale as had been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against
+  the lintel of the door.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he
+        echoed.</p><a name="II"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+  <p>FULFILMENT</p>
+
+  <p>The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth.
+  Barred it was&mdash;the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating
+  with the brown of earth that filled the spaces between&mdash;like the
+  longitudinal stripes of a prairie gopher or on the back of a
+  bob-white. Long wiry slough grass, razor-sharp as to blades,
+  pungent under rain, weighted by squares of tough, native sod,
+  thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork of man, it
+  crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified by
+  the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the
+  miniature waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it,
+  stretching northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod
+  corn: the ears already formed, the ground whitened from the
+  lavishly scattered pollen of the frayed tassels. In the dooryard
+  itself was a dug well with a mound of weed-covered clay by its
+  side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over its mouth. It was
+  deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the surface, and
+  midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a rope
+  ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
+  meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as
+  well it was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a
+  pillow marking the spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat
+  all about, slept away the long, sultry afternoons.</p>
+
+  <p>Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The
+  single horse Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured,
+  was breaking sod far to the west on the bank of the Jim River.
+  Not a live thing other than human moved about the place. With
+  them into this land of silence had come a mongrel collie. For a
+  solitary month he had stood guard; then one night, somewhere in
+  the distance, in the east where flowed the Big Sioux, had sounded
+  the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately nearer and
+  more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
+  collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild
+  they never knew, nor ever filled his place.</p>
+
+  <p>Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that
+  afternoon of late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he
+  had seen; elaborately careful likewise to carry out the family
+  programme as usual.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.</p>
+
+  <p>Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent
+  corroboration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to
+  all fours and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the
+  doorway as only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun
+  and the dust; climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly
+  about his neck, down the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the
+  pillow and the patchwork quilt with a deftness born of
+  experience.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sing! I can't sing, kid."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"</p>
+
+  <p>"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."</p>
+
+  <p>"Please, papa; pretty please!"</p>
+
+  <p>The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do,
+  braced himself in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he
+  knew of the song again and again&mdash;his voice rough and unmusical
+  as that of a crow, echoing and re-echoing in the narrow
+  space&mdash;bent over at last, touched his bearded lips softly to the
+  winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an irresistible catch in
+  his breath, silently to the surface, sent one swift glance
+  sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
+  cabin.</p>
+
+  <p>Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer
+  shotgun, and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy
+  beside the door.</p>
+
+  <p>"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he
+  overhauled the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not
+  deceived. This done, notwithstanding the fact that the sun still
+  beat scorchingly hot thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit
+  his pipe, drew his weather-stained sombrero low over his face,
+  through half-closed eyes inspected the lower lands all about,
+  impassively silent awaited the coming of the inevitable. Of a
+  sudden there was a touch on his shoulder, and, involuntarily
+  starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret Rowland.</p>
+
+  <p>The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
+  something."</p>
+
+  <p>In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more
+  brightly as Rowland drew hard.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"</p>
+
+  <p>The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded
+  reluctant corroboration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You&mdash;saw them?"</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as
+  well, after all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of
+  the rise before them. "They waylaid Mueller there."</p>
+
+  <p>"And you&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all
+  he&mdash;Margaret!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous
+  suggestion!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the
+  quiver of her body against his, the involuntary catch of her
+  breath. "Forgive me, Margaret."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're not to blame. Perhaps&mdash;Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"</p>
+
+  <p>Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above
+  the scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very
+  breath of prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a
+  sunflower stirred, or a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of
+  Indian corn each individual plant drooped, almost like a sensate
+  thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf contracted, like a roll
+  of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In sympathy the colour
+  scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of the paler
+  green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had done
+  Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
+  "Water! Water! Give us drink!"</p>
+
+  <p>Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the
+  woman; like children awed by the sudden realisation of their
+  helplessness, their hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute
+  understanding. Usually at this time of day with nothing to do
+  they slept; but neither thought of sleep now. As passed the slow
+  time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour of supper;
+  but likewise hunger passed them by. Something very like
+  fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at
+  motionless impassive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that
+  nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod
+  corn again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded
+  in preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out,
+  out&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes,"</p>
+
+  <p>"You saw, too?"</p>
+
+  <p>An answering pressure of the hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"The eyes of him, only the eyes&mdash;out there at the edge of the
+  corn!"</p>
+
+  <p>"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his
+  breath tightened. "They're all about: a score at least&mdash;I don't
+  know how many. The tall grass there to the east is alive&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam! They're there again&mdash;the eyes! Oh, I'm
+  afraid&mdash;Sam&mdash;baby!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Hush! Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our
+  only chance. Let them make the first move." Again the hand
+  pressure so tight that, although she made no sound, the blood
+  left the woman's fingers. "Tell me you forgive me, Margaret;
+  before anything happens. I'm a criminal to have stayed here,&mdash;I
+  see it now, a criminal!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't!"</p>
+
+  <p>"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."</p>
+
+  <p>"I love you, Sam."</p>
+
+  <p>Again in the expanse of grass to the east there was motion;
+  not in a single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was
+  visible, not a sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here
+  and there it stirred, and became motionless, and stirred
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>"And&mdash;Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take
+  either of us alive. The last one&mdash;I can't say it. You
+  understand."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I understand. The last load&mdash;But maybe&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this
+  way if&mdash;Margaret, in God's name&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely
+  beneath the grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see
+  her again; must, must&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Margaret!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I must, I say!"</p>
+
+  <p>"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless
+  we show the way. Think&mdash;as you love her."</p>
+
+  <p>"But if anything should happen to us&mdash;She'll starve!"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come&mdash;now; and
+  Landor knows."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, Sam, Sam!"</p>
+
+  <p>There was silence. No human being could give answer to that
+  mother wail.</p>
+
+  <p>Again time passed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that
+  were a hell of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun
+  sank from sight. In the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed
+  red as from a distant conflagration. For and eternity previous it
+  seemed to the silent watchers there had been no move; now again
+  at last the grass stirred; a corn plant rustled where there was
+  no breeze; out into the small open plat surrounding the house
+  sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across the clearing, headed
+  for the protecting grass, halted at the edge irresolute&mdash;scurried
+  back again at something it saw.</p>
+
+  <p>"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained,
+  unnatural. "They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."</p>
+
+  <p>"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural
+  tone!</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man
+  dies."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam Rowland&mdash;my husband!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Margaret&mdash;my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes,
+  regardless of everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how
+  can you forgive me, can God forgive me!" Tight in his arms he
+  kissed her again and again; passionately, in abandon. "I've
+  always loved you, Margaret; always, always!"</p>
+
+  <p>"And I you, man; and I you!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on
+  the field mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water
+  hole, so it came. Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse
+  call of a catbird where no bird was, and again, and again. In
+  front of the maize patch, always in front, a dark form, a mere
+  shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out clear against the light
+  of sky. To right and left appeared others, as motionless as
+  boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler Rowland
+  been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No
+  Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not
+  understand. Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old
+  smoothbore, he waited passive before the darkened doorway of the
+  cabin, looking straight before him, God alone knows what thoughts
+  whirling in his brain. Again in front of him sounded and
+  resounded the alien call. The dark figures against the sky took
+  life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch of the cabin
+  roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in front.
+  Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge
+  pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in
+  front. Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the
+  rear, reached the edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the
+  maize patch, out of the grass, seemingly out of space itself,
+  came a new cry&mdash;the trilling call of the prairie owl. It was the
+  signal. Like twin drops of rain from a cloudless sky fell the two
+  figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter a sound, could
+  offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere, everywhere,
+  swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them forth
+  in legion. In the multitude of hands he was as a child. Within
+  the space of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything
+  had happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the
+  clearing before the door not a human being was visible, not a
+  live thing; only on the thatched roof, silent as before, patient
+  as fate, awaited two other s hadows, darker but by contrast with
+  the weather-coloured grass.</p>
+
+  <p>Minutes passed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the
+  silence. Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a
+  thing of which insanity is made.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!" called a voice softly.</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!" repeated more loudly.</p>
+
+  <p>Again no answer of voice or of action.</p>
+
+  <p>In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly
+  fearful.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped
+  outside.</p>
+
+  <p>A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The
+  earth was not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie
+  owl. As dropped the figures from above there broke forth the
+  Sioux war-cry: long drawn out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood
+  curdling, more savage infinitely than the cry of any wild beast,
+  the others took it up, augmented it by a score, a hundred
+  throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth. Naked,
+  breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they
+  swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two
+  prisoners in their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours,
+  of a sudden they seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage
+  abandon, of drunken exhilaration in the cunning that had won the
+  game without a shot from the white man's gun, without the injury
+  of a single warrior. They were in haste, and yet they were not in
+  haste. They looted the cabin like fire and then fought among
+  themselves for the plunder. They applied the torch to the
+  shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then capered
+  fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until,
+  tinder</p>
+
+  <p>dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all,
+  purposely reserved as a climax, they gave their attention to the
+  pair of half-naked, bound and gagged figures in their midst. Then
+  it was the scene became an orgy indeed. The havoc preceding had
+  but whetted their appetite for the finale. Savagery personified,
+  cruelty unqualified, deadly hate, primitive lust&mdash;every black
+  passion lurking in the recesses of the human mind stalked
+  brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister, unashamed.
+  But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand similar
+  scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
+  the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a
+  nation's expansion, as its progression.</p>
+
+  <p>It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle
+  of prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
+  unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
+  irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed
+  their journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed
+  fair in the print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly,
+  undulatory shadows, forming the most treacherous deadly serpent
+  that ever inhabited earth, they moved eastward until they reached
+  the bank of the swift little river; then turned north, leaving
+  the abandoned, desolated settlement, the ruined cornfields, as
+  tokens of their handiwork, as a message to other predatory bands
+  who might follow, as a challenge to the white man who they knew
+  would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they moved
+  swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
+  almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the
+  pat, pat of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of
+  eaves from a summer rain, the rustle of their passing bodies
+  against the dense vegetation a soft accompaniment. Autochthonous
+  as they had appeared they disappeared. Night and distance
+  swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined grainfield, the
+  smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the glaring
+  white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the background
+  of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for this,
+  and one other thing&mdash;a single sound, repeated again and again,
+  dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.</p>
+
+  <p>"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its
+  depths that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm
+  afraid!"</p><a name="III"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+  <p>DISCOVERY</p>
+
+  <p>More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in
+  construction, as necessity ever induces the unusual, it was
+  nevertheless formidable. To the north was a typical entrenchment
+  with a ditch, and a parapet eight feet high. To the east was a
+  double board wall with earth tamped between: a solid curb higher
+  than the head of a tall man. Completing the square, to the south
+  and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close together and
+  pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by numerous
+  portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers</p>
+
+  <p>near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated,
+  mingled and intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as
+  diverse a gathering of humans as ever graced a single structure
+  even in this land of myriad types. Virtually the entire
+  population of frontier Yankton was there. Likewise the settlers
+  from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the far-away country
+  of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground of the
+  Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the
+  peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild
+  west of the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the
+  Blackfeet, the Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the
+  alarm of rapine and of massacre had spread afar. Very late to
+  arrive, doggedly holding their own until rumour became reality
+  unmistakable, was the colony from the Jim River valley to the
+  east; but even they had finally surrendered, the dogging grip of
+  fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their throats, had
+  fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the
+  Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as
+  you please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux
+  Falls. Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for
+  with the actual retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow
+  mile, thanking the Providence which had permitted them to arrive
+  unmolested, a sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old
+  smoothbore cannon before the big south gate and craved
+  admittance. Out to them went Colonel William Landor, colonel by
+  courtesy, scion of many generations of Landors, rancher at
+  present, cattle king of the future. The conversation that
+  followed there with the east reddening in the morning sun was
+  very brief, very swift to the point.</p>
+
+  <p>"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing
+  them collectively, compellingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"My name is McPherson."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mine is Horton."</p>
+
+  <p>"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."</p>
+
+  <p>"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered
+  McPherson who took the lead.</p>
+
+  <p>"From where?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Sioux Falls."</p>
+
+  <p>"Any news?"</p>
+
+  <p>Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now
+  a day old.</p>
+
+  <p>"And the rest of your settlement&mdash;where are they?"</p>
+
+  <p>McPherson told him.</p>
+
+  <p>"They all went, you say?"</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one
+  family," he qualified.</p>
+
+  <p>"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the
+  company collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did
+  not go?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"That you&mdash;men here went off and left him and his wife and
+  little girl alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were
+  closing ominously. "You come here with that story and ask me to
+  let you inside?"</p>
+
+  <p>McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently,
+  his shoulders squared.</p>
+
+  <p>"We're here," he announced laconically.</p>
+
+  <p>"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids.
+  "Moreover, strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned
+  forward involuntarily; his breath came quick. "It gives me the
+  opportunity, sir, to tell you to your face that you're a damned
+  coward." In spite of an obvious effort at repression, the great
+  veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A damned coward,
+  sir!"</p>
+
+  <p>"What! You call me&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Men! Gentlemen!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor
+  was himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll
+  be no blood shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now,
+  and, as he had done with the newcomers, he addressed them
+  collectively, authoratively. "When I fight it will not be with
+  one who abandons a woman and a child at a time like this.... God!
+  it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the Rowlands for ten
+  years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had been
+  flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my
+  sight, every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in
+  command here. If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside
+  this stockade&mdash;not if the Santees scalped you before my
+  eyes."</p>
+
+  <p>For a second there was silence, inaction.</p>
+
+  <p>"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We
+  tried&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them
+  in, there are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader
+  of men, he turned to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late
+  now,&mdash;I'm afraid it is; but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to
+  bring him here. Who's with me? Who's willing to make the ride
+  back to Sioux Falls?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced,
+  slow of speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit
+  superfluous, pard? We're all with you&mdash;that is, as many as you
+  want, I reckon. None of us ain't cats, so we can't croak but
+  once&mdash;and that might as well be now as ten years from now."</p>
+
+  <p>"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar
+  and the motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report
+  here. The first twenty to return, go."</p>
+
+  <p>From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was
+  McPherson.</p>
+
+  <p>"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.</p>
+
+  <p>No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an
+  inverted V; then silent as they, equally swiftly, he
+  followed.</p>
+
+  <p>Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle
+  back. Not in ignorance of possibilities in store did they come.
+  They had no delusions concerning the red brother, these
+  frontiersmen. Nor in the hot adventurous blood of youth did they
+  respond. One and all were middle-aged men; many had families. All
+  save Landor were strangers to the man they went to seek. Yet at a
+  moment's call they responded; as they took it for granted others
+  would respond were they in need. Had they been conscious of the
+  fact, the action was magnificent; but of it they were not
+  conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal brotherhood
+  of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated abode
+  urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and,
+  supercilious, smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we
+  humans. First of all to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek
+  swelled round with a giant quid. Close at his heels followed
+  Trapper Conway: grizzled, parchment-faced veteran, who alone had
+  followed the Missouri to its source and, stranger to relate, had
+  alone returned with his scalp. Then came Landor himself, the wiry
+  little mustang he rode all but blanketed under the big army
+  saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as though an event
+  of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson, drew up in
+  place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat appreciatively,
+  but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one but many
+  riders; a half dozen, a score,&mdash;enough to make up the allotment,
+  and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly
+  accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho,
+  the mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of
+  apparel, from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or
+  saddleless, across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel
+  of a long rifle, at the hip of every rider hung a holster, from
+  every belt peeped the hilt of a great knife. Long ere this word
+  of the unusual had passed about, and now, on the rise of ground
+  at the back of the stockade, a goodly group had gathered. Silent
+  as the prairies, as the morning itself, they watched the scene
+  below, awaited the <i>d&eacute;nouement.</i> Not without
+  influence was the taciturn example of the red man in this land
+  from which he was slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to
+  the east the red face of the morning sun was just peeping when
+  Landor separated himself from the waiting group, led the way to
+  the big gate and paused. "Twenty only, men," he repeated. "All
+  ready."</p>
+
+  <p>First through the opening went Crosby.</p>
+
+  <p>"One."</p>
+
+  <p>Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.</p>
+
+  <p>"Two."</p>
+
+  <p>From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came
+  Scotchman McPherson; but though he passed fair before the
+  leader's eyes and not a yard away, no number was spoken; no hint
+  of recognition, of cognisance, crossed the latter's face.
+  Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited the next in line, then
+  voiced the one word: "Three."</p>
+
+  <p>On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts
+  silent&mdash;halting at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and
+  twenty men who counted but as a score, started into motion,
+  halted again; as by common consent every head save one of a
+  sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the watching group
+  back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All but to the
+  ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out where
+  no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
+  tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the
+  column one rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear.
+  Implacable as Landor himself, he looked straight before him,
+  awaited the silence that would bring with it renewed
+  activity.</p>
+
+  <p>And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat
+  returned to its place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From
+  his position by the gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind
+  him, impassive again as figures in a spectacle, the others fell
+  in line. At first a mere walk, the pace gradually quickened,
+  became a canter, a trot. By this time the confines of the tiny
+  frontier town were passed. Before them on the one hand, bordering
+  on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown from its
+  coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
+  glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on
+  myriad dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open
+  prairie. Straight into this Landor led the way, and as he did so
+  the cavalcade for the first time broke into a gallop; not the
+  fierce, short-lived pace of civilisation, but the long-strided,
+  full-lunged lope of the frontier, which accurately and as
+  tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off the passing
+  miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.</p>
+
+  <p>Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
+  settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was
+  the prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century
+  before; yet with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead,
+  straight as a line drawn taut from point to point. Nothing
+  stopped their advance, nothing made them turn aside. Seemingly
+  destitute of animal life, the country fairly teemed at their
+  approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the blue-faced
+  anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks. Troops of
+  antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away from
+  the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the
+  safety of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight.
+  Every marshy spot, every prairie pond, had its setting of ducks.
+  The teal, the mallard, the widgeon, the shoveller, the
+  canvasback&mdash;all mingled in the loud-voiced throng that arose
+  before the leader's approach, then, like smoke, vanished with
+  almost unbelievable swiftness into the hazy distance. Prairie dog
+  towns, populous as cities of man a minute before their approach,
+  went lifeless, desolate, as they passed through. In the
+  infrequent draws and creek beds between the low, rolling hills,
+  great-eyed cotton tails scampered to cover or, like the antelope,
+  just out of harm's way, watched the passage of this strange
+  being, man. Wonder of wonders that display of life would have
+  been to another generation; but of it these grim-faced riders
+  were apparently unconscious, oblivious. Their eyes were not for
+  things near at hand, but for the distance, for the possibility
+  that lurked just beyond that far-away rise which formed their
+  horizon, when they had reached that for the next beyond, and the
+  next.</p>
+
+  <p>Hour by hour the morning wore away. Hotter and hotter rose the
+  sun above them. Instead of drops of dew, tiny particles of
+  sun-dried grass flew away from beneath the leaders' feet, mingled
+  with the dust of prairie, became a cloud shutting the leaders
+  from the sight of those in the rear. From being a mere breath,
+  the south wind augmented, became positive, insistent. Hot with
+  the latent heat of many days, it sang in their ears as they went,
+  bit all but scorching, at their unprotected hands and throats.
+  Under its touch the horses' necks, dark before with sweat, became
+  normal again: between their legs, under the, edges of the great
+  saddles where it had churned into foam, dried into white powder,
+  like frostwork amid the hair. Gradually with the change, their
+  breathing became audible, louder and louder, until in unison it
+  mingled with the dull impact of their feet on the heavy sod like
+  the exhaust of many engines. No horseman who values the life of
+  the beast between his legs, fails to heed that warning. Landor
+  did not, but at the first dawdling prairie creek that offered
+  water and, with its struggling fringe of willows, a suggestion of
+  shade, he gave the word to halt, and for four mortal, blistering
+  hours while, man and beast alike, the others slept, kept watch
+  over them from the nearest rise. Relentless to others this man
+  might be, but not even his dearest enemy could accuse him of
+  sparing himself.</p>
+
+  <p>It was three by the clock when again they took up the trail.
+  It was 3.45 when they swam what is now the Vermilion River, the
+  last water-course of</p>
+
+  <p>any size on their way. The dew was again beginning to gather
+  when, well to the south, they approached the bordering hills that
+  concealed the site of Sioux Falls settlement. Then for the first
+  time since they began that last relay Landor gave an order.</p>
+
+  <p>"It'll be a miracle if we don't find Sioux there in the
+  bottom, men," he prophesied. "Perhaps there are a whole band,
+  perhaps it'll only be stragglers; but no matter how many or how
+  few there may be, charge them. If they run you know what to
+  do&mdash;this is no holiday outing. If they stand, charge them all the
+  harder." He faced his horse to the north and gave the word to go.
+  "It's our only chance," he completed.</p>
+
+  <p>What followed belongs to history. Over that last intervening
+  rise they went like demons. The first to gain the crown, to look
+  down into the valley beyond, was Landor. As he did so, grim
+  Anglo-Saxon as he was, his whole attitude underwent a
+  transformation. Back to the others he turned his face, and, plain
+  as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage, and the lust of
+  battle.</p>
+
+  <p>"They're there; a hundred, if a single red!" he shouted. "Come
+  on!" and the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse's
+  flanks, dug until the blood spurted.</p>
+
+  <p>But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction
+  of the time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground.
+  Outnumbering those who charged many times, it was not in savage
+  nature to face that unformed oncoming motley of howling,
+  bloodthirsty maniacs. Slowly at first began the retreat; then as,
+  with great swiftness, the others shortened the distance
+  intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a stampede. Every
+  brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the dismantled
+  ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling like
+  their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for
+  the thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in
+  their ears, cutting at the vegetation about them. Into its
+  friendly cover they plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the
+  surface of a lake, and were swallowed from sight. That is, all
+  but one. That one, unhorsed by accident, was left to face that
+  oncoming flood. . . . But why linger. Like the charge itself, his
+  fate is history. These men were but human, and thick about them
+  were the ashes from the roof-trees of their friends.</p>
+
+  <p>Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind,
+  musical with the drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs
+  from the low land adjoining the river, melancholy with the call
+  of the catbird, with the infrequent note of the whip-poor-will,
+  was upon the land of the Mandans when the score and one, their
+  dripping ponies once more dry, took up the last relay of their
+  journey. Night had caught them there in the deserted settlement,
+  and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait. Now, far to the
+  east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the
+  face of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves
+  through the heated air, slowly rising, lit up the level country
+  softly as by early twilight. Lingeringly, almost reluctantly,
+  Landor got into his saddle. Just to his left, impassive as the
+  night, well to the front of the company as he had been that
+  mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman McPherson. Not once since that
+  early morning scene at Fort Yankton had he spoken a word, not
+  once had he been addressed, had another man shown consciousness
+  of his presence. A pariah, he had so far kept them company; a
+  pariah, he now awaited the end. A moment, fair in his seat,
+  Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for
+  hours came to pass. Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein
+  beside the other man.</p>
+
+  <p>"McPherson," he said, "this morning I called you coward. That
+  you are not such you have proven, you are proving now. For this
+  reason I ask your pardon. For this reason as well, I give you
+  warning. What we will find&mdash;where we are going, I do not doubt,
+  now. I do not believe you doubt. For it I hold you responsible.
+  You had best turn back before belief becomes certainty."
+  Unnaturally precise, cold as November raindrops came the words,
+  the sentences. Deadly in meaning was the pause that followed. "I
+  repeat, you had best turn back."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long half minute, face to face there in the moonlight,
+  Landor waited; but no answer came. Just perceptibly he shifted in
+  his place.</p>
+
+  <p>"I may forget, give my promise of the morning the lie. Do you
+  understand?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I understand."</p>
+
+  <p>Another half minute, ghastly in its significance, passed; then
+  without a word Landor turned. "You have heard, men," he said,
+  "and may God be my judge."</p>
+
+  <p>The full moon was well in the sky, showing clear every detail
+  in that scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter,
+  patter sounded their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more
+  loud they grew, muffled yet penetrating in the silence of night,
+  always augmenting in volume. Out of the shadows figures came
+  dimly into view, taking form against the background of
+  constellations. The straining of leather, the music of steel in
+  bit and buckle, the soft swish of the sun-dried grass proclaimed
+  them very near; then across the trampled corn patch, into the
+  open where had stood the shanty, where now was a thin grey layer
+  of ashes, came the riders, and drew rein; their weary mounts
+  crowding each other in fear at something they saw. Like a storm
+  cloud they came; like the roll of thunder following was the oath
+  which sprang to the lips of every rider save one. Good men they
+  were, God-fearing men; yet they swore like pirates, like humans
+  when ordinary speech is not adequate. In the pause but one man
+  acted, and none intervened to prevent what he did. Out into the
+  open, away from the others, rode Scotchman McPherson; halted, his
+  hand on the holster at his hip. For a second, and a second only,
+  he sat so, the white moonlight drawing clear every line of his
+  grizzled face, his stocky figure. Then deliberately his hand
+  lifted, before him there appeared a sudden blaze of fire, upon
+  the silence there broke a single revolver report, from beneath
+  his lifeless bulk the horse he rode broke free, gave one bound,
+  by instinct halted, trembling in every muscle; then over all, the
+  quick and the dead, returned silence: silence absolute as that of
+  the grave.</p>
+
+  <p>How long those twenty men sat there, gazing at that mute,
+  motionless figure on the ground not one could have told. Death
+  was no stranger to them. For years it had lurked behind every
+  chance shrub they passed, in the depths of every ravine, in the
+  darkness of night, from every tangle of rank prairie grass in
+  broad daylight. To it from long familiarity they had become
+  callous; but death such as this, deliberate, cold-blooded,
+  self-inflicted&mdash;it awed them while it fascinated, held them
+  silent, passive.</p>
+
+  <p>"In God's name!" Again it was Landor who roused them, Landor
+  with his hand on the holster at his hip, Landor who sat staring
+  as one who doubts his own sight. "Am I sane, men? Look, there to
+  your right!"</p>
+
+  <p>They looked. They rubbed their eyes and looked again.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I'll be damned," voiced Crosby; and no man had ever
+  heard him express surprise before. To the north, from the edge of
+  the tall surrounding grass, moving slowly, yet without a trace of
+  hesitation or of fear, coming straight toward them across the
+  trampled earth, were two tiny human figures, hand in hand. No
+  wonder they who saw stared; no wonder they doubted their eyes.
+  One, the figure to the right, was plump and uncertain of step and
+  all in white; white which in the moonlight and against the black
+  earth seemed ghostly. The other was slim and certain of movement
+  and dark&mdash;dark as a copper brown Indian boy, naked as when he
+  came on earth. On they came, the brown figure leading, the white
+  following trustfully, until they were quite up to the watchers,
+  halted, still hand in hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," said a voice, a piping childish voice.</p>
+
+  <p>Like rustics at a spectacle the men stared, turned mystified
+  faces each to each, and stared anew. All save one. Off from his
+  horse sprang Landor, caught the bundle of white in his arms.</p>
+
+  <p>"Baby Rowland! Baby Bess! And you,"&mdash;he was staring the other
+  from head to toe, the distance was short,&mdash;"who are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Uncle Billy," interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of
+  femininity nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa and mamma! I
+  want them."</p>
+
+  <p>Closer and closer the big bachelor arms clasped their burden;
+  unashamed, there with the others watching him, he kissed her.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never mind now, Kiddie. Tell me how you came here, and who
+  this is with you."</p>
+
+  <p>About the great neck crept two arms, clinging tightly.</p>
+
+  <p>"He just came, Uncle Billy. I was calling for papa. Papa put
+  me to sleep and forgot me. The boy heard me and took me out. I
+  was afraid at first, but&mdash;but he's a nice boy, only he won't talk
+  and&mdash;and&mdash;" The narrative halted, the tousled head buried itself
+  joyously. "Oh, I'm so glad you came, Uncle Billy!"</p>
+
+  <p>In silence Landor's eyes made the circle of interested
+  watching faces, returned to the winsome brown face so near his
+  own.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aren't you hungry, Kid?" he ventured.</p>
+
+  <p>On his shoulder the dark poll shook a negative.</p>
+
+  <p>"No. We had corn to eat. The boy roasted it. He made a big
+  fire. He's a nice boy, only&mdash;only he won't say anything."</p>
+
+  <p>Again Landor's eyes made the circle, halted at the intrepid
+  brown waif who, that first word of greeting spoken, had silently
+  stared him back.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're sure you don't know anything more, baby? You didn't
+  hear anything until the boy came?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Uncle Billy. I was asleep. When I woke up it was dark,
+  and I was hungry and&mdash;and&mdash;" At last it had come: the spattering,
+  turbulent tear storm. Her small body shook, her arms clasped
+  tighter and tighter. "Oh, Uncle Billy, I want my papa and mamma.
+  I tried to find them, and I couldn't. Please find them for me,
+  Uncle Billy, Please! Please!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It was well past midnight. The big full moon, high now in the
+  sky, cast their shadows almost about their feet when, their
+  labour complete, the party took up the homeward trail. But there
+  were twenty no longer. At their head as before rode Landor, in
+  his arms not a rifle but a blanket; a blanket from which as they
+  journeyed on came now and anon a sound that was alien indeed: the
+  sobs of a baby girl who wept as she slept. Back of him, likewise
+  as when they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby; but he, too,
+  was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in front of
+  him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat,
+  was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide
+  awake indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every
+  movement about him, every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist
+  chance had put him there, what fate for good or evil, they could
+  only conjecture, could not know, could never know; yet there he
+  was, strangest figure in a land that knew only the bizarre, with
+  whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now, weary to death
+  with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable reaction
+  from the excitement of the past hours, they moved away, to the
+  south, to the west. In front of them, glittering in the
+  moonlight, seemingly infinite, stretched the waves of the rolling
+  prairie, bare as the sea in a calm. Behind them, growing lesser
+  and lesser minute by minute, merging into the infinite white,
+  were three black dots like tiny boats on the horizon's edge. On
+  they went, a half mile, a mile, looked behind; and, with an awe
+  no familiarity could prevent, faced ahead anew. Back of them now
+  as well as before, uniformly endless, uniformly magnificent,
+  stretched that giant ocean: silent, serene, as mother nature, as
+  nature's master, God himself.</p><a name="IV"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+  <p>RECONSTRUCTION</p>
+
+  <p>The day of the Indian terror had passed. No longer did the
+  name of Little Crow carry stampede in its wake. The battles of
+  Big Mound, of White Stone Hill, and of the Bad Lands had been
+  fought, had become mere history; dim already to the newcomer as
+  Lexington or Bull Run. Still in the memory, to be sure, was the
+  half-invited massacre of Custer at the Little Big Horn; but the
+  savage genius of Sitting Bull, of Crazy Horse, and of Gall, who
+  had made the last great encounter bloodily unique in the conflict
+  of the red man and the white, was never to be duplicated. Rightly
+  or wrongly deprived of what they had once called their own,
+  driven back, back on the crest of the ever-increasing wave of
+  settlement, facing the alternative of annihilation or of
+  submergence in that flood, the Sioux had halted like a wild thing
+  at bay, with their backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot
+  of earth on the face of the globe, the Black Hills country, and
+  as a cornered animal ever fights, had battled ferociously for a
+  lost supremacy. But, robbers themselves, holding the land on the
+  insecure title of might alone, fighting to the end, they had at
+  last succumbed to the inevitable: the all-conquering invasion of
+  the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a name stood out:
+  "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," "Little Crow," "Sitting
+  Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall," "John
+  Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic
+  suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had
+  long since passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to
+  desperation, might incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an
+  incorrigible by a harrowing reference to one or to another; yet
+  to the incoming swarms of land-hungry settlers they were mere
+  supplanted play actors, fit heroes for fiction, for romance
+  perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small herds safe in the
+  pasture of a reservation, preserved as a relic of a species
+  doomed to extinction.</p>
+
+  <p>A thing at which to marvel was the growth of the eastern
+  border of Dakota Territory in this, the time of the great boom.
+  History can scarcely find its parallel. In the space of a decade
+  the census leaped from two-score thousand to nearly a half
+  million. New towns sprang up like fungi in a night. Railroads
+  reached out like the tentacles of an octopus, where a generation
+  before the buffalo had tramped its tortuous trail. Prosperous
+  farms came into being in the meadows where the antelope had
+  pastured. Artesian wells, waterworks, electric lights, street
+  railways, colleges, all the adjuncts of a higher civilisation,
+  blossomed forth under the magic wand of Eastern capital. Doomed
+  to reaction, as an advancing pendulum is doomed to retrace its
+  cycle, was this premature evolution; but temporarily, as a
+  springtime freshet bears onward the driftwood in its path, it
+  carried its predecessor, the unconventional, fighting,
+  wild-loving adventurer, before. On it went, on and on until at
+  last, fairly blocking its path, was the big, muddy, dawdling
+  Missouri. Then for the first time it halted; halted in a pause
+  that was to last for a generation. But it had fulfilled its
+  mission. High and dry on the western side of the barrier, imbued
+  as when they had settled to the east, with the restless spirit of
+  the frontier, unsubdued, unchanged, it cast its burden. There, as
+  they had done before, the newcomers immediately took root, and,
+  after the passage of a year, were all but unconscious of the
+  migration. Over their heads was the same blue prairie sky. Around
+  them, treeless, trackless, was the same rolling, illimitable
+  prairie land. In but one essential were conditions changed; yet
+  that one was epoch-making. Heretofore, surrounded by a common, an
+  alien danger, compelled at a second's warning to band together
+  for life itself, all men were brothers. Now, with the passing of
+  the red peril, with eradication of necessity for any manner of
+  restraint, an abandon of licence, of recklessness, born of the
+  wild life, of overflowing animal vitality i nsufficiently
+  employed, swept the land like a contagion. Unique in the history
+  of man's development was this the era of the cowboy, as fantastic
+  now as the era of the red peril, its predecessor; yet vital,
+  bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously human, as no other period has
+  ever been, as in all probability none will ever be again.
+  Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed, chivalrous,
+  fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate, wilful
+  and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented,
+  seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as
+  certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied
+  their own Hell and, impartial, chose from each to weave the web
+  of their lives.</p>
+
+  <p>Of this period, life of this life, was Colonel William Landor;
+  colonel no longer, plain Bill, from the river to the Hills,
+  husband these ten years now, but not father, Cattle King of an
+  uncontested range. Of this life likewise, bred in it, saturated
+  in it, was a dark young woman, his adopted daughter, two years
+  past her majority, Elizabeth Rowland Landor by name. Of it most
+  vitally of all, born of it, rooted in it through unknown
+  centuries of ancestral domicile, was a copper-brown young man,
+  destitute as a boy of twelve of a trace of beard, black as a
+  prairie crow of hair and eyes, deep-lunged like a race-track
+  thoroughbred, wiry as a mustang, garbed as a white man, but
+  bearing the liquid name of a Teton Sioux, "Ma-wa-cha-sa, the lost
+  pappoose," yet known wherever the Santee Massacre and the tale of
+  his appearance was known, as "How" Landor. Of this period, last
+  of all, was the great B.B.&mdash;Buffalo Butte&mdash;ranch, giant among the
+  giants, whose brand was familiar as his own name to every cowboy
+  west of the Missouri, whose hospitable ranch house, twenty-odd
+  miles from the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote Centre, which in
+  turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles from
+  nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into
+  this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the
+  reverse side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one
+  lunger," who, with gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie
+  sun and prairie air.</p><a name="V"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+  <p>THE LAND OF LICENCE</p>
+
+  <p>For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay
+  Creek ranch had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the
+  day previous they had suddenly blown in from the north; a great
+  cloud of yellow dust, lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty
+  panting of winded bronchos, a single demoniacal dare-man whoop
+  heralding their coming, a groaning of straining leather, a jingle
+  of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented stillness even in this
+  silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was, Pete Sweeney,
+  "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was who first
+  entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who, ere
+  ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only
+  man who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute
+  ownership. Pete it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared
+  away, assisted in laying out that same misguided citizen, in
+  decent fellowship, beneath the cottonwood bar, and thrust an
+  adequate green roll in the stiffening hand for funeral
+  expenses.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I
+  don't visit you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to
+  make it square, and this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all.
+  D'ye understand?" and from Manning, the greybearded storekeeper,
+  to Rank Judge, the one-legged saddler, there was no one to say
+  him nay, none to contest his right of authority.</p>
+
+  <p>By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre.
+  Under ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even
+  aggressively, upheld by its representative, Marshal Jim Burton.
+  Likewise there was no lack of pilgrims, who by devious and
+  circuitous routes sought his residence on this occasion, with
+  tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one and all
+  departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
+  not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an
+  even more indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one
+  regretted the mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who
+  imparted the information, no one deplored the lost opportunity
+  for distinction so much as she; but nevertheless the fact
+  remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was thrown upon its
+  own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as best it
+  might.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the
+  beginning of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned,
+  and that more than intermittently, all but continuously, the red
+  liquor had flowed; to the alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins
+  and his straw-haired Norwegian rival across the street&mdash;Gus
+  Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were who fancied that ere
+  this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity for absorption
+  had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable intention
+  of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
+  themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of
+  the town, all of them were now down and out, and in various
+  retired spots, where they had been deposited by their
+  sympathising friends, were snoring in peaceful oblivion. Even Len
+  Barker, game disciple of the great master, had reached his limit
+  and, no longer formidable, had, without form of law, been
+  deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
+  corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the
+  hawk eye and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of
+  solid sustenance, was, to all visible indications, as fresh and
+  aggressive as at the beginning.</p>
+
+  <p>Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor
+  down the single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its
+  face. One and all had succumbed long before to the god of
+  gunpowder. Not a stray dog, and Coyote Centre was plethoric of
+  canines, raised its voice nor showed even a retreating tail near
+  the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire for deepest
+  obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden annihilation to
+  the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a cyclone were
+  imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They were a
+  tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
+  experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object
+  lesson of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at
+  last patience was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of
+  the town hall a tiny group of men were gathered, a group who
+  spoke scarcely above a whisper, who kept a sharp lookout all
+  surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch of an eyelash to
+  disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient. In the
+  single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
+  plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy
+  bearded, had the floor.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included
+  indiscriminately. "You come here with your stories and croak and
+  croak, and still not one of you would dare say a word to Pete's
+  face, not one of you but would stand and let him twist your nose
+  if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of the silent,
+  listening semicircle to the other, with all-including disdain.
+  "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
+  Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're
+  damned cowards, I say."</p>
+
+  <p>In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud
+  Smith, the weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat
+  hurt him.</p>
+
+  <p>"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and
+  agin p'raps you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new
+  marshal, but as fer's I've been able to discover there's no one
+  hereabouts hankerin' fer the job." He spat at a crack in the
+  cottonwood floor meditatively, struck true, and seemed mildly
+  pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin' comfortably rapidly as it
+  is, without adding any marshals to the collection. I've known
+  Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private advice is to let
+  him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the river to
+  supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
+  feelin' as he's feelin' now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky
+  Missourian, who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the
+  first time he isn't looking."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
+  meditatively.</p>
+
+  <p>"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he
+  commented at last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of
+  Pete not lookin'. I ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the
+  feller who tackles that job to say his prayers before he starts.
+  He won't have much time afterwards." With a swifter movement than
+  he had yet made, the speaker slid from his place to the floor,
+  involuntarily cast a glance into the street without. "I ain't
+  perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and I ain't lookin'
+  fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it ain't at
+  all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound to
+  peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better
+  scatter and let it blow over."</p>
+
+  <p>"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if
+  you want to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying
+  here as long as I see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."</p>
+
+  <p>"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning
+  with his deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well,
+  maybe I've got something to say about that." He came out from
+  behind the counter, faced the lanky figure before him, with
+  deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty stiff-backed boy in the
+  daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the dark&mdash;" He halted and
+  his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if you're so anxious
+  for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you take the
+  job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth curled
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went
+  white. Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered
+  dog, and until it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I
+  might ask you the same question. I ain't no property interest
+  here being destroyed like you have. Why don't you do the trick
+  yourself, dad?"</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the
+  old man stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to
+  square his shoulders; but they remained round as before.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand&mdash;minus the index and
+  middle fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled
+  with rheumatism. "Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny
+  storeroom and back again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why
+  don't I?" repeated for the third time. "Do you imagine for the
+  fraction of a second, Walt Wagner, that if I was back twenty
+  years and sound like you are, I'd be asking another man why he
+  didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly, he stood there
+  before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent, distorted
+  senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
+  and ask that question of me?"</p>
+
+  <p>In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked
+  nervously. His face went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud
+  Smith it was, Bud Smith, five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie
+  wind had made like a lobster display in a cafe window, who had
+  halted at the door, but who now came back, he it was who
+  spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested
+  slowly, "you might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by
+  intimatin' that I had cold feet. We'll listen to that, too, any
+  time you see fit to explain, pardner."</p>
+
+  <p>"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become
+  normal again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his
+  elbows back against the glass showcase, glancing the while down
+  at the small man, almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your
+  benefit, I was merely observing that you filled the bill of what
+  dad here said a bit ago we all were." He smiled tantalisingly;
+  again showing the vacancy in his dental arch. "You remember what
+  that was, don't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin'
+  fer trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit.
+  To be dead sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his
+  place behind the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he
+  moved. In it likewise there was an interruption from without; the
+  subdued clatter of a horse's feet on the packed earth of the
+  street, the straining of leather, as the man, its rider,
+  alighted, a moment later the click of the door latch as the same
+  man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered and halted abruptly
+  at what he saw. But those within did not notice. Silent as the
+  night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete Sweeney,
+  they were staring at those two actors there before them.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin'
+  fer trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller
+  of my own age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to
+  hear you say it. I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt
+  Wagner."</p>
+
+  <p>Again within the room there was silence, and again from
+  without there approached an interruption. From up the street,
+  from out the door of Red Jenkins's joint it came; the patter,
+  patter of many feet, leading it the heavy clump of mighty cowhide
+  boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the jingle of spurs on those
+  same boots at every step, the deep breathing of a cowman
+  intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
+  doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and
+  nearer. Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had
+  noticed. The arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In
+  the depths of his pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly,
+  nervously. His face had gone whiter than before. Once he had
+  opened his lips to speak, revealing the blackness of the vacant
+  tooth; but he had closed them again silently. Now at last he
+  cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a long breath.
+  Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew. What
+  if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
+  at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street
+  swung open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it,
+  blocking it, appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman,
+  while upon their ears, like the menacing bellow of an enraged
+  bull, burst a voice&mdash;the challenging, bullying voice of Pete
+  Sweeney, inebriate.</p>
+
+  <p>"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was
+  no answer repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"</p>
+
+  <p>For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction
+  while every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker;
+  at first almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the
+  interruption came over them, with sensations as divergent as
+  their various individual minds. There was no need to tell them
+  who looked at that towering, intruding figure that tragedy lurked
+  in the air, that death on the slightest provocation, at the
+  twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in those big twin Colts lying
+  menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic escaped was a
+  pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with Pete
+  Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god&mdash;bull
+  mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
+  hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad
+  from the soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to
+  the bulging holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt
+  around his waist, to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red
+  silk handkerchief about his throat, to the dark unshaven face, to
+  the drink-reddened nose, to the mere slits of eyes, to the
+  upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of wiry hair; bad in
+  detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence
+  he came a step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart.
+  "What've you got to say for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker
+  meeting. Speak up. What're you all doin' here?"</p>
+
+  <p>Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red
+  Bud Smith.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained
+  evenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes.
+  "You lie by the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of
+  skunks." From man to man he passed the look, halted at last at
+  the figure of the lanky Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to
+  pot me, and I'm lookin' to see the colour of his hair. Who was
+  it, I'd like to know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as
+  before Smith spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do.
+  You can own the whole county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend
+  to your knittin'. Dad here wants to close up, now."</p>
+
+  <p>"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon
+  as you name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted,
+  dropped like claws on the figure of the little land man. "You
+  know who it is I'm lookin' for. Tell me his name."</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know me very well, Pete."</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was
+  inspecting the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its
+  paws. "In other words, you mean you know, but won't tell me."
+  Lingeringly, baitingly, almost exultingly, he was dragging the
+  <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> on and on. "That's what you mean to
+  imply, is it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's
+  body twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even
+  tone. There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime,
+  knowing as he knew that but one man present could interfere to
+  prevent, that that man wouldn't, he spoke those four words:
+  "You've guessed it, Pete." And but minutes before Manning had
+  called this man coward!</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his
+  slow brain failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of
+  the refusal; then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood,
+  came comprehension, came action. Swifter than any human being
+  would have thought possible, unbelievably ferocious even in this
+  land of licence, something took place, something which the
+  staring onlookers did not realise until it was done. They only
+  knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had reached the
+  single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at the
+  same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that
+  the odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting
+  slowly toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a
+  curtain that once raised made them shudder, made their blood run
+  cold, for it revealed there, stretched on the floor, huddled as
+  it had dropped, lifeless, motionless, the figure of the man who
+  had refused, the weazened face of Land Man Bud Smith! All this
+  they realised in that first second; then something that was
+  almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man who had done
+  this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the only
+  means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two
+  great revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now.
+  As swiftly as that horrible thing had been done he had gone
+  sober. Yet no man who saw him that instant feared him one whit
+  less. Not a man present, believer or scoffer, but breathed a
+  silent prayer. And there was reason. If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete,
+  had possessed a real friend on earth, he possessed that one no
+  more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but friends&mdash;there
+  had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant of
+  oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend;
+  murdered him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his
+  tracks. Not another had done this thing but he himself, he,
+  Cowman Pete. Small wonder that they who watched this man prayed,
+  that surreptitious glances sought for an avenue of escape where
+  there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner went whiter and
+  whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon the
+  floor, there would be a reckoning,&mdash;and what that reckoning would
+  be God alone could tell!</p>
+
+  <p>And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary
+  movement, he had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did
+  not waver the breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes
+  he was looking at that mute figure on the floor; looking at it
+  immovably, indescribably, with an impassivity that was horrible.
+  For the moment he seemed to have forgotten the others' presence,
+  seemed at their mercy; and to the mind of Walt Wagner there came
+  a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand came out of his
+  pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his hip;
+  advanced and halted and advanced again, reached
+  almost&mdash;almost&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a
+  snarl: the snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your
+  breeches or by God&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as
+  though drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed,
+  useless thing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had
+  known was but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's
+  son of you. Step lively."</p>
+
+  <p>They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men
+  of them there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and
+  jaws set like a trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his
+  pockets; Rank Judge, stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose
+  Buck Walker, who ran the meat market; Slim Simpson, from the
+  eating joint opposite, pale as the tucked-in apron around his
+  waist; last of all the stranger, tall, smooth-shaven, alien in
+  knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed, at his throat the
+  arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up they came at
+  the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons to
+  recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at
+  another time and another place, that compliance would have been;
+  but with that mute, prostrate figure there before them on the
+  floor, with that other menacing, dominating figure facing them,
+  it was far from humorous. It was ghastly in its confession of
+  impotence, in its mute acquiescence to another's will.</p>
+
+  <p>The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some
+  reason Pete did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed
+  eyes travelling from man to man, the fissure between them
+  deepening, the heavy lids narrowing, moment by moment. A long
+  half minute he waited, gloating on their misery, prolonging their
+  suspense; then came the interruption. A step sounded on the walk
+  without, a step that was all but noiseless. A hand tried the knob
+  of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on the panel.</p>
+
+  <p>Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but
+  the narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the
+  unshaven jaws tightened.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.</p>
+
+  <p>This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's
+  hand moved to the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands,"
+  snarled a voice.</p>
+
+  <p>Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted
+  in air.</p>
+
+  <p>"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another
+  followed, until there were not two but twelve.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make a move, damn you,"&mdash;one of the revolvers had returned to
+  its holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,&mdash;"and I'll drop
+  you, every cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I
+  swing the next second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and
+  like a flash the hand returned to the holster. "Come in, you
+  idiot," he challenged into the darkness without, "come in and
+  take your medicine with the rest."</p>
+
+  <p>Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open
+  doorway, peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw
+  nothing; then of a sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily,
+  noiselessly on moccasined feet, entered a brand new actor,
+  advanced half across the room, while his eyes adjusted themselves
+  to the light, halted curiously. Back of him that instant the door
+  again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty bolt grating
+  in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded the
+  snarl the others knew so well.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin'
+  here?"</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer
+  turned. From his height of six feet one, an inch below that of
+  Pete himself, he returned the other's look fixedly, without
+  answer. He wore a soft flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown
+  corduroy trousers, supported by a belt. Unconsciously, as though
+  he were alone, he hitched the corduroys up over his narrow hips,
+  in the motion of one who has been riding. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable
+  disfigurement. Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his
+  voice was almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to
+  you. What the devil are you here for?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or
+  a muscle.</p>
+
+  <p>Ten seconds passed, fifteen.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with
+  an effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of
+  a rusty spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the
+  habit of doin' that either, pard." He halted and his great chest
+  heaved with the effort of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned
+  a bit forward. "Tell me what you want here, and tell me quick, or
+  by the eternal I'll fill you so full of holes your own mother
+  wouldn't recognise you."</p>
+
+  <p>One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were
+  focussed upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling
+  collar of the flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant
+  in the career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded
+  room. No need to tell seven of them at least that it was a moment
+  of life or death. If something, something which seemed
+  inevitable, happened, if one of those curling, itching fingers on
+  the triggers tightened, if but once that took place, their lives
+  were not worth the wording of a curse. If once again that
+  black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there would
+  be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
+  cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and
+  man by man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The
+  jaws of Bob Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from
+  beneath their sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the
+  centre of a howling pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting
+  with closed lips; his lips as grey as those of the dead man on
+  the floor. Rank Judge had not moved, but the harness on his
+  wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted from leg to
+  leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like an
+  earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
+  uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
+  before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out,
+  as a somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the
+  end of the line was the stranger from the East, representative of
+  another world. Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but
+  he&mdash;but for his clothes, his most intimate friend would not have
+  recognised him at that moment. In him, blind, racking terror was
+  personified. To have saved his soul he could not keep still, and
+  his heavy walking shoes grated as they shuffled on the rough
+  floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood in his mouth and
+  trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes, like those
+  of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting constantly in
+  a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety. If aught
+  in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a hundred
+  times over and over that second.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could
+  reproduce, no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth
+  there ever was a hell, that tiny frontier room with the
+  smoke-blackened ceiling and the single kerosene lamp sputtering
+  on the wall, was the place. Not an imp thereof, but Satan
+  himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete; doubly
+  vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
+  blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who
+  watched, was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy
+  of fourteen, soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a
+  weapon. One branded unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one
+  apparently helpless as a woman. Yet there that night, within the
+  space of minutes, from the time there fell that last speaking
+  silence, with this man the chief actor, there took place
+  something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire, from
+  the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
+  Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and
+  of man mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that
+  night Coyote Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew
+  him no more. Not that he was murdered in cold blood as he had
+  murdered others: it was not that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in
+  the starlight of that very night; but he knew, and they who
+  permitted him to go, knew that it had been better&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>But we anticipate.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.</p>
+
+  <p>But he heard nothing:&mdash;yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe,
+  catlike figure straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw
+  this same figure look at him fully, squarely; as though for the
+  first time really conscious of his presence. He saw two
+  unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek bones, out of a
+  copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them; hold
+  them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
+  owner of those eyes move&mdash;he did not hear, there was no sound,
+  not even a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw&mdash;and move
+  toward him. He saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to
+  pass a prostrate body on the floor; always silent, but always
+  coming, always drawing nearer. He saw this thing, he, Pete
+  Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was terror. He knew what
+  it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had sworn to do; the
+  muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but he made
+  no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
+  unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this
+  man. As his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
+  preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the
+  message that would make the muscles tense; but he could not.
+  Those two eyes were holding him and he could not. All this he
+  knew; and all the while that other was coming nearer and nearer.
+  He began to have a horror of that coming that he could not halt.
+  The great unshaven jaw of him worked; worked spasmodically,
+  involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a sudden felt
+  cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands. Something
+  he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
+  others like those six in the background, began to grip him;
+  something that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden
+  weak&mdash;weak as he had never felt before. And still those eyes were
+  upon him, still that dark face came closer and closer. Once more
+  his brain sent the message to kill, once more he battled against
+  the inevitable; and that me ssage was the last. There was no more
+  response than if he were clay, than if his muscles were the
+  muscles of another man. In that instant, without the voicing of a
+  word, the deed was done. That instant came the black chaotic
+  abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence, his
+  arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now,
+  so near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace
+  himself, tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming,
+  which he read on the page of that other face. But he was too
+  late. Watching, almost doubting their own eyes, the six saw the
+  end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden clench, shoot out like a
+  brown light. They heard an impact, and a second later the thud of
+  a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter lift,
+  stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
+  for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck
+  true. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence,
+  inaction. Then for the first time the victor turned, facing the
+  spectators. Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an
+  instant almost curiously,&mdash;but he did not smile. Twelve arms,
+  that had forgotten to lower, were still in the air&mdash;but he did
+  not smile. Instead he sought out the stranger in knickerbockers
+  and blouse.</p>
+
+  <p>"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to
+  the B.B. ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this
+  he?"</p><a name="VI"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+  <p>THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE</p>
+
+  <p>Well out upon the prairie, clear of the limits of the tiny
+  town, two men were headed due west, into the night, apparently
+  into the infinite. There was no moon, but here, with nothing to
+  cast a shadow, it was not dark. The month was late October, and a
+  suggestion of frost was in the air: on the grass blades of the
+  low places, was actually present. As was all but usual at that
+  day, the direction they were going bore no trace of a road; but
+  the man astride the vicious-looking roan cayuse who led the way,
+  the same copper-brown man with the corduroys of Bob Manning's
+  store, showed no hesitation. Like a hound, he seemed to discern
+  landmarks where none were visible to the eye. He rode without
+  saddle or blanket, or spur, or quirt; yet, though he had not
+  spoken a word from the moment they had started, the roan with the
+  tiny ears had not broken its steady, swinging, seemingly
+  interminable lope, had scarcely appeared conscious of his
+  presence. Almost as unit seemed this beast and human. It was as
+  though the man were born in his place, as though, like a sailor
+  on a tiny boat, accustomed through a lifetime to a rolling,
+  uncertain equilibrium, the adjustment thereto had become
+  involuntary as a heart beat, instinctive as breathing. A splendid
+  picture he made there in the starlight and the solitude; but of
+  it the man who followed was oblivious. Of one thing alone he was
+  conscious, and that was that he was very tired; weary from the
+  effect of an unusual exercise, doubly exhausted in the reaction
+  from excitement passed. With an effort he urged his own horse
+  alongside the leader, drew rein meaningly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let's hold up a bit," he protested. "I've come twenty-five
+  miles to-day already, and I'm about beat." He slapped the breast
+  pocket of his coat a bit obviously, and as his companion slowed
+  to a walk, produced a silver-mounted, seal-covered flask and
+  proffered it at arm's length. "The cork unscrews to the left," he
+  explained suggestively.</p>
+
+  <p>The dark figure of the guide made no motion of acceptance, did
+  not even glance around.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thanks, but I never drink," he declined.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not even to be sociable,"&mdash;the hand was still extended,&mdash;"not
+  when I ask you as&mdash;a friend?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I am a Sioux," simply. "I have found that liquor is not good
+  for an Indian."</p>
+
+  <p>For a second the white man hesitated; then with something akin
+  to a flush on his face, he returned the flask to his pocket
+  untasted.</p>
+
+  <p>Again, without turning, the other observed the motion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pardon me, but I did not mean to prevent you."</p>
+
+  <p>He spoke stiffly, almost diffidently, as on unused to speech
+  with strangers, unused to speech at all; but without a trace of
+  embarrassment or of affectation.</p>
+
+  <p>"I do not judge others. I merely know my people&mdash;and
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the stranger hesitated, and again his face betrayed him.
+  He had scratched an aborigine, and to his surprise was finding
+  indications of a man.</p>
+
+  <p>"I guess I can get along without it," shortly. "I&mdash;" he caught
+  himself just in time from framing a self-extenuation. "I didn't
+  have time&mdash;back there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for
+  what you did. I wish to do so now." He was looking at the other
+  squarely, as the smart civilian observes the derelict who has
+  saved his life in a runaway. Already, there under the stars, it
+  was difficult to credit to the full that fantastic scene of an
+  hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real man, of
+  condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a nasty
+  mess, and I appreciate it."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer. No polite lie, no derogation of self or of what had
+  been done. Just silence, attentive, but yet silence.</p>
+
+  <p>For the third time the white man hesitated, and for the third
+  time his face shaded red; consciously and against his will. Even
+  the starlight could not alter the obtrusive fact that he had cut
+  a sorry figure in the late drama, and his pride was sore.
+  Extenuation, dissimulation even, would have been a distinct
+  solace. Looking at the matter now, the excitement past,
+  palliation for what he had done was easy, almost logical. He had
+  not alone conformed. He had but done, without consideration, as
+  the others with him had done. But even if it were not so, back in
+  the land from which he had come, a spade was not always so
+  called. His colour went normal at the recollection. The habitual,
+  the condescending pressed anew to the fore.</p>
+
+  <p>He inspected the silent figure at his side ingenuously, almost
+  quizzically; as in his schoolboy days he had inspected his
+  plodding master of physics before propounding a query no mortal
+  could answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"I know I waved the white flag back there as hard as any of
+  them," he proffered easily. "I'm not trying to clear myself; but
+  between you and me, don't you think that Pete was merely
+  bluffing, there at the end when you came?" The speaker shifted
+  sideways on the saddle, until his weight rested on one leg, until
+  he faced the other fair. "The fellow was drunk, irresponsibly
+  drunk, at first, when the little chap stirred him up; but
+  afterwards, when he was sober.... On the square, what do you
+  think he would have done if&mdash;if you hadn't happened in?" For so
+  long that Craig fancied he had not given attention to the
+  question, the guide did not respond, did not stir in his seat;
+  then slowly, deliberately, he turned half about, turned and for
+  the first time in the journey met the other's eyes. Even then he
+  did not speak; but so long as he lived, times uncounted in his
+  after life, Clayton Craig remembered that look; remembered it and
+  was silent, remembered it with a tingling of hot blood and a
+  mental imprecation&mdash;for as indelibly as a red-hot iron seals a
+  brand on a maverick, that look left its impress. No voice could
+  have spoken as that simple action spoke, no tongue thrust could
+  have been so pointed. With no intent of discourtesy, no
+  premeditated malice was it given; and therein lay the fine sting,
+  the venom. It was unconscious as a breath, unconscious as
+  nature's joy in springtime; yet in the light of after events, it
+  stood out like a signal fire against the blackness of night, as
+  the beginning of an enmity more deadly than death itself, that
+  lasted into the grave and beyond. For that silent, unwavering
+  look set them each, the red man and the white, in their niche;
+  placed them with an assurance that was final. It was a
+  questioning, analytic look, yet, unconcealed, it bore the
+  tolerance of a strong man for a weak. Had that look been a voice,
+  it would have spoken one word, and that word was "cad."</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the two men sat so, unconscious of time,
+  unconscious of place; then of a sudden, to both alike, the
+  present returned&mdash;and again that return was typical. As
+  deliberately as he had moved previously, the Indian faced back.
+  His left arm, free at his side, hung loose as before. His right,
+  that held the reins, lay motionless on the pony's mane. In no
+  detail did he alter, nor in a muscle. By his side, the white man
+  stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit,
+  until his horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation,
+  sent the rowels of his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank,
+  with a curse held the frightened beast down to a walk. That was
+  all, a secondary lapse, a burst of flowing, irresponsible passion
+  like a puff of burning gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was
+  enough. In that second was told the tale of a human life. In that
+  and in the surreptitious sidelong glance following, that searched
+  for an expression in the boyishly soft face of his companion. But
+  the Indian was looking straight before him, looking as one who
+  has seen nothing, heard nothing; and, silent as before the
+  interruption, they journeyed on.</p>
+
+  <p>A half hour slipped by, a period wherein the horses walked and
+  galloped, and walked again, ere the white man forgot, ere the
+  instinct of companionship, the necessity of conversation,
+  urban-fostered, gained mastery. Then as before, he looked at the
+  other surreptitiously, through unconsciously narrowed lids.</p>
+
+  <p>"I haven't yet asked your name?" he formalised baldly,
+  curtly.</p>
+
+  <p>The guide showed no surprise, no consciousness of the long
+  silence preceding.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Sioux call me Ma-wa-cha-sa: the ranchers, How
+  Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig dropped the reins over his saddle and fumbled in his
+  pockets.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Indian word has a meaning, I presume?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Translated into English, it would be 'the lost
+  pappoose.'"</p>
+
+  <p>The eyebrows of the Easterner lifted; but he made no
+  comment.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have been with my uncle, with Mr. Landor, I mean,
+  long?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Since I can remember&mdash;almost."</p>
+
+  <p>The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor
+  produced a pipe and lit it. It took three matches.</p>
+
+  <p>"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting
+  a girl. Bess he called her, was it not?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in
+  getting it alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking
+  out of doors.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you like this country, this&mdash;desert?" he digressed
+  suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"It is the only one I know."</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean know well, doubtless?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I have never been outside the State."</p>
+
+  <p>Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was
+  habitual.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere
+  that it were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern
+  cemetery than to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning
+  to believe it."</p>
+
+  <p>No comment.</p>
+
+  <p>"I suppose you will leave though, some time," pressed the
+  visitor. "You certainly don't intend to vegetate here
+  always?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I never expect to leave. I was born here. I shall die
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>Once more the shoulders of the Easterner lifted in mute
+  thanksgiving of fundamental difference. Of a sudden, for some
+  indefinite reason, he felt more at ease in his companion's
+  presence. For the time being the sense of antagonism became
+  passive. What use, after all, was mere physical courage, if one
+  were to bury it in a houseless, treeless waste such as this? The
+  sense of aloofness, of tranquil superiority, returned. He even
+  felt a certain pleasure in questioning the other; as one is
+  interested in questioning a child. Bob Manning's store and Pete
+  Sweeney were temporarily in abeyance.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pardon me, if I seem inquisitive," he prefaced, "but I'll
+  probably be here a month or so, and we'll likely see a good deal
+  of each other. Are you married?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>"You will be, though." It was the ultimatum of one
+  unaccustomed to contradiction. "No man could live here alone.
+  He'd go insane."</p>
+
+  <p>"I eat at the ranch house sometimes, but I live alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't do so, though, always." Again it was the voice of
+  finality.</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian looked straight ahead into the indefinite distance
+  where the earth and sky met.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I shall not do so always," he corroborated.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought so." It was the tolerant approval of the prophet
+  verified. "I'd be doing the same thing myself if I lived here
+  long. Conformity's in the air. I felt it the moment I left the
+  railroad and struck this&mdash;wilderness." Once again the unconscious
+  shoulder shrug. "It's an atavism, this life. I've reverted a
+  generation already. It's only a question of time till one would
+  be back among the cave-dwellers. The thing's in the air, I
+  say."</p>
+
+  <p>Again no comment. Again for any indication he gave, the Indian
+  might not have heard.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig straightened, as one conscious that he was talking over
+  his companion's head.</p>
+
+  <p>"When, if I may ask, is it to be, your marriage, I mean?" he
+  returned. "While I am here?"</p>
+
+  <p>For an instant the other's eyes dropped until they were hid
+  beneath the long lashes, then they returned to the distance as
+  before.</p>
+
+  <p>"It will be soon. Three weeks from to-day."</p>
+
+  <p>"And at the ranch, I presume? My uncle will see to that, of
+  course."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, it will be at the ranch."</p>
+
+  <p>"Good! I was wondering if anything would be doing here while I
+  was here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and
+  adjusted the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do
+  you&mdash;your people&mdash;celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a
+  bit ignorant on the point."</p>
+
+  <p>"Celebrate? I don't think I understand." The Easterner glanced
+  at his companion suspiciously but the other man was still looking
+  straight ahead into the distance.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have a dance, or a barbecue or&mdash;or something of that
+  sort, don't you? It's to be an Indian wedding, is it not?"</p>
+
+  <p>Pat, pat went the horses' feet on the prairie sod. While one
+  could count ten slowly there was no other sound.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, there will be no dance or barbecue or anything out of the
+  ordinary, so far as I know," said a low voice then. "It will not
+  be an Indian wedding."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig hesitated. An instinct told him he had gone far enough.
+  Lurking indefinite in the depths of that last low-voiced answer
+  was a warning, a challenge to a trespasser; but something else, a
+  thing which a lifetime of indulgence had made almost an instinct,
+  prevented his heeding. He was not accustomed to being denied,
+  this man; and there was no contesting the obvious fact that now a
+  confidence was being withheld. The latent antagonism aroused with
+  a bound at the thought. Something more than mere curiosity was at
+  stake, something which he magnified until it obscured his
+  horizon, warped hopelessly his vision of right or wrong. He was
+  of the conquering Anglo-Saxon race, and this other who refused
+  him was an Indian. Racial supremacy itself hung in the balance:
+  the old, old issue of the white man and the red. Back into the
+  stirrup went the leg that hung over the saddle. Involuntarily as
+  before he stiffened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, is it not to be an Indian wedding?" he queried directly.
+  "You seemed a bit ago rather proud of your pedigree." A trace of
+  sarcasm crept into his voice at the thinly veiled allusion. "Have
+  you forsaken entirely the customs of your people?"</p>
+
+  <p>Pat, pat again sounded the horses' feet. The high places as
+  well as the low bore their frost blanket now, and the dead turf
+  cracked softly with every step.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I have not forsaken the customs of my people."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why then in this instance?" insistently. "At least be
+  consistent, man. Why in this single particular and no other?"</p>
+
+  <p>The hand on the neck of the cayuse tightened, tightened until
+  the tiny ears of the wicked little beast went flat to its head;
+  then of a sudden the grip loosened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why? The answer is simple. The lady who is to be my wife is
+  not an Indian."</p>
+
+  <p>For an instant Craig was silent, for an instant the full
+  meaning of that confession failed in its appeal; then of a sudden
+  it came over him in a flood of comprehension. Very, very far away
+  now, banished into remotest oblivion, was Pete Sweeney. Into the
+  same grave went any remnants of gratitude to the other man that
+  chanced to remain. Paramount, beckoning him on, one thought, one
+  memory alone possessed his brain: the recollection of that look
+  the other had given him, that look he could never forget nor
+  forgive. "Since you have told me so much," he challenged "you
+  will probably have no objection to telling me the lady's name.
+  Who is it to be?"</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell upon them. Far in the distance, so far that had
+  the white man seen he would have thought it a star, a light had
+  come into being. Many a time before the little roan had made this
+  journey. Many a time he had seen that light emerge from the
+  surface of earth. To him it meant all that was good in life:
+  warmth, food, rest. The tiny head shook impatiently, shifted
+  sideways with an almost human question to his rider at the
+  slowness of the pace, the delay.</p>
+
+  <p>"That light you see there straight ahead is in the ranch
+  house," digressed the Indian. "It is four miles away."</p>
+
+  <p>Again it was the warning, not a suggestion, but positive this
+  time; and again it passed unheeded.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have forgotten to answer my question," recalled
+  Craig.</p>
+
+  <p>Swift as thought the Indian shifted in his seat, shifted half
+  about; then as suddenly he remembered.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I have not forgotten," he refuted. "You tell me you have
+  already heard of Bess Landor. It is she I am to marry."</p>
+
+  <p>At last he had spoken, had given his confidence to this
+  hostile stranger man; not vauntingly or challengingly, but simply
+  as he had spoken his name. Against his will he had done this
+  thing, despite a reticence no one who did not understand Indian
+  nature could appreciate. Then at least it would not have taken a
+  wise man to hold aloof. Then at least common courtesy would have
+  called a halt. But Clayton Craig was neither wise nor courteous
+  this night. He was a great, weary, passionate child, whose pride
+  had been stung, who but awaited an opportunity to retaliate. And
+  that opportunity had been vouchsafed. Moreover, irony of fate, it
+  came sugar coated. Until this night he had been unconscious as a
+  babe of racial prejudice. Now of a sudden, it seemed a burning
+  issue, and he its chosen champion. His blood tingled at the
+  thought; tingled to the tips of his well-manicured fingers. His
+  clean-shaven chin lifted in air until his lashes all but met.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you mean to tell me,"&mdash;his voice was a bit higher than
+  normal and unnaturally tense,&mdash;"do you mean to tell me that you,
+  an Indian, are to marry a white girl&mdash;and she my cousin by
+  adoption? Is this what you mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>Seconds passed.</p>
+
+  <p>"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss
+  the matter further."</p>
+
+  <p>"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the
+  family it is my right, and I demand an answer."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would
+  not be long until they were home now.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," answered the Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again
+  the silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a
+  red flood, that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I
+  live, and if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is
+  white, you'll not marry her. If it's the last act of my life,
+  I'll prevent you!"</p>
+
+  <p>The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not.
+  Beat, beat, beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until
+  the hot blood fairly roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not
+  until the challenge was spoken did he realise to the full what he
+  had done, that inevitable as time there would be a reckoning. Now
+  in a perfect inundation, the knowledge came over him, and
+  unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move. Yet for long,
+  eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
+  reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's
+  store, the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding
+  thereto, recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished,
+  returned now irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might
+  against the feeling, a terror of this motionless human at his
+  side grew upon him; a blind, unreasoning, primitive terror. But
+  one impulse possessed him: to be away, to escape the outburst he
+  instinctively knew was but delayed. In an abandon he leaned far
+  forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur dug viciously into
+  his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan from the
+  surprised beast, a forward leap&mdash;then a sudden jarring halt. As
+  by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do
+  that. It will only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the
+  same hand, stopped there on the prairie. The riders were face to
+  face. "I have tried to prevent this, for the sake of the future,
+  I have tried; but you have made an understanding between us
+  inevitable, and therefore it may as well be now." The voice
+  halted and the speaker looked at his companion fixedly, minutely,
+  almost unbelievingly. "I know I am not as you white men," went on
+  the voice. "I have been raised with you, lived my life so far
+  with you; yet I am different. No Indian would have done as you
+  have done. I cannot understand it. Not three hours ago I saved
+  your life. It was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and
+  yet already you have forgotten, have done&mdash;what you have done."
+  So far he had spoken slowly, haltingly; with the effort of one to
+  whom words were difficult. Now the effort passed. "I say I cannot
+  understand it," he repeated swiftly. "Mr. Landor has been very
+  good to me. For his sake I would like to forgive what you have
+  done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it; but I
+  cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your
+  people have conquered my people, have penned them up in
+  reservations to die; but that is neither your doing nor mine. We
+  are here as man to man. As man to man you have offered me
+  insult&mdash;and without reason." For the first time a trace of
+  passion came into the voice, into the soft brown face. "I ask you
+  to take back what you have just said. I do not warn you. If you
+  do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to take
+  it back."</p>
+
+  <p>He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips
+  were twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
+  perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's
+  mane.</p>
+
+  <p>"Will you not take it back?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"No?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>That was all&mdash;and it was not all. For an instant after the
+  Easterner had spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they
+  were, face to face; then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a
+  very different scene: one as old and as new as the history of
+  man. Just what happened in that moment that intervened neither
+  the white man nor the red could have told. It was a lapse, an
+  oblivion; a period of primitive physical dominance, of primitive
+  human hate. When they awoke&mdash;when the red man awoke&mdash;they were
+  flat on earth, the dust of the prairie in their nostrils, the
+  short catch of their breath in each other's ears, out one, the
+  dark-skinned, was above. One, again the dark-skinned, had his
+  fingers locked tight on the other's throat. This they knew when
+  they awoke.</p>
+
+  <p>A second thereafter they lay so, flaming eyes staring into
+  their doubles; then suddenly the uppermost man broke free, arose.
+  In his ears was the diminishing patter of their horses' hoofs.
+  They were alone there on the prairie, under the smiling satiric
+  stars. One more moment he stood so; he did not turn; he did not
+  assist the other to rise; then he spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"I do not ask your pardon for this," he said. "You have
+  brought it upon yourself. Neither do I ask a promise. Do as you
+  please. Try what you have suggested if you wish. I am not afraid.
+  Follow me," and, long-strided, impassive as though nothing had
+  happened, he moved ahead into the distance where in the window of
+  the Buffalo Butte ranch house glowed a light.</p><a name=
+  "VII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+  <p>A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN</p>
+
+  <p>It was very late, so late that the sun entering at the south
+  windows of the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of
+  his bed when Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long
+  been over, but throughout the unplastered ranch house the
+  suggestion of coffee and the tang of bacon still lingered. At
+  home those odours would have aroused slight sensations of
+  pleasure in the man, even at this time of day; but now and here
+  they were distinctly welcome, distinctly inviting. With the aid
+  of a tin pail of water and a cracked queensware bowl, he made a
+  hasty toilet, soliloquised an opinion of a dressing-room without
+  a mirror, and descended the creaking stairs to the level
+  below.</p>
+
+  <p>The main floor of the ranch house contained but three rooms.
+  Of these, it was the living-room which he entered. No one was
+  about. The pipe which he had smoked with his uncle before
+  retiring the night before remained exactly as he had put it down.
+  His cap and gloves were still beside it. Obviously there was no
+  possibility of breakfast here, and he moved toward the adjoining
+  room. On his way he passed a hook where upon arrival he had hung
+  his riding blouse. Telltale with its litter of dust and grass
+  stems, it hung there now; and unconsciously he scowled at the
+  recollection it suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>Opening the door, he was face to face with a little
+  fast-ticking cheaply ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven,
+  and the man grimaced tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human
+  was present, but here the indications for material sustenance
+  were more hopeful. It was the dining-room, and, although in the
+  main the table had been cleared, at one end a clean plate,
+  flanked by a bone-handled knife and fork and an old-fashioned
+  castor, still remained. Moreover, from the third room, the
+  kitchen, he could now hear sounds of life. The fire in a
+  cook-stove was crackling cheerily. Above it, distinct through the
+  thin partition, came the sound of a girlish voice singing. There
+  was no apparent effort at time or at tune; it was uncultivated as
+  the grass land all about; yet in its freshness and
+  unconsciousness it was withal distinctly pleasing. It was a happy
+  voice, a contented voice. Instinctively it bore a suggestion of
+  home and of quiet and of peace; like a kitten with drowsy eyes
+  purring to itself in the sunshine. A moment the visitor stood
+  silent, listening; then, his heavy shoes clumping on the
+  uncarpeted floor, he moved toward it. Instantly the song ceased,
+  but he kept on, pushed open the door gently, stepped inside.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-morning!" he began, and then halted in an uncertainty he
+  seldom felt among women folk. He had met no one but his uncle the
+  previous night. Inevitably the preceding incident with his guide
+  had produced a mental picture. It was with the expectation of
+  having this conception personified that he had entered, to it he
+  had spoken; then had come the revelation, the halt.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-morning!" answered a voice, one neither abnormally high
+  nor repressedly low, the kind of voice the man seldom heard in
+  the society to which he was accustomed&mdash;one natural, unaffected,
+  frankly interested. The owner thereof came forward, held out her
+  hand. Two friendly brown eyes smiled up at him from the level of
+  his shoulder. "I know without your introducing yourself that
+  you're Mr. Craig," she welcomed. "Uncle Landor told me before he
+  left what to expect. He and Aunt Mary had to go to town this
+  morning. Meanwhile I'm the cook, and at your service," and she
+  smiled again.</p>
+
+  <p>For far longer than civility actually required, to the extreme
+  limit of courtesy and a shade beyond, in, fact, until it
+  unmistakably sought to be free, Clayton Craig retained that
+  proffered hand. Against all the canons of good breeding he
+  stared. Answering, a trace of colour, appearing at the brown
+  throat, mounted higher and higher, reached the soft oval cheeks,
+  journeyed on.</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon," apologised the man. He met the accusing
+  eyes fairly, with a return of his old confidence. "You had the
+  advantage of me, you know. I was not forewarned what to
+  expect."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the breaking of the ice, and they laughed together. The
+  girl had been working with arms bare to the elbow, and as now of
+  a sudden she rolled the sleeves down Craig laughed again; and in
+  unconscious echo a second later she joined. Almost before they
+  knew it, there alone in the little whitewashed kitchen with the
+  crackling cook-stove and the sunshine streaming in through the
+  tiny-paned windows, they were friends. All the while the girl
+  went about the task of preparing a belated breakfast they laughed
+  and chatted&mdash;and drew nearer and nearer. Again while Craig ate
+  and at his command the girl sat opposite to entertain him, they
+  laughed and chatted. Still later, the slowly eaten meal finished,
+  while Elizabeth Landor washed the dishes and put everything tidy
+  and Craig from his seat on the bottom of an inverted basket
+  reversed the position of entertainer, they laughed and chatted.
+  And through it all, openly when possible, surreptitiously when it
+  were wise, the man gave his companion inspection. And therein he
+  at first but followed an instinct. Very, very human was Clayton
+  Craig of Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and very, very
+  good to look upon was brown-eyed, brown-skinned, brown-haired
+  Elizabeth Landor. Neither had thought of evil, had other thought
+  than the innocent pleasure of the moment that first morning while
+  the tiny clock on the wall measured off the swift-moving minutes.
+  Good it is to be alive in sun-blessed South Dakota on a frosty
+  warm October day, doubly good when one is young; and these two,
+  the man and the girl, were both young. Months it takes, years
+  sometimes, in civilisation, with barriers of out on the prairie,
+  alone, with the pulse of nature throbbing, throbbing, insistently
+  all about, the process is very swift, so swift that an hour can
+  suffice. No, not that first hour wherein unconsciously they
+  became friends, did the angel with the big book record evil
+  opposite the name of Clayton Craig; not until later, not until he
+  had had time to think, not until&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>But again we anticipate.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm so glad you've come," the girl had ejaculated, "now when
+  you have." At last the work was over, and in unconscious
+  comradery they sat side by side on the broad south doorstep; the
+  sun shining down full upon their uncovered heads&mdash;smiling an
+  unconscious blessing more potent than formula of clergy. She was
+  looking out as she spoke, out over the level earth dazzling with
+  its dancing heat waves, mysterious in its suggestion of
+  unfathomable silence, of limitless distance. "It's such a little
+  time now before I am going away, and Uncle Landor has talked of
+  you so much, particularly of late." A pause, a hesitating pause.
+  "I suppose you'll laugh at me, but I hope you'll stay here, for a
+  time, anyway, after I'm gone."</p>
+
+  <p>Clayton Craig, the listener, was not gazing out over the
+  prairie. The object at which he was looking was very near; so
+  near that he had leaned a trifle back the better to see, to
+  watch. He shifted now until his weight rested on his elbow, his
+  face on his hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are going away, you say?" he echoed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I supposed you knew&mdash;that Uncle had told you." Despite
+  an effort, the tiny ears were reddening. She was very human also,
+  was Elizabeth Landor. "I am to be married soon."</p>
+
+  <p>"Married?" A long pause. "And to whom, please?" The voice was
+  very low.</p>
+
+  <p>Redder than before burned the tiny ears. No more than she
+  could keep from breathing could she prevent telling her secret,
+  her happiness, this prairie girl; no more than she could prevent
+  that accompanying telltale scarlet flood.</p>
+
+  <p>"You didn't know it, but you've met him already," she
+  confided. "You met him last night." To her at this time there was
+  no need of antecedent. There was but one to whom the pronoun
+  might refer. "It was he who showed you here&mdash;How Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long time&mdash;for he was thinking now, was Clayton Craig,
+  and did not answer&mdash;there was silence. Likewise the girl, her
+  confession voiced, said no more; but her colour came and went
+  expectantly, tantalisingly, and the eyes that still looked into
+  the distance were unconscious of what they saw. From his place
+  the man watched the transparent pantomime, read its meaning,
+  stored the picture in his memory; but he did not speak. A minute
+  had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was thinking
+  of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had
+  received&mdash;and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl,
+  but it was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big
+  shaggy-haired collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his
+  aimless wandering about the place to thrust a friendly muzzle
+  into the stranger's hand; but even then he did not respond. For
+  almost the first time in his irresolute life a definite purpose
+  was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig, and little things
+  passed him by. A third minute passed. The colour had ceased
+  playing on the face he watched now. The silence had performed its
+  mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was
+  prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the
+  volume and made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"I met him last, night, you say?" It was the hesitating voice
+  of one whose memory is treacherous, "I have been trying to
+  recall&mdash;Certainly you must be mistaken. I saw no one last night
+  except Uncle Landor and an Indian cow-puncher with a comic opera
+  name." He met the brown eyes that were of a sudden turned upon
+  him, frankly, innocently. "You must be mistaken," he
+  repeated.</p>
+
+  <p>Searchingly, at first suspiciously, then hesitatingly, with a
+  return of the colour that came as easily as a prairie wind stirs
+  the down of a milk-weed plant, Elizabeth Landor returned his
+  look. It was an instinct that at last caused her eyes to
+  drop.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I was not mistaken," she voiced. "How Landor is an
+  Indian. It is he I meant."</p>
+
+  <p>For a carefully timed pause, the space in which one recovers
+  from hearing the unbelievable, Craig was silent; then swiftly,
+  contritely he</p>
+
+  <p>roused. "I beg a thousand pardons," he apologised. "I meant no
+  disrespect. I never dreamed&mdash;Forgive me." He had drawn very near.
+  "I wouldn't hurt you for the world. I&mdash;Please forgive me." He was
+  silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"There's nothing to forgive." The girl's colour was normal
+  again and she met his eyes frankly, gravely.</p>
+
+  <p>"But there is," protested the man humbly. "Because he happened
+  to be minus a collar and had a red skin&mdash;I was an ass; an
+  egregious, blundering ass."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't talk that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know
+  him, was all. If you had been acquainted all your life as I
+  have&mdash;" Against her will she was lapsing into a defence, and she
+  halted abruptly. "You were not at fault."</p>
+
+  <p>Again for a carefully timed pause the man was silent. Then
+  abruptly, obviously, he changed the subject.</p>
+
+  <p>"You said you were going away," he recalled. "Is it to be a
+  wedding journey?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," tensely.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me of it, please; I wish to hear."</p>
+
+  <p>"You would not be interested."</p>
+
+  <p>"Elizabeth&mdash;" syllabalised, reproachfully. "Am I not your
+  cousin?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Haven't you forgiven me yet?" The voice was very low. Its
+  owner was again very near.</p>
+
+  <p>"You'd laugh at me if I told you," repressedly. "You wouldn't
+  understand."</p>
+
+  <p>Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away&mdash;resumed the former
+  position; the place from which, unobserved, he could himself
+  watch.</p>
+
+  <p>"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly,
+  reluctantly. Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right.
+  "Just the two of us are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse
+  and a tent and How's camp kit and stay out there alone until
+  winter comes." Against her will she was warming to the subject,
+  was unconsciously painting a picture to please the solitary
+  listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and plenty to
+  read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never
+  carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game
+  whenever we want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when
+  we please." Again unconsciously she glanced at the listener to
+  see the effect of her art. "We'll be together, How and I, and
+  free&mdash;free as sunshine. There'll be nothing but winter, and
+  that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's what I've always
+  wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes away every
+  year, and he's promised this once to take me along." Suddenly,
+  almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her companion.
+  "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of
+  listlessness in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want
+  anything at any time you can go to the nearest ranch house. One
+  always does forget something you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly.
+  "That's the best of it all. The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch
+  that way, to the west, until you get to the Hills. We probably
+  won't see another human being while we're gone. We'll be as much
+  alone as though we were the only two people in the world."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I
+  was thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for
+  breakfast. And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly
+  if I were changing my residence so frequently." He lifted from
+  his elbow. "Pardon me again, though," he added contritely. "I
+  always do see the prosaic side of things." The smile vanished,
+  and for the first time he looked away, absently, dreamily. As he
+  looked his face altered, softened almost unbelievably. "It would
+  be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be alone,
+  absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for
+  most, the single person who always had the same likes and
+  dislikes, the same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of
+  such a thing before; it would be wonderful, wonderful!"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face
+  and her eyes were bright.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig.
+  Warmer and warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was
+  silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always
+  envy other people the things we haven't ourselves; and I&mdash;" He
+  checked himself abruptly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."</p>
+
+  <p>"But it's true."</p>
+
+  <p>Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate,
+  sympathetic, unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land.
+  Just this she was; and another, this man with her, her cousin by
+  courtesy, was sad. Inevitably she responded, as a flower responds
+  to the light, as a parent bird responds to the call of a
+  fledgling in distress.</p>
+
+  <p>"Maybe it's true now&mdash;you think it is," she halted; "but
+  there'll be a time&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed
+  shortly, unmusically. "It's merely my lot."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly
+  for her as though the brightness of the day had faded under a
+  real shadow, it altered now under the cloud of another's
+  unhappiness. But one suggestion presented itself; and innocently,
+  Instinctively as a mother comforts her child, she drew nearer to
+  the other in mute human sympathy.</p>
+
+  <p>The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.</p>
+
+  <p>"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought
+  differently,</p>
+
+  <p>when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl
+  I understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter
+  how well I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch,
+  never become necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm
+  the only one of my kind, that I must go through life
+  so&mdash;alone."</p>
+
+  <p>Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as
+  one child presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her
+  companion's hands lay listless on his knee, and instinctively,
+  compellingly, she placed her own upon it, pressed it softly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my
+  own love, my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply
+  couldn't help it, it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so
+  sorry."</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at
+  her. When he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his
+  voice; but that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't
+  know how lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a
+  bit ago, shows me the other side of life, the happy side; and I
+  wish I were dead." A mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The
+  future looks so blank, so hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to
+  me. Anything else would be preferable, anything. It's so to-day,
+  now." He halted and of a sudden turned away so that his face was
+  concealed. "God forgive me, but I wish it were over with, that I
+  were dead!"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful
+  entirely, the girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could
+  not prevent were in the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so
+  good to be alive. You can't mean it. You can't."</p>
+
+  <p>"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up.
+  "What's the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else
+  cares, ever will care. What's the use&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all
+  of us here care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear
+  to hear you." She halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose
+  hinderingly in her throat. "I feel somehow as though I was to
+  blame, as though if you should mean what you said,
+  should&mdash;should&mdash;" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes
+  glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her
+  fingers locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless;
+  then of a sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had
+  suggested came over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve.
+  Not the faintest suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his
+  honesty, occurred to her, not the remotest doubt. In all her life
+  no one had ever lied to her; she had never consciously lied to
+  another. The world of subterfuge was an unread book. This man had
+  intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant it. He would
+  do it, unless&mdash;unless&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still
+  lying idle on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it,
+  held it prisoner between her own. It was not a suggestion she was
+  combating now. It was a certainty. "Promise me you won't do this
+  thing." She shook the hand insistently; at first gently, then, as
+  there was no response, almost roughly. "Tell me you won't do it.
+  Promise me; please, please!"</p>
+
+  <p>"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless
+  absolutely; I never realised before how useless. You didn't
+  intend to do it, but you've made me see it all to-day. I don't
+  blame you, but I can't promise. I can't."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a
+  mountain, as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the
+  prairie. For seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out,
+  distorted seconds; then, interrupting, something happened. There
+  was not a cloud in the sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun
+  still shone bright as before; yet distinctly, undeniably, the man
+  felt a great wet spattering drop fall from above upon his
+  hand&mdash;and a moment later another. He glanced up, hesitated;
+  sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of the
+  little woman already standing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe
+  it." He took her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's
+  length; and the angel who watched halted with pen in air,
+  indecisive. "We've known each other such a ludicrously short
+  time&mdash;but a few hours. Can it be possible that you really meant
+  that, that at least to someone it does really matter?" It was his
+  turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no answer came.
+  "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess, tell
+  me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained
+  its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively
+  sought that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his
+  ancestors, had done to similar chins in their day, lifted it
+  until their eyes met. Had he been facing his Maker that moment
+  and the confession his last, Clayton Craig could not have told
+  whether it were passion or art, that action. "Tell me, Bess girl,
+  is it mere pity, or do you really care?"</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers,
+  meeting by chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's
+  mind in the glitter of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so
+  fantastic, so unexpected that for a moment the girl did not
+  realise, did not understand. For an instant she stood so,
+  perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and wider, opening
+  wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what she
+  feared&mdash;and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking,
+  ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength
+  of a captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second
+  longer she stood there, not her chin alone, but her whole body
+  trembling; then without a word she turned, mounted the single
+  step, fumbled at the knob of the door. "Bess," said the man
+  softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not glance back nor speak,
+  and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard her slowly
+  climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close
+  behind her.</p><a name="VIII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+  <p>THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET</p>
+
+  <p>Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social
+  inclination attain the age of five and fifty without contracting
+  superfluous avoirdupois and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel
+  William Landor was no exception to the first rule was proven by
+  the wheezing effort with which he made his descent from the
+  two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob Manning's store,
+  and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the free ends
+  of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held true
+  was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
+  soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag
+  tacked above the knob of the door before him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like
+  a strip of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the
+  entrance, found it locked, and in lieu of entering tested the
+  badge of sorrow between thumb and finger. "Pant stuff, sure
+  enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob himself, or they'd
+  have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now what in
+  thunder, I wonder&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house.
+  Like the general store, the door was closed, and just above the
+  catch, flapping languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the
+  mate to the black rag dangling at his back. The spectator's
+  shaggy eyebrows tightened in genuine surprise, and with
+  near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts of the short row of
+  other buildings along the street.</p>
+
+  <p>"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
+  evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse
+  with carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted,
+  indecisive, and for the first time became conscious that not a
+  human being was in sight. In the street before him a pair of
+  half-grown cockerels with ludicrously long legs and abbreviated
+  tails were scratching a precarious living from amid the litter.
+  On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's meat market
+  a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
+  physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one
+  end of the single street to the other not a human being was in
+  sight; save the present spectator, not a single disturber of the
+  all-pervading quiet. Landor had seen the spot where the town now
+  stood when it was virgin prairie, had watched every building it
+  boasted rise from the earth, had hitherto observed it through the
+  gamut of its every mood from nocturnal recklessness to
+  profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the sun
+  nearing the meridian, deserted, dead&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though
+  another were listening. "There must have been a general cleanup
+  this time. I fear that the report of my respected nephew&mdash;" He
+  checked himself suddenly, a bit guiltily. Even though no one was
+  listening, he was loath to voice an inevitable conclusion.
+  Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at last, and,
+  leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud citizens
+  denominated the residence quarter&mdash;a handful of unpainted
+  weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
+  surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now,
+  and as he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious
+  satisfaction at the relief. At the second domicile, a residence
+  as nearly like the first as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he
+  turned in at the lane leading to the house unhesitatingly, and
+  without form of knocking opened the door and stepped inside.</p>
+
+  <p>The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its
+  uncarpeted cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished,
+  smoke-tinted walls. In it, to the casual observer, there were
+  visible but four objects: an old-fashioned walnut desk that had
+  once borne a top, but which did so no longer; two cane-bottomed
+  chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one thereof, a man. The
+  latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing an unshaven
+  chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of which the
+  lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie, and
+  scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair
+  was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though
+  he looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the
+  scrutiny, there was no salutation, not even when, without form of
+  invitation, the rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and
+  tossed his broad felt hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk.
+  A moment they sat so, while with an effort the newcomer recovered
+  his breath.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated
+  eventually. "I've noticed that the last place to look for a
+  doctor is in the proximity of a funeral." He fumbled in his
+  pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that in the other's mouth.
+  "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather from the
+  appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than
+  ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face
+  was concealed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Rather," laconically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze
+  had cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion
+  appreciatively. "I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I
+  think she can be trusted to attend to such little matters."</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes
+  were observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two
+  men known each other these five years.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family,"
+  commented Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper,
+  any time." Again the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't
+  decided yet to prove the fact for yourself, have you?"</p>
+
+  <p>Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that
+  had brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent.
+  Only too well he knew the signs&mdash;the good-natured satire that ill
+  concealed a tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of
+  trivialities that cleared the way later of non-essentials. In
+  silence he waited; and, as he had known the moment that big
+  figure appeared in the doorway, it came.</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as
+  deliberately flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his
+  side, inspected the burning tuck critically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow&mdash;an old fellow
+  like myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his
+  business as an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with
+  canvas curtains such as you've seen me drive sometimes." The
+  speaker paused a second to clear his throat. "Supposing this old
+  fellow was just riding through the country easy, taking his time
+  and with nothing particular on his mind, and all of a sudden he
+  should feel as though someone had sneaked up and stuck him from
+  behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should happen,
+  and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go
+  black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much
+  later, and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig
+  and the team stock still out in the middle of the prairie."
+  Deliberately as it had left, the cigar returned to the speaker's
+  lips, was puffed hard until it glowed furiously; and was again
+  critically examined. "Supposing such a fat old fellow as myself
+  should tell you this. As a doc and a specialist, would you think
+  there was something worth while the matter with him?"</p>
+
+  <p>Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his
+  fingers sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a
+  goodly collection of its mates, and the drooping eyelid
+  tightened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the
+  second time, and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking,
+  should be spilled out and have to foot it home three miles. What
+  would you think then?"</p>
+
+  <p>One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash
+  off his vest absently.</p>
+
+  <p>"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my
+  nephew when the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I
+  sent How over instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy
+  to come a couple of weeks ago&mdash;that's when it caught me
+  first."</p>
+
+  <p>"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"</p>
+
+  <p>Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the
+  ranch. Mary'd have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out
+  to shoot at a coyote, and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at
+  the other explanatorily, deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's
+  son and the only real relative I have, you know. I just asked him
+  to come on general principles."</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he
+  fumbled amid a litter of articles useful and useless, and,
+  extracting a battered stethoscope, shifted his chair forward
+  until it was close to the other and stuck the tiny tubes to his
+  ears. Still without comment he opened the rancher's shirt,
+  applied the instrument, listened, shifted it, listened, shifted
+  and listened the third time&mdash;slid his chair back to the former
+  position.</p>
+
+  <p>"What else do you know?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father
+  went that way when he was younger than I am, and his father the
+  same." The stogie had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a
+  fresh one steadily. "I've been expecting it to catch up with me
+  for years."</p>
+
+  <p>"Your father died of it, you say?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position,
+  and in sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was
+  waiting, I remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner
+  with a stuffed sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks
+  in the air. Mother and Frances&mdash;that's my sister&mdash;were waiting,
+  and they sent me running to call father. He was a lawyer, and a
+  great hand to shut himself up and work. I was starved hungry, and
+  I remember I hot-footed it proper upstairs to his den and threw
+  open the door." Puff! puff! went the big stogie. "An Irish
+  plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I recollect," he
+  completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that day to
+  this."</p>
+
+  <p>"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing
+  the opening anthem at the time."</p>
+
+  <p>The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared
+  impassively out the single window. It faced the main street of
+  the town.</p>
+
+  <p>"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed
+  evenly. "I see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's
+  place."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor did not look around.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he
+  recalled in mock sarcasm. "What I want to know is your
+  opinion."</p>
+
+  <p>"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal
+  agony.</p>
+
+  <p>"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be
+  before&mdash;" he halted and jerked his thumb over his
+  shoulder&mdash;"before Bob and the rest will be doing that to me?"</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes
+  beneath the other's drooping lids.</p>
+
+  <p>"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws
+  closed tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned
+  the other's gaze.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed.
+  "Tell me, and let's have it over with."</p>
+
+  <p>For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black
+  eyes bored the other through and through, at first impersonally,
+  as, scalpel in hand, he would have studied a patient before the
+  first incision in a major operation; then, as against the other's
+  will, a great drop of sweat gathered on the broad forehead,
+  personally, intimately.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated
+  evenly. He did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was
+  about to say, did not qualify in advance by intimating that his
+  prognosis might be wrong. "I think the next attack will be the
+  last. Moreover, I believe it will come soon, very soon."
+  Impassively as he had spoken, he produced a book of rice paper
+  from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long fingers
+  were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a machine.
+  Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame
+  was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly
+  smoke separated him from the other.</p>
+
+  <p>With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, passed his
+  sleeve across his forehead clumsily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I
+  said, I expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For
+  the second time his cigar was dead, but he did not light it
+  again. There was no need of subterfuge now. "I want you to do me
+  a favour." He looked at the other steadily through the
+  diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," said Chantry.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"No!" he interrogated.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said so."</p>
+
+  <p>A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as,
+  with an effort, he got to his feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly.
+  "I was labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."</p>
+
+  <p>The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long
+  fingers had locked over his knee. He did not move.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am
+  your friend that I will not promise."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm
+  dense."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one
+  thing I can't promise you."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.</p>
+
+  <p>"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of
+  your affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. But how in the world&mdash;" "Don't ask it then, please,"
+  swiftly. He ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else,
+  someone you've known for a long time."</p>
+
+  <p>"I've known you for a long time&mdash;five years."</p>
+
+  <p>"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry
+  scouted the obvious. "If there should be need she could get a
+  lawyer from the city&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to
+  avoid. Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of
+  taking care of themselves as they have of speaking Chinese.
+  They'd be on the county inside a year, with no one interested to
+  look out for them."</p>
+
+  <p>"But How&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"He's as bad. He can ride a broncho, or stalk a sandhill crane
+  where there isn't cover to hide your hat, or manage cattle, or
+  stretch out in the sun and: dream; but business&mdash;He wouldn't know
+  a bank cheque if he saw one; and, what's worse, he doesn't want
+  to know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Craig, then, your nephew&mdash;" It was not natural for Chantry to
+  be perfunctory, and he halted.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the big rancher was silent. In his lap his
+  fingers met unconsciously, tip to tip, in the instinctive habit
+  of age.</p>
+
+  <p>"I anticipated that," he said wearily. "I realise it's the
+  obvious thing to do. I never adopted How as I did the girl&mdash;I was
+  willing to, but he didn't see the use&mdash;and so Craig's the only
+  man kin I have." The life and magnetism, usually so noticeable in
+  Landor's great figure, had vanished. It was merely an old man
+  facing the end who settled listlessly into his seat. "I had big
+  hopes of the boy. I hadn't seen him since he was a youngster, and
+  Frances, while she lived, was always bragging about his doings.
+  That's why I sent for him." Pat, pat went the big fingers in his
+  lap against each other. "I've always felt that if worst came to
+  worst the women folks would have someone practical to rely on;
+  but somehow, when I saw him last night, from what he said and
+  what he didn't say, from the way he acted and the way he
+  explained&mdash;what happened here last evening&mdash;" The speaker caught
+  himself. A trace of the old shrewdness crept into the grey eyes
+  as he inspected his companion steadily. "I know How pretty well,
+  and when someone intimates to me that he is a grand-stand player,
+  or goes out of his way to pick a quarrel, or meddles with someone
+  else's affairs&mdash;" Again the big man caught himself. The scrutiny
+  became almost a petition. "I cut you off short about what went on
+  here yesterday," he digressed. "I didn't want to hear. I guess I
+  was afraid to hear. It's been foolish, I know, but I've depended
+  a good deal upon the boy, and I'm afraid he's going to be
+  a&mdash;disappointment."</p>
+
+  <p>With the old machine-like precision Chantry rolled another
+  cigarette, lit it, sent a great cloud of smoke tumbling up toward
+  the ceiling. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>"You see for yourself how it is," said the rancher. "I
+  wouldn't ask you again if there was anyone else I could go to;
+  but there isn't. Maybe I'm only borrowing trouble, maybe there
+  won't be anything for you or anyone to do; but it would be a big
+  load off my mind to know that if anything should happen.&mdash;" He
+  halted abruptly. It was not easy for this man to discuss his
+  trouble, even to a friend. "It isn't such a big thing I'm
+  asking," he hurried. "I'm sure if positions were reversed and you
+  were to request me&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I&mdash;" Of a
+  sudden, interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin,
+  ungainly figure in shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the
+  point of caricature. Unconsciously he started pacing back and
+  forth across the room, restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the
+  years he had previously known the man had Landor seen him so,
+  seen him other than the impassive, almost forbidding practitioner
+  of a minute ago. For the time being his own trouble was forgotten
+  in surprise, and he stared at the transformation almost
+  unbelievingly. Back and forth, back and forth went the thin,
+  ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved, paused
+  at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a
+  silhouette looking out over the desolate town. Watching, Landor
+  shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Once he cleared his throat as
+  if to speak. An instinct told him he should say something; but he
+  was in the dark absolutely, and words would not come. Reaching
+  over to the desk he took up his broad felt hat and sat twirling
+  it in his fingers, waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his
+  seat. His face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid
+  drooped even more than normally.</p>
+
+  <p>"I feel I owe you an apology," he said swiftly. "In a way
+  we've been friends, and as you say, it's not a big thing you ask
+  of me; but nevertheless I can't grant it. Please don't ask
+  me."</p>
+
+  <p>The hat in Landor's hands became still, significantly
+  still.</p>
+
+  <p>"I admit I don't understand," he accepted, "but of course if
+  you feel that way, I shall not ask you again." Unconsciously a
+  trace of the former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose
+  heavily. "I think I'd better be going." His mouth twitched in an
+  effort at pleasantry. "Mary'll be dying to give me the
+  details."</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume
+  his seat. Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest
+  squarely.</p>
+
+  <p>"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said
+  repressedly. "Would you like to hear?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes&mdash;if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to,
+  however&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I'd rather you&mdash;understood than to go that way." The
+  doctor cleared his throat in the manner of one who smokes
+  overmuch. "We all have our skeleton hid away somewhere, I
+  suppose. At least I have mine, and it keeps bobbing out at times
+  like this when I most wish&mdash;" He caught himself, met his
+  companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you wondered why I
+  ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried suddenly.
+  "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
+  don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there
+  was something peculiar about it all?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving
+  again. He had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it
+  tolerantly, with a vague sense of commiseration&mdash;an attitude very
+  similar to that with which the uninitiated observe a player at
+  golf; but that there might be another, a sinister meaning&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem
+  peculiar, now that you consider it?" The question came swiftly,
+  tensely, with a significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell
+  me, please."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, perhaps; but&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but
+  see." The speaker started anew the restless, aimless pace. "The
+  country is full of us; all new countries are." He was still
+  speaking hurriedly, tensely, as we tell of a murder or a ghastly
+  tragedy; something which in duty we must confide, but which we
+  hasten to have over. "It's easier to get here than to Mexico or
+  to Canada, and until the country is settled, until people begin
+  to suspect&mdash;" He halted suddenly opposite the other, his face
+  deathly pale, deathly tortured. "In God's name, don't you
+  understand now?" he questioned passionately. "Must I tell you in
+  so many words why I refused, why I don't dare do anything else
+  but refuse?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, you don't need to tell me." Absently, unconsciously, the
+  rancher produced a red bandana handkerchief and wiped his face;
+  then thrust it back into his pocket. "I think I understand at
+  last." His eyes had dropped and he did not raise them again to
+  his companion. "I'm sorry, very sorry, that I asked you; sorry
+  most of all that&mdash;" He halted diffidently, his great hands
+  hanging loose at his side, his broad shoulders drooping wearily.
+  He was not glib of speech, at best, and this second blow was hard
+  to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant, searching for
+  words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the door.
+  "I really must be going," he concluded.</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry did not ask him to stay, made no motion to prevent his
+  going. Tense, motionless, he stood where he had last paused,
+  waited in silence until the visitor's hand was upon the knob.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye Landor," he said then simply.</p>
+
+  <p>Not the words themselves, but something in the tone caused the
+  rancher to halt, to look back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-day, you mean, rather," he corrected.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, good-bye. You will not see me again."</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I'm too much of a coward for that, or I should have done
+  so long ago. I merely mean I'll move on to-morrow."</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face the two men stood staring at each other. Seconds
+  drifted by. It was the doctor who spoke at last.</p>
+
+  <p>"God knows that if I could, I'd change with you even now,
+  Landor," he said repressedly. "I'd change with you gladly." A
+  moment he stood so, tense as a wire drawn to the point of
+  breaking, ghastly tense; then of a sudden he went lax.
+  Instinctively his fingers sought his pockets, and there where he
+  stood he started swiftly to roll a cigarette.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go, please," he requested. "Good-bye."</p><a name="IX"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+  <p>THE VOICE OF THE WILD</p>
+
+  <p>Eight miles out on the prairie, out of sight of the Buffalo
+  Butte ranch house&mdash;save for a scattering herd of grazing cattle
+  in the distance, and a hobbled mouse-coloured broncho feeding
+  near at hand, out of sight of every living thing&mdash;a man lay
+  stretched full length upon the ground. It was the time of day
+  that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's store, and the
+  broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to keep the
+  glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket; an
+  Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a
+  blot of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his
+  moccasined feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would
+  have thought him asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes
+  that looked forth motionless from beneath the hat brim, that
+  apparently never for an instant left that scattering blot where,
+  distorted, fantastic from distance and through the curling heat
+  waves the herd grazed, were very wide awake indeed. They were not
+  even drowsy or off guard. They were merely passive, absolutely
+  passive. The whole body was passive, motionless, relaxed in every
+  muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the marvel&mdash;to all save
+  the thousandth human in this restless age, the impossibility. To
+  be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely nothing, not even
+  sleep&mdash;seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one of the most
+  difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need is
+  sufficient; but man, modern man&mdash;Here and there one retains the
+  faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth;
+  but here and there only. Yet it was such an one that lay alone
+  out there on the Dakota prairie that October day; one who, as
+  Craig had said, hinted unfortunately of comic opera, but who
+  never, even in remotest conception, fancied that comic opera
+  existed, a dreamer and yet, notwithstanding, a doer, an Indian,
+  and still not an Indian; Ma-wa-cha-sa by name.</p>
+
+  <p>With the approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now,
+  wandering northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane
+  and tail, set each individual hair of the little beast vibrating
+  in unjustified ferocity; and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the
+  brittle grass stalks at the man's feet with the muffled crackling
+  of a far-distant prairie fire. The herd, a great machine cutting
+  clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in its path, moved on and
+  on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling country, and passed
+  slowly from view; then, still moving forward, took shape on the
+  summit of the next rise, more distinct than before.</p>
+
+  <p>Time passed as the man lay there, time that to another would
+  have been interminable, that to him was apparently unnoted.
+  Gradually, as the full heat of the day approached, the breeze
+  became stronger, set the heat waves dancing to swifter measure,
+  sang audibly in the listener's ears its siren song of prairie and
+  of peace. The broncho, its appetite temporarily satisfied, lay
+  down fair in its tracks, groaned lazily in the action, and shut
+  its eyes. It was the rest time of the wild, and the same instinct
+  appealed to the leader of the distant herd. Down it went where it
+  stood as the pony had done, disappeared absolutely from view. A
+  moment later another followed, and another, and another. It was
+  almost uncanny, there in the fantastic glimmer, that
+  disappearance. In the space of minutes, look where one would, the
+  horizon was blank. Where the herd had been there was nothing, not
+  even a blot. It was as the desert, and the vanished herd a
+  mirage. It was like the far northland tight in the grip of
+  winter, like the ocean at night. It was the Dakota frontier at
+  midday.</p>
+
+  <p>Again time passed and, motionless as at first, wide eyed, the
+  man lay looking out. The pony was sound asleep now. Its nostrils
+  widened and narrowed rhythmically and it snored at intervals.
+  Save for this and the soft crackle of the grass and the aeolian
+  song of the wind the earth was still; still as death; so still
+  that, indescribably soft as it was immeasurably distant, the man
+  detected of a sudden against it a new sound. But he did not stir.
+  The black eyes looked out motionless as at first. He merely
+  waited a minute, two&mdash;and it came again; a bit louder this time,
+  more distinct, unmistakable.</p>
+
+  <p>This time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the
+  gaudy blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it
+  completely with his body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed
+  under his head, and, leaning back, the hat brim still shading his
+  eyes, he lay gazing up into the sky, motionless as a prairie
+  boulder.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley,
+  a chorus. It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance;
+  but nearer than before and approaching closer second by second.
+  Not from the earth did it come, but from the air. Not by any
+  stretch of the imagination was it an earthly sound, but
+  a&euml;rial. It was an alien note and still it was not alien.
+  There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
+  distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote
+  was the keynote of the time and place, its message was their
+  message, the thrill it bore to the listener the thrill of the
+  whole. It was not a musical call, that steadily approaching
+  sound. No human being has ever been able to locate it in pitch or
+  metre; yet to such as the listening man upon the ground, to those
+  who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless the sweetest,
+  most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note which
+  will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
+  the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
+  impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the
+  man heard drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was
+  the swelling, diminishing note of the migrant on its way south,
+  of the grey Canada honker en route from the Arctic circle to the
+  Gulf of Mexico.</p>
+
+  <p>"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within
+  a half mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the
+  intent of its makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many
+  throats, in many keys, louder and louder, confused as children's
+  voices at play; then in turn diminishing, retreating. Very
+  mystifying to one who did not understand would have been that
+  augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting human boulder it
+  was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he knew every
+  movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
+  broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
+  sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To
+  all wild things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile
+  high in the air as inevitably as to the beast on earth instinct
+  had said "halt." They were still going southward, still drawing
+  nearer and nearer; but it would not be for long. Already they
+  were circling, descending, searching here and there for a place
+  to alight, to rest. Suspicious even here, they were taking their
+  time; but distinct now amid the confusion was the sound of their
+  great wings against the denser air, and the "Honk! honk! honk!"
+  was a continuous chatter.</p>
+
+  <p>Circle after circle made the flock. Once their noise all but
+  ceased, and the listener fancied for an instant they were down,
+  but in a moment it was resumed louder than before, and he knew
+  they were still a-wing. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!"
+  They were very near indeed, so near that the sleeping pony was
+  aroused at the clamour and, lifting its head, looked about
+  curiously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Honk! honk! honk! Flap! flap! Swish!" Between the sun and the
+  watcher there fell a moving shadow and another&mdash;then a multitude.
+  The clamour was all-surrounding, the flap of great wings a
+  continuous beating, the whistle of air like that in a room with a
+  myriad buzzing electric fans. Temporarily the prairie breeze was
+  lost; swallowed up in the greater movement. Surprised, for the
+  moment frightened, the broncho sprang to his feet&mdash;paused
+  irresolute. For an instant the sky was hid. Overhead, to right,
+  to left, all-obscuring, was nothing but a blot of great grey
+  bodies, of wide wings lighter on the under surface, of long,
+  curious necks, of dangling feet; then, swiftly as it had come it
+  passed; the sun shone anew; the cloud and the shadow thereof,
+  going straight in the face of the wind, wandered on. "Honk! honk!
+  honk! honk! honk! honk!" they repeated; but it was the voice of
+  departure. The thing was done. There on the level earth, fair in
+  view, they had passed overhead within twenty feet of their
+  arch-enemy, man; and had not known. Now less than a quarter of a
+  mile away they were circling for the last time. One big gander
+  was already down and stretching his long neck from side to side.
+  Another, with a great flapping of wings, was beside him; and
+  another, and another. The prairie wind carried along the sound of
+  their chatter; but it was subdued now, entirely different from
+  the clamour of a bit ago. Against the blue of the sky where they
+  had been a blot only, the curling, dancing heat waves arose. One
+  and all had answered the siesta call.</p>
+
+  <p>Up to this time the man who watched had not stirred. As they
+  had gone over, the wide-open eyes had stared up at them; but not
+  in the twitching of a muscle had the long body betrayed him. Not
+  even now that it was over did he move. Instead, low at first,
+  then louder, a whistle sounded. The pony, wide awake now, was
+  grazing contentedly; but he paused. The whistle sounded for the
+  third time, and reluctantly he drew near, halted obediently. Then
+  at last there was action. With one motion the Indian was on his
+  feet. Swiftly as it was spread the blanket was rolled and
+  replaced in the waterproof pouch with the remnants of the lunch
+  and a book of odds and ends which he carried always with him. The
+  whole was strapped to the pony's bare back. As swiftly the hobble
+  was removed and, not a minute from the time the last bird was
+  down, the man and the beast, the latter only visible from the
+  direction in which they were going, were moving on a zigzag,
+  circuitous trail toward the resting yet ever-watchful flock
+  before them.</p>
+
+  <p>On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his
+  body even with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through
+  the wind-tossed mane. First to the right, then to the left they
+  tacked, halting at intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will
+  halt now and then to feed; but never losing the general
+  direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer and nearer. A half
+  hour passed by and in it they covered forty rods&mdash;half the
+  distance. Thirty minutes more elapsed and they had crossed an
+  equal portion of the remaining space. Then it was they halted and
+  a peculiar thing happened.</p>
+
+  <p>The wind had gradually risen during the day, and now, the
+  middle of the afternoon, was blowing steadily. Light objects
+  unattached move easily across the level prairie at this time of
+  year, and here and there under its touch one after another of a
+  particular kind were already in motion. Fluffy, unsubstantial
+  objects they were, as large as a bushel measure and rudely
+  circular. Looking out over the level earth often a half dozen at
+  a time were visible, rolling and halting and rolling again on an
+  endless journey from nowhere to nowhere. They were the well-named
+  tumble weeds of the prairie; as distinctive as the resting flock
+  of late autumn, of approaching winter. One of these it was now
+  that came tumbling in lazily from the south and, barely missing
+  the indifferent birds themselves, dawdled languidly on toward the
+  pony beyond. On it came, would have passed to the right; but,
+  under an impulse he in no way understood, the broncho moved to
+  intercept it. Fair in its path, the little beast would still have
+  shifted to give it right of way, for the weed is very prickly;
+  but again the authority he did not question held him in his
+  place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came
+  together. Then it was the <i>finale</i> began, the real test, the
+  matching of human cunning and animal watchfulness.</p>
+
+  <p>Left alone there upon the prairie, the indifferent broncho
+  resumed its feeding. Away from it, foot by foot, so slowly that a
+  careful observer could barely have seen it stir, moved the great
+  weed. No animal on the face of earth save man himself would have
+  been suspicious of that natural blind; even he would have
+  overlooked it had he not by chance noted that while every other
+  of its kind was moving with the wind, it slowly but surely was
+  advancing against it. The scene where the drama was taking place
+  was level as a floor, the grazed grass that covered it scarcely
+  higher than a man's hand; yet from in front not an inch of the
+  Indian's long body was visible, not a sound marked its advance.
+  In comparison with its movement time passed swiftly; a third half
+  hour while it was advancing ten rods. Already the short autumn
+  afternoon was drawing to a close. The sun was no longer
+  uncomfortably hot. The heat waves had ceased dancing. In sympathy
+  the prairie breeze, torn of the sun, was becoming appreciably
+  milder. As certainly as it had come, the brief rest period was
+  drawing to a close.</p>
+
+  <p>But the long figure that gave the blind motion showed no
+  haste. Inch by inch it advanced, never still, yet never hurrying.
+  The great unsuspicious birds were very near now, so near that a
+  white hunter would have lost his equanimity in anticipation.
+  Through the meshwork of the blind the stalker counted them.
+  Twenty-seven there were together, and near to him another, a
+  sentinel. He was within half the distance of a city block of the
+  latter, so close that he could see the beady, watchful eyes, the
+  pencillings of the plumage, the billowing of feathers as the long
+  neck shifted from side to side. Verily it was a moment to make a
+  sportsman's blood leap&mdash;to make him forget; but not even then did
+  the Indian show a sign of excitement, not for a minute did the
+  lithe body cease in its soundless serpentine motion. It was
+  splendid, that patient, stealthy approach, splendid in its
+  mastery of the still hunt; but beyond this it was more, it was
+  fearful. Had an observer been where no observer was, it would
+  inevitably have carried with it another suggestion&mdash;the
+  possibilities of such a man were a real object, one vital to his
+  life, and not a mere pastime, at stake. What would this patient,
+  tireless, splendid animal do then? What if another man, his
+  enemy, were the object, the quarry?</p>
+
+  <p>The rest time at last was over. Insidiously into the air had
+  crept a suggestion of coolness, of approaching night. In the
+  background the pony ceased feeding, stood patiently awaiting the
+  return of its rider. Far in the distance, the herd, a darker blot
+  against the brown earth, were once more upon their feet. The
+  flock, that heretofore like a group of barnyard fowls in the dust
+  and the sun had remained indolently resting and preening their
+  plumage, grew alert. One after the other they began wandering
+  here and there aimlessly, restlessly. The subdued chatter became
+  positive. Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a
+  challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings
+  tentatively, and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The
+  cycle was all but</p>
+
+  <p>complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them
+  south, that had for this brief time sent them to earth, was
+  calling again. In sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went
+  still. Another minute, another second even, perhaps, and they
+  would be gone. Through the filmy screen the stalker saw it all,
+  read the meaning. He had ere this drawn unbelievably near. Barely
+  the width of a narrow street separated him from the main
+  flock&mdash;less than the breadth of a goodly sized room the
+  motionless sentinel. It was the moment for action.</p>
+
+  <p>And action followed. Like a mighty spring the slim muscular
+  body contracted in its length. Toes and fingers dug into the
+  earth like a sprinter awaiting the starting pistol. He drew a
+  long breath. Then of a sudden, straight over the now useless
+  blind, unexpected, startling as a thunderclap out of a cloudless
+  sky, directly toward the nearest bird bounded a tall brown
+  figure, silent as a phantom. For a second the entire flock stared
+  in dumb paralytic surprise; then following there came a note of
+  terror from eight and twenty throats that rose as one voice, that
+  over the now silent prairie could have been heard for miles. It
+  was the signal for action, for escape, and, terror-mad, they
+  broke into motion. But a flock of great Canada geese cannot, like
+  quail, spring directly a-wing. They must first gather momentum.
+  This they attempted to gain&mdash;in its accomplishment all but one
+  succeeded. That one, the leader, the sentinel, was too near.
+  Almost before that first note of terror had left his throat the
+  man was upon him. Ere he could rise two relentless hands had
+  fastened upon his beating wings and held him prisoner. Hissing,
+  struggling, he put up the best fight he could; but it was
+  useless. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" shrilled the flock
+  now safe in the air. "Honk! honk! honk!" as with wings and feet
+  they climbed into the sky. "Honk! honk! honk!" softer and softer.
+  "Honk! honk! honk!" for the last time, faint as an echo; and they
+  were gone. Behind them the human and the wild thing his prisoner
+  stood staring at each other alone.</p>
+
+  <p>For a long, long time neither moved. Its first desperate
+  effort to escape past, the bird ceased to struggle, stood passive
+  in its place; passive as the man himself had remained there on
+  the ground a few hours before. Its long neck swayed here and
+  there continuously, restlessly, and its throat was a-throb; but
+  no muscle of the body stirred. It had made its fight&mdash;and lost.
+  For the time being resistance was fatuous, and it accepted the
+  inevitable. Silent as its captor, it awaited the move of the
+  conqueror. It would resist again when the move came, resist to
+  the last ounce of its strength; but until then in instinctive
+  wisdom it would husband its energy.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet that move was very slow in coming. It was the time of day
+  when ordinarily the herder collected his drove and returned
+  toward the home corral; still he showed no intention of haste.
+  The broncho was shaking his head at intervals restlessly; too
+  well trained to leave, yet impatient as a hungry child for the
+  return&mdash;and was ignored. For the time being the man seemed to
+  have forgotten all external considerations. Not savagely nor
+  cruelly, but with a sort of fascination he stood gazing at this
+  wild thing in his power. For a long, long time he did nothing
+  more, merely looked at it; looked admiringly, intimately. No
+  trace of blood hunger was in his face, no lust to kill; but pure
+  appreciation&mdash;and something more; something that made the two
+  almost kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike.
+  Each was graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of
+  its kind physical perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of
+  the wild; of solitude, of magnificent distances. Each was a part
+  of its setting; as much so as the all-surrounding silence. Last
+  of all, each stood for one quality dominant, one desire
+  overtowering all others; and that was freedom, unqualified,
+  absolute.</p>
+
+  <p>Long as it was they stood there so, the bird was true to its
+  instinct of passive inaction. It was the human that made the
+  first move. Gently, slowly, one hand freed itself, stroked the
+  silky soft plumage; stroked it intimately, almost lovingly&mdash;as an
+  animal mother caresses its young. The man did not speak, made no
+  sound, merely repeated the motion again and again. Under the
+  touch the restless head became still, the watchful black eyes
+  more watchful. That was all. Slowly as it had moved before, the
+  man's hand shifted anew, passed down, down, the glossy throat to
+  the breast&mdash;paused over the heart of the wild thing. There it
+  remained, and for the first time a definite expression came into
+  the mask-like face; a look of pity, of genuine contrition. A
+  moment the hand lay there; then, childish as it may seem, absurd,
+  if you please, the man spoke aloud.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're afraid of me, deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he
+  queried softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a
+  cannibal, I'm going to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into
+  the black eyes&mdash;deep, mysterious as the wild itself. "You think
+  this, and still you don't grovel, don't make a sound. You're
+  brave, birdie, braver than most men." He paused, and one by one
+  his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of you; so proud that
+  I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his full height.
+  Unconsciously his arms folded across his chest. "Go, birdie;
+  you're free."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer there was inaction. Unbelieving, still a
+  captive, the great bird stood there motionless as before; then of
+  a sudden it understood; it was free. By some chance, some
+  Providence, this great animal, its captor, had lost the mastery,
+  and it was free. Simultaneously with the knowledge the pent-up
+  energy of the last minutes went active, fairly explosive. With a
+  mighty rush it was away; feet and wings beating the earth, the
+  air. Swifter and swifter it went, gaining momentum with each
+  second. It barely touched the frost-brown prairie; it cleared it
+  entirely, it rose, rose, with mighty sweeps of mighty wings. Oh,
+  it was free! free! free! "Honk! honk!" Free! free! "Honk! honk!
+  honk!"</p>
+
+  <p>Like a statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the
+  dark spot on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at
+  last into the all-surrounding brown.</p><a name="X"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER X</h3>
+
+  <p>THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED</p>
+
+  <p>It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor
+  returned that evening. The herd safely corralled for the night,
+  he rode slowly toward the ranch house, and, without leaving the
+  pony's back, opened and closed the gate of the barb wire fence
+  surrounding the yard and approached the house. There was a bright
+  light in the living-room, and, still without dismounting, he
+  paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs. Landor,
+  looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her
+  hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his
+  feet on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking
+  a cigarette, and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the
+  room looked blue. Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not
+  finding conversation easy, and the former appeared distinctly
+  bored. Neither Landor himself nor the girl was anywhere visible,
+  and, after a moment, the spectator moved on around the corner.
+  The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the kitchen, and
+  the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing at last
+  under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It
+  was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim
+  light was burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the
+  barebacked broncho hesitated, looking up; then rolling his
+  wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder he moved very close to the
+  weather-boarded wall. The building was low, and, by stretching a
+  bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the second story. He
+  tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.</p>
+
+  <p>Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.</p>
+
+  <p>Still no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit
+  frosty, the pony stamped impatiently.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me
+  good-night?"</p>
+
+  <p>This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash
+  was opened; a face appeared, very white against the black
+  background.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.</p>
+
+  <p>The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was
+  unrolled.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not
+  sick?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired,
+  is all."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his
+  black head bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed
+  human that he was, there seemed to him nothing now to say,
+  nothing adequate. Meanwhile the pony was growing more and more
+  impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the</p>
+
+  <p>half-frozen ground rhythmically.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit
+  there in the window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade
+  closed as before.</p>
+
+  <p>For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of
+  head, motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a
+  sound, and at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own
+  quarters.</p>
+
+  <p>The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the
+  Buffalo Butte ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room
+  shack, grudgingly built according to government requirements to
+  prove up on a homestead, it had recently been enlarged by the
+  addition of a second larger room, and as a whole the place
+  further improved by the building of a sod and weather-board barn.
+  The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted with the
+  tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had
+  remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor
+  himself could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for
+  years, and in all that time, even in the coldest weather, the
+  voluntary exile had never lived under a roof. Primitive or
+  evolved as it might be, as youth and as man, the Indian was a
+  tent-dweller. Just now the little house was being fitted up for
+  occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of the day and at
+  evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under eight by
+  ten feet of canvas near at hand.</p>
+
+  <p>A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against
+  a dark horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house
+  yard the man on the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that
+  he had company; yet, characteristic in his every action, he did
+  not hurry. Methodically he put up the pony in the new barn, fed
+  and bedded him for the night. From the adjoining stall, out of
+  the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish whine and the protest
+  of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an observer would
+  have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a pair of
+  sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two
+  gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible.
+  It was to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps
+  from his lunch remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the
+  pony, he made a bed; then&mdash;though the little beast was only a
+  grey prairie wolf, it was a baby and lonely&mdash;he knelt down and
+  for a moment laid his own face against the other's softly shaggy
+  face.</p>
+
+  <p>When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there
+  was a moist spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had
+  inscribed its affection.</p>
+
+  <p>On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man
+  with his back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap
+  and stepped inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the
+  manner of one whose thoughts had been far away.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're late to-night," he commented.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or
+  expected, and the subject dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in
+  silence the Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging
+  opposite was burning low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the
+  tin reflector so that the light would play on the scene of
+  operations. Leaving the tent for a moment, he returned with a
+  young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put it in a skillet to
+  fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he produced a
+  couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the opposite
+  side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be
+  dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that
+  supper was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey
+  red cloth was set, the odour of coffee&mdash;cheap coffee, yet
+  surprisingly fragrant&mdash;was in the air, and the bird and potatoes
+  were temptingly brown. It was almost uncanny the way this man
+  accomplished things. Landor himself never ceased to marvel. How
+  always seemed unconscious of what he was doing, seemed always
+  thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a motion, and
+  when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was so
+  in small things. It was identical in large.</p>
+
+  <p>Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a
+  word had been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted
+  hospitably.</p>
+
+  <p>"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an
+  early supper. I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his
+  seat wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not
+  press his invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's
+  admission. Either would have been superfluous. Instead he ate
+  with the hearty appetite of a healthy human, and thereafter,
+  swiftly and methodically as he had prepared the meal, cleared the
+  table and put all in order. Then at last, the fire replenished
+  and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown within the
+  radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the
+  perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and
+  awaited the something he knew had brought the other to him at
+  this unusual hour. "There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of
+  the little table at your right," he assisted.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor roused with a trace of surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the
+  superfluous, the obvious explanation.</p>
+
+  <p>Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and
+  pressed the brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match
+  he lit crackled explosively, and he started at the unexpected
+  sound as one whose nerves were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still
+  sat for a moment puffing hard.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a
+  favour. Will you promise me?"</p>
+
+  <p>The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my
+  power, yes, sir," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the
+  relation of the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the
+  younger, the trace of almost patriarchal respect that never left
+  his manner when, addressing the elder. "If in my power, yes,
+  sir."</p>
+
+  <p>"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly.
+  "It's simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of
+  waiting until the day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though
+  the speaker were uncertain whether or no to say more. "I have a
+  particular reason for wishing it," he completed inadequately.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question
+  was voiced; there was no probing of the confidence the other
+  preferred not to give.</p>
+
+  <p>"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already
+  glowing bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had
+  done.</p>
+
+  <p>"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong
+  now, but nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day
+  while I was in</p>
+
+  <p>town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form,
+  but I feel better to have things settled." With forced matter of
+  factness he knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the
+  grate and filled the bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any
+  responsibility, so I left practically everything to Bess. I know
+  that if anything should happen to me you'd take care of her
+  mother."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very
+  different from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher
+  to-night, very obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear
+  natural. "I know you'll make her happy, my boy."</p>
+
+  <p>Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted
+  uncomfortably. As well as he knew his own name he knew that his
+  secret was secret no longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild
+  thing that hides itself to die alone he avoided direct mention of
+  the fact, direct wording of the inevitable. But something in the
+  attitude of the motionless figure before him prevented further
+  dissimulation. Some influence urged him to hasten the
+  <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> which he knew was but postponed. With an
+  effort he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the
+  other's black eyes steadily.</p>
+
+  <p>"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned
+  directly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is
+  that I'm sorry you did as you did."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sorry, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, sir. Very sorry."</p>
+
+  <p>"And why?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon
+  the Indian's face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the
+  corner by the stove was in shadow. "I will tell you why." He
+  returned to his place and stretched himself as before, his hands
+  locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr. Landor, and
+  Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you will
+  compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have
+  seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."</p>
+
+  <p>For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with
+  a fragment of coal from the grate.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't see why, How," he refuted.</p>
+
+  <p>"You do, though, sir."</p>
+
+  <p>"No. Tell me."</p>
+
+  <p>There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other
+  would not answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black
+  eyes fixed upon him unshiftingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As
+  we are now I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because&mdash;I
+  love her." He paused, and into the tent there came the
+  long-drawn-out wail of the baby prisoner. Silence returned. "As
+  surely as that little wolf is lonely, Bess will know the trouble
+  money brings if you do as you intend. Not myself, but other men
+  will teach her."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his
+  fingers.</p>
+
+  <p>"Once more I ask why, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.</p>
+
+  <p>"Because she is white and they are white, and I&mdash;am an
+  Indian."</p>
+
+  <p>At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had
+  hitherto succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man
+  could ignore it no longer. It was true, as true as human nature;
+  and he knew it was true. Other men, brothers of his own race,
+  would do this thing&mdash;as they would do anything for money; and he,
+  Landor, he who had raised her from a child, who had adopted her
+  as his own daughter, he it was who would make it possible!</p>
+
+  <p>Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt
+  to move about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought
+  himself inch by inch; battled against the knowledge of the
+  inevitable that had been dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A
+  long time he stood so, his great hands locked, his face toward
+  the blank tent wall opposite; then at last he turned.</p>
+
+  <p>"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and
+  understand the way you feel. God knows I wish it were different,
+  wish I did not believe what you say true; but things are as the
+  are. What we have to do now is the best thing possible under the
+  circumstances." He sat down in the chair again heavily, his hands
+  still locked in his lap. "If wrong has been done I am to blame, I
+  myself, in raising you and Bess together. I might have known that
+  it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for each other; but
+  I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Landor&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The big man halted. For the first time he realised the
+  admission of what he had been saying, the inevitable
+  implication&mdash;and he was silent. For seconds likewise the Indian
+  was still; but in them he was looking at the other steadily, in a
+  way he had never looked at him before, with an intensity that was
+  haunting.</p>
+
+  <p>"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There
+  was no anger in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes,
+  pathos&mdash;terrible, gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else
+  felt so&mdash;everyone except Bess herself; but you&mdash;you&mdash;I did not
+  know that before, Mr. Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the
+  bottom of his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in
+  self-defence; but he could not. There was nothing to say.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the
+  repressed voice, "not even when at first you were slow to give
+  your consent to our marriage. I fancied it was merely because you
+  thought me impractical, because I cared nothing for a life that
+  was different, was not my own. Nor again, even a bit ago when you
+  asked me to promise&mdash;what I did promise&mdash;I did not suspicion such
+  a thing. I thought it a compliment, the sincerest compliment I
+  had ever received in my life: the fact that you should trust me
+  so, with all that was dear to you in the world." Just perceptibly
+  he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's face. "But
+  I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You are
+  like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that
+  we've lived together for half a generation makes no difference.
+  You're square, square to the end. You even like me in a way.
+  You've given your word and won't go back on it; but nevertheless
+  you're sorry. Even while you urge us to marry, to have the thing
+  over, to have a responsibility off your mind, you feel you are
+  sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a second, and
+  even at this time Landor was conscious that it was infinitely the
+  longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't blame
+  you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
+  race; but nevertheless, nevertheless&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes
+  were of a sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at
+  the roof of the tent. No power on earth could have made him
+  complete that sentence, made him admit the deadly hurt it
+  suggested. From the unusual confidence of a bit ago he merely
+  lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive self. Yet as
+  plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the difference,
+  realised as well that while outwardly there would be no change,
+  from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
+  the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to
+  exist. He had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the
+  knowledge for the first time in the years they two had lived
+  together he realised how much after all he had grown to depend
+  upon this laconic human, how much he had lost. It was the last
+  drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing straw. His great
+  ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in his
+  hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
+  marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with
+  his deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them,
+  silence that by word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from
+  the stable there sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a
+  moment later, muffled, echo-like from the distance, the answering
+  call of one of its own kind free upon the infinite prairie; but
+  apparently neither man noticed, neither man cared&mdash;and the
+  silence returned. Long minutes passed. The fire in the stove
+  burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a suggestion of the
+  coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without a word he
+  put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were
+  unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a
+  moment he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of
+  attempting an explanation where none was possible; but he
+  realised it would but make matters worse, and desisted. The
+  Indian, too, had arisen, and repressedly co urteous, stood ready
+  to open the flap of the tent for the other to pass. For a moment,
+  the last moment they were ever to see each other alive, they
+  stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each knowing that
+  the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly, Landor took
+  a step forward.</p>
+
+  <p>The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he
+  passed; then closed again, shutting him out.</p>
+
+  <p>For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man
+  remained as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an
+  inanimate thing. The kerosene lamp was burning low now and
+  sputtered dismally; but he did not notice, did not hear. For the
+  third time, tremulous against the background of night and of
+  silence, came the wail of the lonely little captive. It was a
+  kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the figure
+  responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute
+  later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey,
+  bright-eyed something, happy as a puppy at release and
+  companionship. Methodically the man banked the coal fire and put
+  out the lantern. He did not make a bed, did not undress. Instead,
+  weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid the buffalo robes, lay
+  still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed, inquiring nose in the
+  darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no response, and
+  becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the silent
+  being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly&mdash;and likewise
+  became still.</p><a name="XI"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+
+  <p>THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</p>
+
+  <p>The darkness that precedes morning had the prairie country in
+  its grip when Howard, the gaunt foreman of the B.B. ranch, drew
+  rein before the silent tent, and with the butt end of his quirt
+  tapped on the heavy canvas.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wake up," he called laconically. "You're wanted at the ranch
+  house."</p>
+
+  <p>Echo-like, startling in its suddenness, an inverted V opened
+  in the white wall and in it, fully dressed, vigilant, appeared
+  the figure of its owner.</p>
+
+  <p>"What is it?" asked a voice insistently.</p>
+
+  <p>The Texan stared in unconcealed surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"In Heaven's name, man, don't you ever sleep?" he drawled.
+  "The boss is dead," he added baldly at second thought.</p>
+
+  <p>The black V closed again, and distinct in outline against the
+  white background appeared the silhouette of the listener. His
+  arms were folded across his chest in a way that was
+  characteristic, and his moccasined feet were set close together.
+  He spoke no word of surprise, asked no question; merely stood
+  there in the silence and the semi-darkness waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>The foreman was by no means a responsive soul, yet, watching,
+  there instinctively crept over him a feeling akin to awe of this
+  other silent human. There was the mystery of death itself in that
+  motionless, listening shadow.</p>
+
+  <p>"It was just before I came over to tell you that Mrs. Landor
+  raised the house," he explained. "She woke up in the night and
+  found the boss so&mdash;and cold already." Unconsciously his voice had
+  lowered. "She screamed like a mad woman, and ran down-stairs in
+  her nightdress, chattering so we could hardly understand her." He
+  slapped at his baggy chaperajos with his quirt absently. "That's
+  all I know, except there's no particular use to hurry. It's all
+  over now, and he never knew what took him."</p>
+
+  <p>Silently as before the aperture in the tent opened and closed
+  and the listener disappeared; to reappear a moment later with a
+  curled-up woolly bundle in his arms. Without a word of
+  explanation he strode toward the barn, leaving Howard staring
+  after him uncertainly. Listening, the latter heard a suppressed
+  little puppyish protest, as though its maker were very sleepy, a
+  moment later the soft, recognising whinny of a broncho, and then,
+  startlingly sudden as the figure had first emerged from the tent,
+  it appeared again, mounted, by his side.</p>
+
+  <p>For half the distance to the ranch house not a word was said;
+  then of a sudden Howard drew his horse to a walk meaningly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I suppose it's none of my business," he commented without
+  preface, "but unless I'm badly mistaken there'll be hell to pay
+  around the Buffalo Butte now."</p>
+
+  <p>Again, as at the tent door, his companion made no answer;
+  merely waited for the something he knew was on the other's mind.
+  The east was beginning to lighten now, and against the reddening
+  sky his dark face appeared almost pale.</p>
+
+  <p>Howard shifted in his saddle seat and inspected the ground at
+  his right as intently as though there might be jewels scattered
+  about.</p>
+
+  <p>"The boss's relative&mdash;Craig," he added, "has taken possession
+  there as completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead
+  of been a visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the
+  man's face an unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted
+  characteristically. "I like you, How, or I wouldn't stick my bill
+  into your affairs. That boy is going to make you trouble, take my
+  word for it."</p>
+
+  <p>Even then there was no response; but the overseer did not seem
+  surprised or offended. Instead, the load he had to impart off his
+  mind, his manner indicated distinct relief. But one thing more
+  was necessary to his material comfort&mdash;and that solace was at
+  hand. Taking a great bite of plug tobacco, a chew that swelled
+  one of his thin cheeks like a wen, he lapsed into his normal
+  attitude of disinterested reverie.</p>
+
+  <p>The ranch house was lighted from top to bottom, abnormally
+  brilliant, and as the Indian entered the odour of kerosene was
+  strong in his nostrils. In the kitchen as he passed through were
+  the other two herders. They sat side by side in uncomfortable
+  inaction, their big sombreros in their hands; and with the
+  suppression of those unused to death nodded him silent
+  recognition. The dining-room was empty, likewise the living-room;
+  but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled catch of
+  a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative, the
+  voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
+  even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of
+  the three who were already present knew that he was there.</p>
+
+  <p>Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one
+  corner of the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She
+  did not look up as he entered, apparently did not see him, did
+  not see anything. The first wild passion of grief past, she had
+  lapsed into a sort of passive lethargy. Her fingers kept picking
+  at the edge of the loose dressing sack she had put on, and now
+  and then her thin lips trembled; but that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to
+  the bed; shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done
+  when Howard first broke the news, his feet came close together
+  and his arms folded across his chest in characteristic,
+  all-observing attention. Not a muscle moved, he scarcely seemed
+  to breathe. He merely watched.</p>
+
+  <p>And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at
+  first beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised
+  until the face was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as
+  she had thrown herself down, her head all but buried from view,
+  was the girl Bess. She was sobbing as though her heart would
+  break: sobbing as though unconscious of another human being in
+  the world. Above her, leaning over her, was the form of a man:
+  Craig. His uncle had brought his belongings from the tiny town
+  the day before, and even at this time his linen and cravat were
+  immaculate. He was looking down at the little woman before him,
+  looking and hesitating as one choosing between good and evil.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he was saying, "you must not. You'll make yourself
+  sick. Besides, it's nearly morning and people will be coming.
+  Don't do so; please!"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, no indication that he had been heard; only the
+  muffled, racking, piteous sobs.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," insistently, "Bess! Listen to me. I can't have you do
+  so. Uncle Landor wouldn't like it, I know he wouldn't. He'd be
+  sorry if he knew. Be brave, girlie. You're not alone yet."</p>
+
+  <p>Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty,
+  curved shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.</p>
+
+  <p>The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face
+  went very close.</p>
+
+  <p>"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't
+  let you cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl;
+  infinitely too much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly,
+  hurts me more than I can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated,
+  and like an inexperienced gambler his face went tense and white.
+  "You must listen to me, Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are
+  others who will take care of you. I myself will take care of you,
+  girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's something I must tell you,
+  something you make me tell you now." Swiftly, unhesitatingly, he
+  leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed about her and
+  he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle, could not
+  prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you two
+  days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is
+  why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love
+  you!"</p>
+
+  <p>This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the
+  roof, came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living
+  actors remained for a second while the first light of day sifted
+  in through the tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious
+  of the drama enacting before her eyes, unconscious of anything,
+  her thin fingers still picking at the edge of her sack; the
+  motionless watcher rigid as a casting in bronze: the passionate
+  gambling stranger man holding the girl to him tightly, so tightly
+  she could not but remain so, passive; then came the climax. Of a
+  sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself into a
+  man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the
+  close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a
+  sound, one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate&mdash;and again
+  the first. Unexpected as death itself would have been at that
+  instant, Craig felt two mighty irresistible hands close on his
+  shoulders; close with a grip that all but paralysed. Irresistibly
+  again he felt himself turned about, put upon his feet; realised
+  of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly even to admit of a
+  cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot distant, he was
+  staring into the face of the one being on earth from whom he had
+  most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully intervening,
+  a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came between.
+  The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he
+  didn't. Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive
+  him&mdash;for my sake."</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test
+  kerosene still hung about the closed living-room where the same
+  four people sat in council. No effort had as yet been made to put
+  the place to rights, and in consequence it was stuffy and
+  disordered and proportionately depressing. The mound of cigarette
+  stumps which Craig had builded the night before lay unsightly and
+  evil of odour on the table. The faded rag carpet was littered
+  with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding blouse and
+  cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat, which
+  he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a
+  chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences
+  of his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two
+  days' residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete
+  possession. Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority
+  in the past, concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That
+  voice was speaking now.</p>
+
+  <p>"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is
+  buried in Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's
+  father." The voice halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his
+  other sister, who died years and years ago, are both there."
+  Obviously, too obviously, he turned away until his face was hid.
+  Into the voice there crept a throb that was almost convincing.
+  "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure, even though he wouldn't
+  have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned it the first night
+  I came, but of course I didn't realise&mdash;then&mdash;" The voice was
+  silent.</p>
+
+  <p>As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no
+  emotion, did not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain
+  awakened, had she grasped the full meaning of the thing which had
+  happened to her. Later, indefinitely later, the knowledge would
+  come, and with it the hour of reckoning; but for the present she
+  was a mere puppet in the play. Craig, the dominant, had told her
+  to dress, and she had dressed. He had summoned her to the
+  council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her now that he
+  had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had entered,
+  stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had
+  spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.</p>
+
+  <p>"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who
+  cares for him or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was
+  becoming unmanageable and the girl halted, winking hard. "It
+  seems cruel."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if he would have wished it, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"But if he hadn't wished it&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"I repeat I think he would." Craig shifted until his back was
+  toward the other man. "I think that his mentioning the
+  possibility at all, the first night I came, proves that he wished
+  it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps.... I don't know." ... A long pause; then of a sudden
+  the girl arose and walked to the window. But subterfuge was from
+  her a thing apart, and she merely leaned her face against the
+  casement. "I can't bear to think of it," she trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig moved half way toward her; then remembered, and
+  halted.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, let's decide, and not talk about it," he returned
+  swiftly. "You agree with me after all, don't you, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl did not look up.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't ask me. You and How and Aunt Mary decide." With an
+  effort she resumed her former place; but even yet she did not
+  glance at him. "Wherever you take him I shall go along, is
+  all."</p>
+
+  <p>Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think he would have liked that. I ... You agree with
+  me too, don't you, Aunt Mary?"</p>
+
+  <p>The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up
+  vacantly. "What?" she queried absently.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me," she returned
+  monotonously.</p>
+
+  <p>In sympathy, the girl's brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig
+  turned away almost impatiently. "Let's consider it settled then,"
+  he said.</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at
+  Craig that she looked. It was at that other figure in the
+  background, the figure that not once through it all had stirred
+  or made a sound. "What shall we do, How? what ought we to do?"
+  she asked.</p>
+
+  <p>For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig
+  recognise the other's presence by so much as a glance. Only the
+  look of exultation left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids
+  tightened perceptibly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't consider what I think, Bess," said a low voice at last.
+  "Do what you feel is right."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who
+  brought the decision to pass. How Landor, the Indian, it was who,
+  alone in the dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man
+  out decently, and for five dragging minutes thereafter, before
+  the others had come, stood like a statue gazing down at the
+  kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own</p>
+
+  <p>that no living human had ever seen or would ever see. How
+  Landor, the Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with
+  the closely drawn canvas curtains, drove all that day and half
+  the night to the nearest undertaker at the railroad terminus
+  beyond the river, seventy-five miles away. How Landor, the
+  Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses, but barely a
+  pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail, and ere
+  it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre,
+  knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of
+  Mary Landor he knew. How Landor it was once more who, before
+  twenty-four hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the
+  unwilling visitor by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch
+  yard. Last of all, How Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the
+  old surrey once more to the east, and with still another team
+  before him and a cold lunch in his pocket, sat waiting within the
+  hour to take the departing ones away.</p>
+
+  <p>Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was
+  superfluous. What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew.
+  That he had expected what had taken place in his absence, his
+  bringing Mrs. Burton proved. At last realisation had come, and
+  Mary Landor was paying the price of the brief lethargic respite;
+  paying it with usury, paying it with the helpless abandon of the
+  dependent. The dreary weather-coloured ranch house was not a
+  pleasant place to be in that day. Craig left it thankfully, with
+  a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting topcoat, as the
+  door closed behind him. The other passenger, the one who should
+  have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>How Landor it was again who, when minutes of waiting had
+  passed, minutes wherein Craig consumed cigarettes successively,
+  tied the team and disappeared within doors. What he said none
+  save the girl herself knew; but when he returned he was not
+  alone, and though the eyes of his companion were red, there was
+  in her manner no longer a trace of hesitation.</p>
+
+  <p>The two passengers comfortably muffled in the robes of the
+  rear seat, the driver buttoned the curtains tight about them
+  methodically. The day was very still, not a sound came to them
+  from over the prairie, and of a sudden, startlingly clear, from
+  the house itself there came an interruption: the piteous,
+  hopeless wail of a woman in a paroxysm of grief, and a moment
+  later the voice of another woman in unemotional, comforting
+  monotone.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," said a choking, answering voice, "I can't go after all,
+  I can't!"</p>
+
+  <p>Within the carriage, safe from observation, her companion took
+  her hand authoritatively, pressed it within his own.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you can, Bess," he said low. "Aunt Mary will have to
+  fight it out for herself. You couldn't help her any by
+  staying."</p>
+
+  <p>But already the Indian was gone. Within the house as before,
+  even keen-eared Mattie Burton failed to catch what he said. Had
+  she done so, she would have been no wiser, for apparently that
+  moment a miracle took place. Of a sudden, the hysterical voice
+  was silent. The man spoke again and&mdash;the watcher stared in pure
+  unbelief&mdash;her own hand in her companion's hand, Mary Landor
+  followed him obediently out to the surrey.</p>
+
+  <p>"We haven't any time to lose," he said evenly, as he drew back
+  the flap of the curtain. "You'd better say good-bye now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mother!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Bessie, girl. Bessie!"</p>
+
+  <p>Again within the ranch house, Mary Landor sank into a seat
+  with the utter weariness of a somnambulist awakened. Fully a half
+  minute the Indian stood looking down at her. For one of the few
+  times in his life his manner indicated indecision. His long arms
+  hung loose from his shoulders. His wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes.
+  The watcher thought he looked very, very weary. Then of a sudden
+  he roused. Bending over&mdash;did he foresee what was to come, that
+  moment?&mdash;he did something he had never done before.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, mother," he said, and kissed her on the lips.</p>
+
+  <p>The door closed behind him noiselessly, and a half minute
+  later the loose-wheeled old surrey went rumbling past the door.
+  Mrs. Burton was feminine and curious, and she went to the window
+  to watch it from sight. The Indian, alone on the front seat, sat
+  looking straight ahead. The bronchos, fresh from the stall, and
+  but a few weeks before wild on the prairie, tugged at the bit
+  wickedly, tried to bolt; but the driver did not stir in his
+  place. The left hand, that held the reins, rose and fell with
+  their motion, as an angler takes up slack in his line; that was
+  all. The woman had lived long on the frontier. She was
+  appreciative and pressed her face against the pane the better to
+  see. They were through the gate now, well out on the prairie. The
+  clatter of the waggon had ceased, the figure of the driver was
+  concealed by the curtains; but the bronchos were still tugging at
+  the bit, still&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mary! In heaven's name!" The sound of a falling body had
+  caught her ear and she had turned. "Mary Landor!" The dishes in
+  the cupboard against the wall shook as something heavy met the
+  floor. "Mary!" A pause and a tongue-tied examination. "My God!
+  The woman is dead!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It was ten minutes before starting time. The old-fashioned
+  engine, contemptuously relegated to the frontier before going to
+  the junk heap, was puffing at the side of the low sanded station
+  platform. The rough cottonwood box was already in the baggage
+  car. How himself had assisted in putting it there, had previously
+  settled for its transportation. Likewise he had bought the girl's
+  ticket, and checked her scanty baggage. The usual crowd of
+  loafers was about the place, and his every action was observed
+  with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the spectators
+  followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels for
+  his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the
+  vanquished&mdash;and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing
+  upon the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop
+  sounded; and when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was
+  repeated intrepidly near at hand. They put themselves elaborately
+  in his way, to move at his approach with grunts of guttural
+  protestation. Already, even here on the frontier, the Sioux and
+  his kind were becoming a novelty. Verily they were rare
+  sportsmen, those mimicking loafers; and for Indians it was ever
+  the open season. All about sounded the popping of their
+  artillery; to be, when exhausted, as often reloaded and fired
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>But through it all, apparently unseeing, unconscious, the man
+  had gone about his business. Now as he left the ticket window and
+  approached the single coach, it was nearly starting time. The
+  girl had already entered and sat motionless in her seat watching
+  him through the dusty window glass. Craig, his feet wide apart,
+  stood on the platform smoking a last cigarette. He shrugged in
+  silence as the other passed him and mounted the steps.</p>
+
+  <p>Save for the girl, the coach was empty; but, destitute of
+  courtesy, the spectators without stared with redoubled interest.
+  Without a word the man handed over the ticket and checks. Still
+  in silence he slipped a roll of bills into her passive hand.
+  Until that moment the girl had not thought of money; but even now
+  as she accepted it, there never occurred the wonder from whence
+  it had come. Had she known how those few dollars had been stored
+  up, bit by bit, month by month&mdash;But she did not know.
+  Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless,
+  was Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on
+  the threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was
+  entering, she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was
+  merely passive, trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down
+  from the prairie milkweed plant, she was to be the sport of every
+  breath of wind that blew. And already that wind was blowing. She
+  had watched the scene on the platform, had understood the intent
+  of the mimicry, had seen the winks and nudges, had heard the
+  mocking war whoop. All this she had seen, all this had been
+  stored away in her consciousness to recur again and again in the
+  future. Even now her cheeks had burned at the knowledge, and at
+  last she had watched the man's coming with a feeling of
+  repression she had never known before, whose significance she did
+  not try to analyse, did not in the least understand. She did not
+  thank him for the money. To do so never occurred to her. It was
+  the moment for parting, but she did not throw her arms about his
+  neck in abandon, as she would have done a week before. Something,
+  she knew not what, prevented. She merely sat there, repressed,
+  passive, waiting. A moment, by her side, the Indian paused. He
+  did not speak, he did not move. He merely looked at her; and in
+  his dark eyes there was mirrored a reflection of the look there
+  had been in the eyes of the wild thing he had stalked and
+  captured that day alone on the prairie. But the girl was not
+  looking at him, did not se e. A moment he stood so, unconsciously
+  as so many, many times before, in pose; then deliberately,
+  gently, ignoring the row of curious observant eyes, he took her
+  hand and raised it to his lips.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, Bess," he said low. "Come back as soon as you can;
+  and don't worry. Everything will come right." Gently as he had
+  lifted the hand, he released it. A smile&mdash;who but he could have
+  smiled at that moment?&mdash;played for an instant over his face.
+  Then, almost before the girl realised the fact, before the
+  repressive something that held her in its grip gave release, he
+  was gone. As he left the coach, Craig, who was waiting, started
+  without a word or a hint of recognition to enter. His foot was
+  already on the step, when he felt a hand upon his arm; a hand
+  with a grip whose meaning there was no misinterpreting. Against
+  his will he drew back. Against his will he met the other, face to
+  face, eye to eye. For what seemed to him minutes, but which in
+  reality was only a second, they stood so. Not a word was spoken,
+  of warning or of commonplace. There was no polite farce for the
+  benefit of the spectators. The Indian merely looked at him; but
+  as once before, alone under the stars, that look was to remain
+  burned on the white man's memory until he went to his grave.</p>
+
+  <p>"A'board," bawled the conductor, and as though worked by the
+  same wire, the engineer's waiting head disappeared within the cab
+  window.</p>
+
+  <p>Side by side, Clayton Craig and Elizabeth Landor sat watching
+  the weather-stained station and the curious assembled group, as
+  apparently they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the
+  alien figure of an Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless
+  after them; and by his side, in baiting pantomime, one gawky
+  urchin engaged in the labour of scalping a mate. The last sound
+  that reached their ears was the ironic note of a war whoop
+  repeated again and again.</p><a name="XII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+
+  <p>WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY</p>
+
+  <p>It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the
+  girl had left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the
+  bare lot adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith,
+  the twelfth since How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny
+  railway terminus. The one train from the East was due at 8:10 of
+  the morning. It was now eight o'clock. Within the shambling,
+  ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior and its
+  wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and freshly
+  dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the
+  single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed
+  according to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey,
+  recently oiled and tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn
+  up conveniently to the door. In a tiny room, designated the
+  study, of the Methodist parsonage, on the straggling outskirts of
+  the town, the only minister the settlement boasted sat staring at
+  the unpapered wall opposite. He was a mild-featured young man of
+  the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from a school of
+  theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the
+  frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared
+  marriage licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time
+  to time he glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to
+  the tiny fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and
+  frowned unconsciously.</p>
+
+  <p>At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the
+  arrival or departure of a train were congregated. In some way
+  suggestions of the unusual had passed about, and this day their
+  number was greatly augmented. Just what they anticipated they did
+  not know; they did not care. Restless, athirst for excitement,
+  they had dumbly responded to the influence in the air and come.
+  In the foreground, where a solitary Indian stood motionless,
+  waiting, there was being repeated the same puerile pantomime and
+  horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals, from the rear,
+  sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as that
+  afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar
+  even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily
+  into the sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and
+  lighter, became denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy,
+  the humorists on the platform redoubled their efforts. The
+  instinct of anticipation, of Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that
+  had brought them there, urged them on. Not one throat but many
+  underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection. A half dozen voices
+  caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to throat.
+  Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing
+  became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before,
+  who had come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd
+  pressed closer and closer about the alien, the centre of
+  attraction. When he moved farther along the platform to avoid
+  them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the innate racial
+  hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air jostled
+  him&mdash;and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no
+  retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion
+  redoubled, drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators
+  in the rear began mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to
+  see. Within the station itself the shirt-sleeved agent
+  surreptitiously locked the door to the ticket-room and sprung the
+  combination of the safe. Beginning harmless ly, the incident was
+  taking on a sinister aspect, and he had lived too long in this
+  semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning to his place of
+  observation at the window, he was just in time to see a decayed
+  turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with
+  enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear.
+  Simultaneously, with a roar and a puff of displaced air, the
+  light train drew into the station, on time.</p>
+
+  <p>Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move
+  twice farther away along the platform, he had not stirred.
+  Unbelievable as it may seem, even when the missile had struck
+  him, though it had left a great red welt, he gave no sign of
+  feeling. For a space following the arrival of the train there was
+  a lull, and in it, as though nothing had happened, he approached
+  the single coach and stood waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>It was the last of the week and travel was very light.</p>
+
+  <p>A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip
+  descended first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared
+  with speed. A big rancher with great curling moustaches and a
+  vest open save at the bottom button followed. He likewise took
+  stock of the surroundings, and discreetly withdrew. Following him
+  there was a pause; then of a sudden onto the platform, fair into
+  view of the crowd, appeared one for whom apparently they had been
+  looking, one who on the instant caused the confusion, temporarily
+  stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a dainty brown girl
+  with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth Landor
+  returned alone!</p>
+
+  <p>"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the
+  refound voice of the expectant crowd.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had
+  introduced the jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her;
+  we don't mind."</p>
+
+  <p>A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far
+  up the single street, and that brought curious faces to a half
+  score of doors.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!"
+  Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had
+  appeared. Her great eyes opened wider than before, her face
+  shaded paler momentarily, the soft oval chin trembled. Another
+  minute, another second even.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll
+  take care of you."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure
+  curiosity the crowd went silent, listening&mdash;silent until he was
+  silent; then with the lack of originality ever manifest in a mob,
+  they caught up his words themselves.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't
+  keep him waiting."</p>
+
+  <p>But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that
+  moment, she could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the
+  chin had at first presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but
+  she was beyond the reach of tears now. The complete meaning of
+  the scene had come to her at last, the realisation of personal
+  menace; and a fear such as she had never before known, gripped
+  her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word; but her
+  muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old telescope
+  satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes,
+  wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now
+  rapidly accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't
+  stand there, come."</p>
+
+  <p>At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly,
+  with trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then
+  of a sudden she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted
+  defensively. But she was not quick enough, had seen too late; and
+  that instant came the <i>d&eacute;nouement.</i> A second turnip,
+  decayed like its predecessor, aimed likewise unerringly, caught
+  her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke into fragments that
+  fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain after a
+  thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down
+  her face.</p>
+
+  <p>Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still
+  prairie about them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had
+  themselves wittingly or unwittingly done. Save one, not a human
+  being stirred. That one, no need to tell whom, transformed
+  visibly; transformed as they had never seen a human being alter
+  before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself on the
+  platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from
+  sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically.
+  In the stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear
+  distinctly. For an instant after he had reached her the Indian
+  stood so, his left arm about her, his back toward them. He did
+  not say a word, he did not move. For the first time in his life
+  he dared not. He did not see red that moment, this man; he saw
+  black&mdash;black as prairie loam. Every savage instinct in his brain
+  was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his free hand was
+  clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind his
+  right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone,
+  it was nothing, he could forgive; but now&mdash;now&mdash;He stared away
+  from them, stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky;
+  but, listening, they, who almost with fascination watched, could
+  hear beneath the catch of the girl's sobs the sound of his
+  breathing.</p>
+
+  <p>Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second
+  or a minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell.
+  What they did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them.
+  All their lives they had seen passion, seen it in every phase,
+  seen it until it was commonplace. It was in the very air of the
+  frontier, to be expected, life of the life; but as this man
+  shifted they saw a kind of which they had never dreamed. For How
+  Landor was master of himself again, master, as well&mdash;they knew
+  it, every man and youth who saw,&mdash;of them. For another
+  indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them;
+  looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face
+  within the surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a
+  drunken cowman, had seen that identical look. Now not one but a
+  score saw it, felt a terrible ice-cold menace creep from his
+  brain into their brains. Even yet he did not speak, did not make
+  a sound; nor did they. Explain it as you will, he did this thing.
+  Another thing he did as well; and that was the end. Slowly,
+  deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out his hand.
+  Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes
+  were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but
+  she had grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully
+  calm&mdash;almost as much so as the man. Deliberately as he had
+  stepped down into the spectators' midst, the Indian took the old
+  telescope from the girl's hand and, she following by his side,
+  moved a step forward. He did not touch her again nor did she him.
+  They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up the
+  single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were
+  alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed;
+  through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by
+  magic closed behind them, until they were within a solid human
+  square. But of all the assembled spectators that day, an
+  aggregation irresponsible, unchivalrous as no other rabble on
+  earth&mdash;a mob of the frontier,&mdash;not on e spoke to challenge their
+  action, not one attempted to bar their way. The complete length
+  of the platform they went so, turned the corner by the
+  station&mdash;and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view,
+  hid by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl
+  weakened. Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it
+  fast.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this
+  with you and me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"</p>
+
+  <p>But the man said never a word.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire
+  crackled cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room
+  where the same two people sat alone. Already the world had taken
+  on a different aspect. Not that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten
+  that recent incident at the depot. She would never forget it. It
+  had merely passed into temporary abeyance, taken its proper place
+  in the eternal scheme of things. Another consideration,
+  paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded it from the
+  stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent far
+  longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that
+  at last prompted speech.</p>
+
+  <p>"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried
+  suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"How did <i>you</i> know I would be at the train to meet you?"
+  echoed a voice.</p>
+
+  <p>The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow
+  when you wrote as if I&mdash;I&mdash;" A swiftly gathered shower called a
+  halt. Tear drops, ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell
+  me," she completed.</p>
+
+  <p>The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic
+  life, so there was little to record of the death of Mary Landor.
+  "It was best that you were away," he ended. "It was best for her
+  that she went when she did."</p>
+
+  <p>"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious
+  query. "You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something
+  more.</p>
+
+  <p>"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would&mdash;go while I
+  was away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me
+  away on purpose."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, How. I want to know."</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought so, Bess," simply.</p>
+
+  <p>For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new
+  understanding of this solitary human stole over her, an
+  appreciation that drowned the sadness of a moment ago. "How you
+  must care for me," she voiced almost unconsciously. "How you must
+  care for me!"</p>
+
+  <p>She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again
+  a silence fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she
+  was thinking. Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were
+  passively waiting. At the parsonage the young minister still sat
+  scowling in his study. No time had been set for the visit he
+  expected. There was no apparent reason why he should not have
+  gone about his work; but for some reason he could not. Angry with
+  himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket and,
+  placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked
+  over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.</p>
+
+  <p>Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl
+  shifted, dropped to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged
+  slowly red.</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me
+  to-day that I would come alone?"</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian showed no surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, How?" The question was just audible.</p>
+
+  <p>"Because I trusted you, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes
+  glanced up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance
+  fell. A longer pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not
+  have spoken if she would. A great preventing lump was in her
+  throat, an obstacle that precluded speech. Many things had
+  happened in the short time since she had last been with this man,
+  some things of which she was not proud; and beside such a trust
+  as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition upon her
+  part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise
+  without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The
+  memory of that draught was with her now. Under its influence she
+  spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are better than I am, How," she said.</p>
+
+  <p>If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He
+  did not even look at her. Time was passing, time which should
+  have found them upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It
+  was his day, his moment, his by right; but no one looking at him
+  would have doubted that he himself would never first suggest the
+  fact. Conditions had changed very rapidly in the recent past,
+  altered until, from his view-point, it was impossible for him to
+  make the move toward the old relation, to even intimate its
+  desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In the
+  fulness of time he was rewarded.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed
+  voice, "will you do me a favour?"</p>
+
+  <p>"What is it, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the
+  recall had come, and for the first time he was looking at her
+  steadily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.</p>
+
+  <p>"I promise."</p>
+
+  <p>Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she
+  wished to say.</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't be&mdash;offended or angry, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me
+  angry."</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you
+  humour me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married
+  to-day you'll be dressed&mdash;well, not the way you usually dress."
+  Her colour came and went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed
+  like&mdash;You understand, How."</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he
+  checked himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the
+  immaterial, went, as ever, straight to fundamentals without
+  preface or delay. Scarce one human in a generation would have
+  held aloof at that moment. It was his, his by every right; but
+  even yet he would not take it, not until&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I
+  want you to answer me&mdash;as you would answer your mother were she
+  alive." Once again, unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms
+  across his breast, his great shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr.
+  Landor's will. He has left you nearly everything. You are rich,
+  Bess; I won't tell you how rich because you wouldn't understand.
+  You are young and can live any life you wish. You know what
+  marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You know what
+  others, people of your own race, think when you are with me. They
+  have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all
+  this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish
+  to come? Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer.
+  Don't do it, or we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as
+  you know I love you, whether you have thought of all this and
+  still wish to marry me. Tell me." He was silent. Once again it
+  was a climax, and once again came oblivion of passing time. For
+  minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide open eyes, the girl
+  made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision made, not as
+  before in ignorance of what that decision meant. Deliberately,
+  with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight of
+  future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I
+  wish to marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's
+  no one in the world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry
+  you to-day, How."</p>
+
+  <p>Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until
+  then, he accepted his reward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise.
+  "Bess!" That was all.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled
+  with portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was
+  gathered; only now it was not at the station, but at a place of
+  far more sinister import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope"
+  saloon. Again in personnel it was different, notably different
+  from that of the first occasion. The same irresponsibles were
+  there, as ever they are present at times of storm; but added to
+  the aggregation now, outnumbering them, were others ordinarily
+  responsible, men typical in every way of the time and place. A
+  second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
+  gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that
+  had brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last,
+  these dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously.
+  Rumour, inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as
+  the one-story buildings on the main street, had begun when How
+  Landor had commenced to haunt the station at the time of the
+  incoming train. The incident of the morning had familiarised the
+  rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had followed a report from the
+  hotel landlord, and gossip had become certainty. Then it was that
+  horse-play had ceased, and, save at the point of congregation, a
+  silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its place. So marked
+  was the change that when at last the Indian and the girl left the
+  hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street through
+  which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
+  prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but
+  the ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath
+  it, as yet well in the distance, he detected the warning of an
+  alien note. Not as on that other day out on the prairie when he
+  caught the first trumpet call of the Canada goose, did he
+  recognise the sound from previous familiarity. Never in his life
+  had he heard its like; yet now an instinct told him its meaning,
+  told him as well its menace. Not once did he look back, not one
+  word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his side; yet as
+  surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when he
+  catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How
+  Landor realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had
+  struck, that as surely as the wild thing must battle for life he
+  must do likewise&mdash;and that soon, very, very soon.</p>
+
+  <p>Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman
+  was ever garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all
+  but humorously grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that
+  were far from a fit and the first starched shirt and collar he
+  had ever worn. Laughable unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out
+  in the individuality-destroying dress of the white brother would
+  have been to an observer who had not the key to the situation;
+  but to one who knew the motive of the alteration it was far as
+  the ends of the earth from humorous. On they went, silent now,
+  each in widely separated anticipation; and after them, at first
+  silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and noisier,
+  followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope saloon.
+  As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
+  William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead
+  where the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human
+  being was in sight, unless one were suspicious and looked
+  closely, not a face; but to the Indian eyes were everywhere.
+  Every house they passed&mdash;for they were in the residence section
+  now&mdash;had its pair or multiple pairs peering out through the slats
+  of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a performance, at the
+  side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had spread; like
+  turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their shells; yet
+  everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to take
+  a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the
+  pedestrians were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding
+  across the lawn to pause at a safe distance and growl a menace;
+  and again the all-noting Indian had observed the cause of the
+  unwonted bravery, had heard the low voice from the kitchen that
+  had urged the beast on.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm
+  approached. Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the
+  girl not been living in the future instead of the present, she
+  would have recognised its coming. For the pursuers were gaining
+  rapidly now. They had crossed onto the same street, the principal
+  residence thoroughfare, and were coming as a crowd ever moves:
+  swiftly, those in the rear exerting themselves to get to the
+  fore, and so again. Far from silent by this time, the man ahead,
+  the man who never deigned a backward glance, could hear their
+  voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
+  interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
+  seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a
+  commander, a directing spirit&mdash;and as well as he knew his own
+  name he knew who that leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in
+  the ways of the world was this man; but in the reading of his
+  fellows he was a master.</p>
+
+  <p>Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had
+  congregated at the train, he had nevertheless observed them
+  individual by individual; and in his own consciousness had known
+  that the moment, his moment, had not come: for a leader, the
+  leader, was not there. Again when the train had pulled in he had
+  watched&mdash;and still the leader did not appear. But he was not
+  deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had trusted
+  in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that
+  one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been
+  right. For the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained
+  on them so rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in
+  those brief hours the Indian and the girl had been alone in the
+  tiny room at the hotel had vitalised the lukewarm racial
+  hostility into a thing of menace, was the same man whose life he
+  had once saved, the same man about whose throat ere the identical
+  night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig by name,
+  one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master
+  of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was
+  again looking out the single window. Time and time again he had
+  tried to work&mdash;and as often failed. At last he had conformed to
+  the inevitable and was merely waiting. The house was on the
+  outskirts of the town and the window faced the open prairie; bare
+  and rolling as far as the eye could reach. He was city bred, this
+  mild-faced servant of God, and as yet the prairie country was a
+  thing at which to marvel. He was looking out upon it now,
+  absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and its
+  silence&mdash;when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no
+  longer silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by
+  moment, penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an
+  indistinct roar; rising, lowering, yet ever constant: a sound
+  unlike any other on earth, distinctive as the silence preceding
+  had been typical&mdash;the clamour of angry, menacing human voices
+  <i>en masse.</i> Once, not long before, in a city street the
+  listener had heard that identical sound; and recognition was
+  instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike that had
+  been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden
+  appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate
+  figure of the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment
+  only, for life, in their midst. Swift as memory came that
+  picture; and swift upon its heels, blotting it out, the present
+  returned. Clifford Mitchell had not been among this people long;
+  yet already he had caught the spirit of the place, and as he
+  listened he knew full well what a similar gathering among them
+  would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor; not a
+  drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after
+  moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first
+  real terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind
+  was there a doubt as to the destination of that oncoming
+  multitude. Premonition had been too electric in the air that day
+  for him to question its meaning. They were coming to him, to him,
+  Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible menacing humans. It might
+  be another for whom they had gathered; but he as well would share
+  in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he was a party to
+  the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from the time
+  the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours of
+  trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
+  anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a
+  certainty. Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring
+  out on his forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm
+  of his hand. Following came a purely physical weakness; and
+  stumbling across the room he took the seat beside the desk.
+  Unconsciously nervous, restless, his fingers fumbled with the
+  pile of papers before him until they came to a certain one he had
+  buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to do so he
+  spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
+  waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
+  cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by
+  it alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He
+  could hear them down the street at the other end of the block
+  before the residence of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a
+  certainty because part of those who came were on the sidewalk,
+  and that was the only piece of cement in town. Again, by the same
+  token, he knew when they passed the only other house in the block
+  besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk there, and when
+  the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps went
+  suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in
+  a moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own
+  yard, the roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could
+  even distinguish what they were saying now, could catch names,
+  his own name.</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed
+  before his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously
+  faces, not a few but as many as could crowd into the space,
+  appeared outside the panes, staring curiously in. Involuntarily
+  he arose to draw the shade; and at that moment, interrupting,
+  startlingly loud, there came a knock at his front door.</p>
+
+  <p>Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood
+  irresolute; and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of
+  curious faces multiplied.</p>
+
+  <p>The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but
+  deliberately and with an insistence there was no
+  misunderstanding.</p>
+
+  <p>This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out
+  the faces of the curious. The licence he had been absently
+  holding was still in his hand; but he did not delay to put it
+  down. There was something compelling in that knock; something
+  that demanded instant obedience, and he obeyed. The living-room
+  through which he passed on his way had two windows and, identical
+  with that of his study, each was black with humanity; but he did
+  not even glance at them. His legs trembled involuntarily and his
+  throat was dry as though he had been speaking for hours; yet,
+  nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly he
+  turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto
+  the street, looked out.</p>
+
+  <p>While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the
+  uncounted throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that
+  October day, they remembered that moment, the moments that
+  followed. As real life is ever stranger than fiction, so off the
+  stage occur incidents more stirring than at the play. Standing
+  there in the narrow doorway, white-faced, hesitant, awaiting a
+  command, the minister himself exemplified the fact beyond
+  question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had
+  thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his
+  consciousness for but one impression; and that was for the drama
+  ready there before him. And small wonder, for, looking out, this
+  was what he saw:</p>
+
+  <p>An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of
+  dead grass and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of
+  seed scattered on fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story
+  houses. This the background. In the midst of it all, covering his
+  lawn, overflowing into the yards of his neighbours, dense,
+  crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was a solid zone of
+  motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and untrimmed
+  beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation and
+  passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously
+  aping their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments;
+  all ages and conditions of the human frontier male were
+  there&mdash;but in that zone not a single woman. Ranchers there were
+  in corduroys and denims, cowboys in buckskin and flannel,
+  gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of their kind,
+  business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in anything
+  and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the
+  surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to
+  bay.</p>
+
+  <p>In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple
+  of paces of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them,
+  a rather small brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of
+  ready-made clothes and a derby hat of the model of the year
+  before, were nearest; so near that the door, which swung outward,
+  all but touched them. The other, a well-built, smooth-faced
+  Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands, was opposite. His
+  dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat and patent
+  leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his linen
+  was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin.
+  Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to
+  prevent, as he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and
+  left. One look told his story. He had been drinking, drinking for
+  days; and, worst of all, he had been drinking this day, drinking
+  in anticipation of this very moment, swallowing courage against
+  the necessity of the now. All this the stage and its setting,
+  upon which the white-faced minister raised the curtain.
+  Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the real
+  play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used
+  front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not
+  a sound marked the opening of the drama.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could
+  feel; then of a sudden it was broken&mdash;not by words, but by
+  action. One step the white-skinned man took forward; a step
+  toward the girl. A second step he advanced, and halted; for,
+  preventing, the hand of the other man was upon his own.</p>
+
+  <p>"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for
+  congratulations yet. Stand back, please."</p>
+
+  <p>Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a
+  curse, a challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical
+  terrified little cry the girl shrank back into the doorway
+  itself. But none other, not even the minister, stirred.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in
+  the stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to
+  stand back. I don't warn you, I merely request&mdash;but I shall not
+  ask it again." Of a sudden the speaker's hand left the other's
+  arm, dropped by his own side. "Stand back, please."</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working,
+  passionate, menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky
+  overhead. A moment they remained so while the breathless
+  onlookers expected anything, while from the doorstep the
+  minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then slowly,
+  lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took
+  silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still
+  another, and was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first
+  time he found voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd
+  have let you go if you'd given up the girl; but now&mdash;now&mdash;May God
+  have mercy on your soul now, How Landor!"</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first
+  meeting on the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It
+  was the crisis, and as before an instinct which she did not
+  understand, which she merely obeyed, brought her to the Indian's
+  side; held her there motionless, passive, mysteriously unafraid.
+  Her usually brown face was very pale and her eyes were
+  unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably calm&mdash;calm as
+  a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that solid
+  zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or
+  no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that
+  motionless, dominant human by her side.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear
+  each other breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the
+  minister's lips became audible; then came the end. Incredible
+  after it was over was that <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>, inexplicable
+  to a legion of old men, then among the boys, who witnessed it, to
+  this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take place in this
+  world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate other men
+  it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first
+  challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken.
+  The only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life
+  found voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that
+  listening, expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion
+  his arms folded across his chest.</p>
+
+  <p>"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done
+  my best to avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything
+  at your hands, every insult which you could conceive, things
+  which no white man would have permitted for a second; and so far
+  without resentment. But I shall stand it no more. I'm one to a
+  hundred; but that makes no difference. Bess Landor and I are to
+  be married now and here; here before you all. I shall not talk to
+  you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace; but as
+  surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to
+  me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I
+  shall kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do
+  this thing." A moment longer he stood so, observing them
+  steadily, with folded arms; then, still facing, he moved back a
+  step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we are ready."</p>
+
+  <p>And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two
+  hundred curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of
+  prairie night itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were
+  married. The minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held
+  the book close before his face, it was memory alone that prompted
+  the form; for the pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet
+  it was done, and, save one alone, every spectator who had come
+  with a far different intent stayed and listened to the end. That
+  one, a tall, modish alien with a red, flushed face covered with a
+  two-days' growth of bread, was likewise watching when it began.
+  But when it was over he was not there; and not one of those who
+  had followed his lead had noticed his going.</p><a name=
+  "XIII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+
+  <p>THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE</p>
+
+  <p>Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the
+  smiling, sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were
+  driving: a white girl of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man
+  a few years older. Back of them, in the direction from which they
+  had come, was the outline of a straggling, desolate village.
+  Ahead, to either side, was the rolling brown earth; and at the
+  end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall, the blue of a
+  cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
+  mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless
+  after three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit
+  mightily. Though the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains
+  of the old surrey flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace
+  alone. The harness on the ponies shuffled and creaked with every
+  move. Though the bolts of the ancient vehicle had been carefully
+  tightened, it nevertheless groaned at intervals with the motion;
+  mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of the aged, apparently
+  without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried grass rattled
+  continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was no other
+  sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny town
+  there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
+  behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
+  followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly,
+  silently, he was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce
+  visible landmarks he alone distinguished was returning to his
+  own, to the wild that lay in the distance beyond.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went;
+  and back of them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built
+  terminus grew dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as
+  completely as though it had never been. Last of all to disappear,
+  already a mere black dot against the blue, was the water tank
+  beside the station. For three miles, four, it held its place;
+  then, as, with the old unconscious motion the girl turned to look
+  back, she searched for it in vain. Behind them as before,
+  unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue surrounding
+  wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there with no
+  observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
+  alone.</p>
+
+  <p>As the first man and the first woman were alone they were
+  alone. From horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork,
+  not a suggestion of human presence. They might live or die, or
+  laugh or weep, or love or hate&mdash;and none of their kind would be
+  the wiser. All her life that she could remember the girl had
+  lived so, all her life she had but to lift her eyes above her
+  feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of fate never
+  until this moment, the moment when of all she should have been
+  the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her
+  so, did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it
+  concealed touch her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never
+  until the whirl of the last fortnight had the future, her future,
+  appealed to her as something which she herself must shape or
+  alter. Heretofore it had been a thing taken for granted,
+  preordained as the alternate coming of light and of darkness. But
+  in that intervening time, short as it was, she had awakened. Rude
+  as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they had
+  nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
+  panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes.
+  Sensations, thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously
+  dreamed had been hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before
+  her gaze. More a nightmare on the whole than an awakening it had
+  all been; yet nevertheless the experience had been hers. Much of
+  its meaning had passed her by. Events had crowded too thickly for
+  her to grasp the whole; but <i>en masse</i> the effect had been
+  definite&mdash;startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may seem, for
+  the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
+  consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
+  metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from
+  an adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken
+  place. Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not
+  adjusted herself to the change, had barely become conscious
+  thereof, yet certain as existence it self, the transformation had
+  come to pass. Looking back there that afternoon, looking where
+  the town had been and now was not, mingling with the impressions
+  of a day full to overflowing, there came to the girl for the
+  first time a definite appreciation of this thing that she had
+  done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear again,
+  passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
+  taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth
+  Landor the woman.</p>
+
+  <p>Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long.
+  With the swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement
+  vanished, the personal menace gone, the impression it had made
+  passed promptly into abeyance. As when she and the man had sat
+  alone in the tiny room of the hotel, another consideration was
+  too insistent, too vital, to prevent dominating the moment. Any
+  other diversion, save absolute physical pain itself, would have
+  been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by minute, as
+  the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
+  impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead,
+  looming bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm
+  cloud until it blotted out every other thought, came realisation
+  of the thing she had done: came appreciation of its finality, its
+  immensity. Then it was that the infinite bigness of this
+  uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite loneliness, pressed
+  her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a child is
+  afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
+  intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the
+  future endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably
+  smiling, she fancied a time when it would not smile, when its
+  passive eventless monotony would be maddening. Swiftly,
+  cumulatively as with every intense nature impressions reproduce,
+  this one augmented. Again into the consideration intruded the
+  absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
+  distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory
+  recalled the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For
+  better or for worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us
+  part." No, there was no escape, no possible avenue that remained
+  unguarded. The knowledge overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague
+  possibilities, recently born, became realities. Closer and closer
+  gripped the solitude. For the first time in her existence the
+  dead surrounding silence became unbearable. Almost desperately
+  she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she sought the hand
+  of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her eyes,
+  until the very team itself was blotted out.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"</p>
+
+  <p>The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened
+  but not yet completely returned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."</p>
+
+  <p>"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the
+  team to a walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased
+  flapping, hung close. "I don't think I understand. Tell me why,
+  Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark.
+  The dark has never hurt it. It merely is."</p>
+
+  <p>At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her,
+  he did not move. In the time since they had come into his own a
+  wonderful change had come into the face of this Indian man; and
+  never was it so wonderful as at this moment. He still wore the
+  grotesque ready-made clothes. The high collar, galling to him as
+  a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made a red circle about his
+  throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious. Very, very young
+  he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a colour in his
+  beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The black
+  eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
+  of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a
+  period of exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which
+  serves as a standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of
+  How Landor the hour had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing,
+  he could scarcely credit the truth. His cup of happiness was
+  full, full to overflowing; yet he was almost afraid to put it to
+  his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it should prove a
+  myth.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
+  worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian
+  for his God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with
+  closed lips. Thus the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein
+  he should have been eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity
+  that would never be his again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist
+  looked on at her handiwork, watched to the end; and then,
+  observing that <i>finale</i>, laughed&mdash;and with the voice of
+  Elizabeth Landor.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
+  understand, and I can't tell you."</p>
+
+  <p>She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a
+  gesture she had never used before, that had come very lately:
+  come concomitantly with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth.
+  "Anyway, I think it will be all right. I at least am not afraid
+  of your eloping with someone else." She laughed again at the
+  thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap. "It's quite
+  impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
+  someone else; even though that property were a girl."</p>
+
+  <p>Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the
+  reins. On his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively
+  he realised that something was wrong; but how to set it right he
+  did not know, and, true to his instincts, waited. "You wouldn't
+  be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl, "even
+  though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
+  anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd
+  decided to do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would
+  never occur to you; not even as possibility."</p>
+
+  <p>Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but
+  no light came.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It
+  would never occur to me to do so."</p>
+
+  <p>More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the
+  voice of Elizabeth Landor.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you
+  haven't the vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again
+  involuntarily. "I hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was
+  even more deficient than you; but now&mdash;now&mdash;" Once again the
+  tense-strung laugh, while in her lap the crossed hands locked and
+  grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a sudden I seem to see
+  humour in everything!"</p>
+
+  <p>More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very
+  inability to fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team
+  to a walk, fumbled with the reins impotently.</p>
+
+  <p>"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying
+  you. Tell me what it is, won't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly.
+  "Wrong?" Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly
+  nothing is wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so
+  much in common as you and I, who touch at so many places, are
+  just married and alone? Wrong: the preposterous idea!"</p>
+
+  <p>She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness
+  seemed to be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood
+  and was looking at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an
+  expression that was terrible in its haunting suggestion of
+  unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He did not say a word; he
+  merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the seconds passed
+  there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace of the
+  glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
+  the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the
+  mortal stab she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation
+  in a gust and contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a
+  thunderclap her mood changed, her own face, hysterically tense,
+  relaxed in a flood of tears. In an abandon of remorse her arms
+  were about him, her face was pressed close to his face.</p>
+
+  <p>"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you.
+  I'm nervous and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me;
+  please!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by
+  the map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey
+  from nowhere to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted
+  for the night.</p>
+
+  <p>Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save
+  once when, far to the south, they had detected the blot of a
+  grazing herd, they had seen no sign of human presence. They saw
+  no indication now. The short fall day was drawing to a close. The
+  sun, red as maple leaf in autumn, was level with the earth when
+  How Landor pulled up beside the low sloping bank, and, the girl
+  watching from her observation seat in the old surrey, unharnessed
+  and watered the team and hobbled them amid the tall frost-cured
+  grass to feed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness
+  have it face north, south, east, or west?"</p>
+
+  <p>"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes
+  up in the morning."</p>
+
+  <p>With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work
+  the man set about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of
+  the waggon box. The furnishings, likewise his own, were close
+  packed beside. More quickly than the watcher fancied it possible
+  the whole began to take shape. Long before the glory had left the
+  western sky the tent itself was in place. Before the chill, which
+  followed so inevitably and swiftly, was in the air the diminutive
+  soft coal heater was installed and in service. Following,
+  produced from the same receptacle as by legerdemain, vanishing
+  mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed the blanket bed,
+  the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the frontier
+  "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task was
+  complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
+  and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy
+  that light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the
+  ridge pole. Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing
+  over the soundless earth, the man approached the lone spectator
+  and held out his arms for her to descend.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man
+  at such a time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do
+  everything; cook supper and all. Come, girlie."</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when
+  Colonel William Landor had called, the two people within the tent
+  occupied the same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the
+  girl, the light from the single lantern playing upon her brown
+  head and soft oval face. In the partial darkness of the corner,
+  stretched among the buffalo robes, lay the man. His arms were
+  locked behind his head. His face was toward her. His eyes&mdash;eyes
+  unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature man&mdash;were upon her.
+  As he had said, this was his night, and he was living in it to
+  the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was at this
+  time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
+  made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
+  worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as
+  a devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother.
+  Since they had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than
+  a single sentence at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of
+  himself. Then he had apologised for the meagreness of the meal.
+  "To-morrow," he had said, "we will have game, the country is full
+  of it; but to-day&mdash;" he had looked down as he had spoken&mdash;"to-day
+  I felt somehow as though I could not kill anything. Life is too
+  good to destroy, to-day."</p>
+
+  <p>Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of
+  passing time; and now and then in her place the girl's eyes
+  lifted, found him gazing at her&mdash;and each time looked away. For
+  some reason she could not return that look. For some reason as
+  each time she caught it, read its meaning, her brown face grew
+  darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was afraid of
+  the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
+  gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the
+  depths of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love,
+  such confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it&mdash;and
+  still she did not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his,
+  oblivion of all save the passing minute; and it was not hers.
+  Prescience, without a reason therefor which she would admit,
+  prevented forgetfulness. She tried to shake the impression off;
+  but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively, almost under compulsion,
+  she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the way.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last
+  forcedly. "It makes me afraid of myself&mdash;afraid of dropping.
+  Supposing I should fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am!
+  No one, not even you, could ever put the pieces together."</p>
+
+  <p>"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you
+  did, I'd be there to catch you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far
+  above earth, you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all
+  there is in the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to
+  be annihilated, too, then."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that
+  afternoon, very carefully.</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think
+  I'm perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very&mdash;bad
+  at times."</p>
+
+  <p>The other smiled; that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even
+  fancy I don't like you and run away."</p>
+
+  <p>"If you did you'd return very soon."</p>
+
+  <p>"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know so."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Because you care for me."</p>
+
+  <p>"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go,
+  you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"You'd find your mistake and come back."</p>
+
+  <p>The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.</p>
+
+  <p>"And when I did&mdash;come back&mdash;you'd forgive me, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"There'd be nothing to forgive."</p>
+
+  <p>"It wouldn't be wrong&mdash;to leave you that way?"</p>
+
+  <p>"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if I did anything, if I&mdash;ran away with another man?"</p>
+
+  <p>The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very
+  boyish.</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me
+  back, no matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"</p>
+
+  <p>For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his
+  face the man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the
+  first time since they had been speaking his eyes dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to
+  have everything go on as before&mdash;I am human. I could not."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their
+  feet; then of a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed,
+  unmusically, hysterically.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled
+  you to say it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A
+  god shouldn't marry a mortal, you know."</p>
+
+  <p>The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed
+  on the girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say,
+  forgive me anything; but how about the other man, the one who had
+  induced me to run away? Would you forgive him, too?"</p>
+
+  <p>Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not
+  drop.</p>
+
+  <p>"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and
+  I won't give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the
+  other man, too?"</p>
+
+  <p>Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the
+  Indian lifted in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted
+  until his face stood out clear in the light like the carving of a
+  master.</p>
+
+  <p>"Forgive <i>him</i>, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a
+  god?"</p>
+
+  <p>That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human
+  being looking at the speaker that moment would have pressed the
+  query farther, no human being could have misread the answer. With
+  the same little hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in
+  her seat. The tense hands went lax.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married
+  every day, you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a
+  lot of things lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves.
+  I never supposed before that I possessed them."</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty,
+  the man arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very
+  gently lifted the girl to her feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you,
+  something you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough
+  to tell me now, girlie?"</p>
+
+  <p>Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did
+  not look up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her
+  back, her long lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly
+  as the passing shadow of an April cloud, the mood changed, she
+  glanced up.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I
+  have." She smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how
+  much you cared for me, was all. I've found out. There's
+  absolutely nothing to tell, How, man; absolutely nothing."</p>
+
+  <p>For another half minute the man looked at her deeply,
+  silently; but, still smiling, she answered him back, and with a
+  last lingering grip that was a caress his hands dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy
+  to feel that you are unhappy, is all."</p>
+
+  <p>"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that
+  came so easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his
+  sleeve. "I'm very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this
+  once again, won't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Forgive you!&mdash;Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to
+  his breast, the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating
+  him, bearing him as the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God,
+  girl, if you could only realise how I love you. I can't tell you;
+  I can't say things; but if you could only realise!"</p>
+
+  <p>Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown
+  eyes, sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips
+  parted.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again.
+  Tell me that you love me. Tell me! tell me!"</p><a name=
+  "XIV"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+
+  <p>FATE, THE SATIRIST</p>
+
+  <p>Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had
+  been read and executed. According to its provisions the home
+  ranch with one-tenth of the herd, divided impartially as they
+  filed past the executor, were left to Mary Landor; in event of
+  her death to descend to "an only nephew, Clayton Craig by name."
+  A second fraction of the great herd, a tenth of the remainder,
+  selected in the same manner, reverted at once "unqualifiedly and
+  with full title to hold or to sell to the aforementioned sole
+  blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate not previously
+  mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had builded,
+  various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city bank,
+  and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
+  could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly
+  to "my adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A
+  single sheet of greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic
+  antiquated phrases, penned laboriously with the scrawling hand of
+  one unused to writing; but incontrovertible in its laconic
+  directness. Save these three no other names were mentioned. So
+  far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called How Landor, was
+  concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred words the
+  labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet was
+  covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
+  who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river:
+  William Landor of the Buffalo Butte.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the
+  execution. Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue
+  and an isolated manner was present to conserve his interests;
+  and, satisfied on that score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a
+  beautifully embossed leather case was exhausted, in fact, to
+  quote his own words, "as quickly as a kind Providence would
+  permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence he came.
+  Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
+  Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately
+  took possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene
+  the Buffalo Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known;
+  and in its place upon the flank of every live thing controlled,
+  stared forth a C locked to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new
+  master, Clayton Craig.</p>
+
+  <p>Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and
+  become a memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made
+  man and wife&mdash;and no one was present at the departure to bid them
+  adieu. Back from the land of nothingness they came&mdash;and again no
+  one was at hand to welcome their return. In but one respect did
+  the accomplishment of that plan alter from the prearranged; and
+  that one item was the consideration of time. They did not stay
+  away until winter, as the girl had announced. Starting in
+  November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay for
+  more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
+  Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on."
+  Battle against it as she might, she was powerless under its
+  dominance. She knew not from whence had come the change, nor why;
+  but that in the last weeks she had altered fundamentally,
+  unbelievably, she could not question. The very first night out,
+  ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of change on the
+  morrow. The next day it was the same&mdash;and the next. When they
+  were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
+  time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in
+  sympathy her companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would
+  come a pause; and the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would
+  close upon her anew. Thus day by day passed until a week had gone
+  by. Then one morning when camp was struck, instead of advancing
+  farther, the man had faced back the way they had come. He made no
+  comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days that followed did
+  he once allude to the reason that had caused the change of plan.
+  When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she lapsed
+  listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
+  precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for
+  acting it was, even the girl could not but realise at that time,
+  was masterly. What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no
+  human being could ever know; for he never gave the semblance of a
+  hint. Probably not sinc e man and woman began under the sanction
+  of law and of clergy to mate, had there been such a honeymoon.
+  Probably never will there be such another. That the whole
+  expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could have
+  doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
+  which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could
+  have questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home,
+  had passed. The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in
+  its frost-brown sun-blessed perfection as though spread
+  luxuriously within the tropics. Adam was there, Adam prepared to
+  accept it as normally content as the first man; but Eve was not
+  satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had shown his face and
+  tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit the fact
+  even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this newborn
+  discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the prairie
+  itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
+  returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously
+  by.</p>
+
+  <p>One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament;
+  and that was the opening of the new house. This was to be a
+  surprise, a climax boyishly reserved by its builder for their
+  return. The man had intentionally so arranged that the start
+  should be from the old ranch, and in consequence the girl had
+  never seen either the new or its furnishings, until the November
+  day when the overloaded surrey drew up in the dooryard, and the
+  journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable, in the light of
+  the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that frontier nest
+  represented, the moment must have been to the man when he led the
+  way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he threw
+  open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
+  her.</p>
+
+  <p>"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he
+  said, and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as
+  everything was, and cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that
+  was overwhelming. Never before, not even that first night they
+  had been alone, had the girl realised as at this moment what she
+  meant to this solitary, impassive human. Never before until these
+  mute things he had fashioned with his own hands stood before her
+  eyes did she realise fully his love. With the knowledge now came
+  a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms flew about
+  his neck. Her wet face was hid.</p>
+
+  <p>"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an
+  awakening the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came
+  the reaction. The man took up his duties where he had laid them
+  down: the supervision of a herd scattered of necessity to the
+  winds, the personal inspection of a range that stretched away for
+  miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch for the day packed in the
+  pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left astride the
+  mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark or
+  later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming,
+  ever considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the
+  house dark and the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this
+  and the girl stretched listless on the bed against the wall,
+  staring wide-eyed into the darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently,
+  and gone about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not
+  deceived, and that moment, if not before, he recognised the
+  inevitable.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest
+  detail his manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was
+  How Landor. With a blindness that was masterly, that was all but
+  fatuous, he ignored the obvious. His equanimity and patience were
+  invulnerable. Silent by nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an
+  effort to be companionable. Probably no white man alive would
+  have done as he did, would have borne what he did; perhaps it
+  would have been better had he done differently;</p>
+
+  <p>but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling
+  starched linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to
+  the distant town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day
+  after day he polished his boots and struggled with his cravat.
+  Puerile unqualifiedly an observer would have characterised this
+  repeated farce; but to one who knew the tale in its entirety, it
+  would have seemed very far from humorous. All but sacrilege, it
+  is to tell of this starved human's doing at this time. The
+  sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in this life and
+  jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How Landor's
+  chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it all
+  he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost
+  of a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment
+  he entered his house until the moment he daily disappeared,
+  astride the vixenish undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone,
+  when there were no human eyes to observe, to pity perchance,
+  then&mdash;But let it pass what he did then. It is another tale and
+  extraneous.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the
+  days grew shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened
+  shade by shade. No human being came their way, nor wild thing,
+  save roving murderers on pillage bent. Even the cowmen he
+  employed, the old hands he and Bess had both known for years,
+  avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the execution of the
+  will he had built them another ranch house at a distance on the
+  range, and there they congregated and clung. They accepted his
+  money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further than
+  that&mdash;they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
+  whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted
+  on&mdash;whither no one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one
+  other cowboy, the old Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally,
+  there neither was nor had been any outward manifestation of
+  hostility, nor even gossip. But the olden times when the
+  hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor was the meeting
+  point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were gone. They
+  did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did a
+  subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face,
+  when by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging.
+  His reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise;
+  but, again, they were white and he was red&mdash;and between them the
+  chasm yawned.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its
+  sway. It was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land
+  the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of
+  the unfit. Here and there upon the range, dark against the now
+  background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a
+  weakling. Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves
+  howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, and
+  the spot where it had been would merge once more into the
+  universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
+  migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at
+  daylight or at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing
+  wings, or the booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any
+  season, this impression of the wild was even more pronounced now.
+  The thought of God is synonymous with immensity; and so being,
+  Deity was here eternally manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind
+  could not conceive a more infinite bigness than this gleaming
+  frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon beneath the blazing
+  winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of words to
+  describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the girl,
+  Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
+  at a time did not glance without.</p>
+
+  <p>Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring.
+  Long before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read
+  incontestably its advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured
+  cayuse bore him over the range, was there the mellow crunch of
+  snow underfoot. Instead the sound was crisp and sharp: the
+  crackling of ice where the snow had melted and frozen again.
+  Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page appeared
+  another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and <i>en
+  masse</i>, wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown
+  blots the size of an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak
+  under the influence of prolonged winter, and lay down frequently
+  to rest, their warm bodies branding the evidence with melted
+  snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on the ranges, that sprang
+  daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were changing their
+  winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though soiled by
+  a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
+  white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day
+  by day, as though they were a pestilence, they expanded,
+  augmented until they, and not the white, became the dominant
+  tone. The sun was high in the sky now. At noontime the man's
+  shadow was short, scarcely extended back of his pony's feet.
+  Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed through, there
+  was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles. After
+  that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
+  in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became
+  creeks; flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the
+  day long. Not only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost
+  their white blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown.
+  Migratory life, long absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites
+  soared far overhead on motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest
+  of heralds, practised their five-toned lay. Here and there, to
+  the north of prairie boulders, appeared tufts of green; tufts
+  that, like the preceding brown, grew and gr ew and grew until
+  they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last, the climax, the
+  <i>finale</i> of the play, came life, animal and vegetable, with
+  a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
+  whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
+  following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth
+  in their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes
+  swarmed with their new-come denizens. Last of all, final
+  assurance of a new season's advent, by day and by night,
+  swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical as distant chiming
+  bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie and of
+  spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
+  that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway
+  distinctive, alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!"
+  sounded and echoed and re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened
+  land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it repeated; and listening humans
+  smiled and commented unnecessarily each to the other: "Spring is
+  not coming. It is here."</p><a name="XV"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XV</h3>
+
+  <p>THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</p>
+
+  <p>A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full
+  grown, swung slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house
+  and the barn as the stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not
+  glance behind, he made no sound. With almost human dignity he
+  vacated the premises to the newcomer. Not until he reached his
+  destination, the ill-lighted stable, did curiosity get the better
+  of prudence; then, safe within the doorway, he wheeled about, and
+  with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his long, sensitive
+  nose taking minutest testimony.</p>
+
+  <p>The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in
+  approved riding togs, halted likewise and returned the look;
+  equally minutely, equally suspiciously. The horse he rode was one
+  of a kind seldom seen on the ranges: a thoroughbred with slender
+  legs and sensitive ears. The rider sat his saddle well;
+  remarkably well for one obviously from another life. Both the
+  horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance they made
+  a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective
+  "smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the
+  looseness of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with
+  his general youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle
+  here and there, have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so,
+  taking in every detail of the commonplace surroundings. Then,
+  apparently satisfied, he dismounted and, tying the animal to the
+  wheel of an old surrey drawn up in the yard, he approached the
+  single entrance of the house and rapped.</p>
+
+  <p>To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to
+  the elbow, a frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a
+  plain gingham gown. A moment they looked at each other; then the
+  man's riding cap came off with a sweep and he held out his
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was
+  all. Then he looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see
+  your husband," he exclaimed. "Is he at home?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that
+  you had returned."</p>
+
+  <p>A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his
+  hand dropped; but his eyes held their place. "Yes. I only came
+  yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to talk over
+  with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man.
+  "Aren't we to be even neighbourly?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be
+  otherwise."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming
+  positive now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."</p>
+
+  <p>"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately.
+  "Answer?" She undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by
+  courtesy, that after I've lived the last four months I'm still
+  such a child as that? Do you really wish me to answer, Neighbour
+  Craig,"</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins
+  in his trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously.
+  Then again he looked up.</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave
+  an hour ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It
+  was you I came to see. May I stay?"</p>
+
+  <p>Again the girl ignored the question.</p>
+
+  <p>"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you
+  wouldn't have come, that nothing you know of could have made you
+  come? Let's understand each other in the beginning. You admit
+  this?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"</p>
+
+  <p>The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the
+  eyes; silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could
+  not fathom, could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as
+  deliberately she released him, looked away.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."</p>
+
+  <p>"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an
+  obvious effort he checked himself "Thank you," he completed
+  repressedly.</p>
+
+  <p>This time the girl did not smile. "Don't you realise yet that
+  sort of thing is useless?" she queried unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>It was the man this time who was silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so;
+  but for once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us
+  good, we're both living a lie; but at least we understand each
+  other. Let's not waste energy in pretending&mdash;when there's no one
+  to be deceived."</p>
+
+  <p>Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too
+  much a part of his life to shake off instantly. Then he
+  laughed.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway
+  be it so. And now, that I'm to stay&mdash;" A meaning glance through
+  the open door. "You were working, weren't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch.
+  You remember another morning once before, don't you&mdash;a morning
+  before you grew up&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Perfectly."</p>
+
+  <p>"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."</p>
+
+  <p>"I am quite deficient in imagination."</p>
+
+  <p>"At least, though, dishes must be washed."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not necessarily&mdash;this moment at least. They have waited
+  before."</p>
+
+  <p>"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or
+  interfere."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and
+  enjoy the sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated?
+  They're clean, I know. I scrubbed them this very morning
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>The man hesitated. Then he sat down.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm
+  going to return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit&mdash;the
+  way you are now. You've changed terribly."</p>
+
+  <p>"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely
+  as I am this moment for&mdash;a lifetime."</p>
+
+  <p>"For&mdash;how long, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>"A lifetime, I think."</p>
+
+  <p>"For four months, you mean."</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps&mdash;it's all the same."</p>
+
+  <p>"Since you did a foolish thing?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I have done many such."</p>
+
+  <p>"Since the last, I mean."</p>
+
+  <p>"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened.
+  "The last was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in
+  the smallest possible manner since then."</p>
+
+  <p>The man inspected his boots.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at
+  length.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took
+  a place beside him. "I had forgotten."</p>
+
+  <p>They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real
+  perplexity.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."</p>
+
+  <p>"I have not denied it," evenly.</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for
+  anything; but he was finding his mistake.</p>
+
+  <p>"This life you've&mdash;selected, is wearing on you," he added.
+  "Frankly, I hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and
+  happy."</p>
+
+  <p>"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin
+  mine. You're dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the
+  signs."</p>
+
+  <p>The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank
+  criticism than to receive it.</p>
+
+  <p>"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said
+  intimately, "nor attempt to deny it. There is a reason,
+  however."</p>
+
+  <p>"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually
+  is an explanation for everything we do in this life."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a
+  compliment."</p>
+
+  <p>"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back
+  against the lintel of the door. She looked very young that
+  moment&mdash;and very old.</p>
+
+  <p>"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my
+  explanation for being&mdash;as I am. What is yours?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I wish to know the reason."</p>
+
+  <p>"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you
+  have married?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life,
+  and&mdash;the man you have named."</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't believe I understand, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence
+  I possessed, for two weeks."</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.</p>
+
+  <p>"I repeat you have the compliment&mdash;if you consider it
+  such."</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all
+  the time, the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them
+  now, steadily, immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without,
+  against the background of the dark interior his eyes shone as
+  though they were afire.</p>
+
+  <p>"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I
+  have made you unhappy."</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a
+  voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I merely understand you&mdash;now. You're not sorry, because
+  otherwise you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be
+  here&mdash;even though my husband were away."</p>
+
+  <p>Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly
+  a novelty in his life to be treated as he was being treated this
+  day. Ordinarily glib of speech, for some reason in the face of
+  this newfound emotionless characterisation, he had nothing to
+  say. It is difficult to appear what one is not in the blaze of
+  one's own fireside. It was impossible under the scrutiny of this
+  wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events gone by.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've
+  got other things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway."
+  He looked at her openly, significantly. "Your own self, for
+  instance."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm listening. Tell me everything."</p>
+
+  <p>"You really fancy I will after&mdash;the past?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"And why, please?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You've already told me why."</p>
+
+  <p>"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to
+  be ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm still listening."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your
+  husband? You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively,
+  impassively. Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an
+  untrained eye, a black dot stood out above the horizon line. Her
+  eyes paused upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked
+  suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"You swear it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I swear."</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still
+  perjure yourself. To answer your question, I really don't
+  know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll
+  stand a lot from you, but there's a limit&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's
+  not a soul but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be
+  seated."</p>
+
+  <p>From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily,
+  resentfully&mdash;then with an expression wherein surprise and
+  unbelief were mingled. He sat down.</p>
+
+  <p>The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and
+  on.</p>
+
+  <p>"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my
+  soul, if I have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make
+  the exchange, no one who can give me light. Does that answer your
+  question?"</p>
+
+  <p>Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are
+  why."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, only silence.</p>
+
+  <p>"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl.
+  "A little tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit?
+  You're not plural, but nevertheless you personified that pack.
+  You and the unknown things you represented were pressing me
+  close. I was confused and afraid. I was a babe four months ago. I
+  was not afraid of How, I had loved him&mdash;at least I thought I had,
+  I'm sure of nothing now&mdash;and, as I say, I was afraid of
+  you&mdash;then."</p>
+
+  <p>"And now&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she
+  looked away.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm not in the least afraid of you now&mdash;or of anything."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not even of your husband?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I
+  made a mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am
+  afraid of something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are
+  of death, of this infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip
+  deep, unconsciously. "I sometimes think the old fear of
+  everything were preferable, were the lesser of the two
+  evils."</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose
+  skin under his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.</p>
+
+  <p>"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think
+  you've gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked
+  away; but unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the
+  landscape that spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you
+  realise what a mess you've made of your life."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think I do," she said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a
+  brute after all in attempting to prevent your doing as you
+  did."</p>
+
+  <p>"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't
+  been a brute."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then,
+  Bess? Cared for me myself?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"And that I frightened you back here?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.</p>
+
+  <p>"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it
+  now?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl looked away in silence.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't tell you. I don't know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days&mdash;anything
+  except that I'm afraid."</p>
+
+  <p>"Of the future?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes&mdash;and of myself."</p>
+
+  <p>For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said
+  nothing. A long silence fell between them. It was the girl
+  herself who broke it.</p>
+
+  <p>"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and
+  the voice was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with
+  Uncle Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>"Was I to blame, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."</p>
+
+  <p>"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl said nothing.</p>
+
+  <p>"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can
+  restore the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making
+  you unhappy?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I admit it."</p>
+
+  <p>The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.</p>
+
+  <p>"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't.
+  You're too selfish."</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.</p>
+
+  <p>The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively
+  maddening!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be
+  ourselves to-day. I merely told you things as they are."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in
+  silence. One of his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay
+  in his lap. Against his will now and then a muscle contracted
+  nervously; and of a sudden he thrust the telltale member deep
+  into his trousers pocket.</p>
+
+  <p>"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't
+  go on this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Haven't you ever thought of it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else&mdash;for an age."</p>
+
+  <p>"And you've decided nothing?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Absolutely nothing."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his
+  voice trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By
+  what right should you be permitted to decide?"</p>
+
+  <p>The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His
+  eyes were steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that
+  he would win, that the moment was his moment.</p>
+
+  <p>"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said
+  simply.</p>
+
+  <p>"Love me, after what you have done?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I have been mad&mdash;and done mad things. But I've
+  discovered my fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you
+  so&mdash;and to make amends."</p>
+
+  <p>Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look;
+  but the man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure
+  that he voiced a challenge.</p>
+
+  <p>"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you
+  ran away, in spite of the fact that you are married, you love
+  me!"</p>
+
+  <p>Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her
+  lips parted, but she said no word.</p>
+
+  <p>"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't&mdash;because it
+  is true."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second
+  time that day Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise.
+  While yet he was master of the situation, while yet the time was
+  his, he arose.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He
+  looked at her deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say,
+  for I've told you that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember
+  this: If I've stolen your happiness, I'll give it all back. As
+  God is my witness, I'll give it all back with interest." Swiftly,
+  before she could answer, he turned away and strode toward the
+  impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he undid the tie strap
+  and mounted. Without another word, or a backward glance, he rode
+  away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the damp spring
+  earth.</p>
+
+  <p>Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not
+  move. She did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at
+  the C-C ranch house, until the buildings hid the owner from view,
+  did her eyes leave him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she
+  looked away over the prairie, away where the last time she had
+  glanced a tiny black dot stood out against the intense blue sky.
+  But look as she might she could not find it. It was there no
+  more. It had been for long; but now was not. Clean as though
+  drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the unbroken
+  horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes.
+  With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable
+  doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.</p><a name="XVI"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+
+  <p>THE RECKONING</p>
+
+  <p>It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening,
+  and as he came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled
+  his feet as one unconsciously will when very weary. He was
+  wearing his ready-made clothes and starched collar; but the
+  trousers were deplorably baggy at the knees from much riding, and
+  his linen and polished shoes were soiled with the dust of the
+  prairie.</p>
+
+  <p>Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully
+  prepared. Serving it was a young woman he had not seen for long,
+  a young woman minus the</p>
+
+  <p>slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at
+  belt and throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on
+  either cheek. A young woman, moreover, who anticipated his
+  slightest wish, who took his hat and fetched his moccasins, and
+  when the meal was over brought the buffalo robes and stretched
+  them carefully on the gently sloping terrace just outside the
+  ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly, continuously;
+  with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year before.
+  To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her
+  companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self,
+  returned, unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was
+  now and then a note that rang false, a hint of suppressed
+  excitement in the unwonted colour, an abnormal energy bordering
+  on the feverish in her every motion. Not in the least deceived
+  was this impassive, all-observing human, not in the least in
+  doubt as to the cause of the transformation: yet through it all
+  he gave no intimation of consciousness of the unusual, through it
+  all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never was there a
+  more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive,
+  sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not
+  remarkable. He had never done so except when she had not. When he
+  looked at her there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in
+  his gaze; but that also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery
+  in the depths of his steady black eyes. Never more himself, never
+  outwardly more unsuspicious was the man than on this occasion;
+  even when, the meal complete, the girl had led him hand in hand
+  out of doors, out into the soft spring night, out under the stars
+  where she had stretched the two robes intimately close.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft
+  south breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in
+  their ears; about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their
+  nostrils the subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth
+  and of growing things. But not even then could the girl be still.
+  Far too full of this day's revelation and of anticipation of
+  things to come was she to be silent. The mood of her merely
+  changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless, ceased. In its place
+  came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a definite
+  question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed
+  arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great
+  unknown, when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she
+  did not alter her position. "I wonder," she said, "whether if one
+  has made a mistake, it were better to go on without acknowledging
+  it, living a lie and dying so, or to admit it and make another,
+  who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay the penalty?" She
+  paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do you think,
+  How?"</p>
+
+  <p>In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the
+  lighter sky her face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a
+  silhouette.</p>
+
+  <p>"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he
+  answered.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from
+  suffering?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the
+  truth makes one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any
+  difference, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with
+  his steady eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he
+  said. "I think this is one of them."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted
+  unconsciously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she
+  objected.</p>
+
+  <p>"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're
+  honest with ourselves or not."</p>
+
+  <p>"You think that, really?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At
+  last, abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new
+  thought, a new query.</p>
+
+  <p>"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she
+  questioned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there
+  was no irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible
+  mute pain. "How should I know what is best in life, I, who have
+  never known life at all?"</p>
+
+  <p>Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath
+  the words themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled
+  inference.</p>
+
+  <p>"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."</p>
+
+  <p>This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth
+  glaring, where the running might read.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I have an idea&mdash;and more," he said. "Happiness, your
+  happiness, has always been the first thing in my life."</p>
+
+  <p>Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before.
+  Step by step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey.
+  Step by step she was drawing away from her companion; yet though,
+  wide-eyed, he watched her every motion, felt the distance
+  separating grow wider and wider, he made no move to prevent,
+  threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately from his grip, from
+  beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was filching his one
+  ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke no word of
+  unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not but
+  have admired her child that night.</p>
+
+  <p>One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before
+  she had walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now
+  there was no hesitation. The move was deliberate; even
+  certain.</p>
+
+  <p>"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly,
+  "but I haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal
+  to me." She paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her
+  head. "I've been watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew
+  up; watched him become restless week by week. Last night,&mdash;you
+  didn't notice, but I did,&mdash;I heard another wolf call away out on
+  the prairie, and I got up to see what Shaggy would do. Somehow I
+  seemed to understand how he'd feel, and I came out here, out
+  where we are now, and looked down toward the barn. It was
+  moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost
+  as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting
+  up; but all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated
+  from somewhere away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't
+  stirred. He was standing there, where you had chained him, just
+  outside the door; but when that second call came, it was too
+  much. He started to go, did go as far as he could; then the
+  collar choked him and he realised where he was. He didn't make a
+  sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he couldn't
+  help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the
+  chain stretched across his back&mdash;" She halted abruptly, of a
+  sudden sat up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll
+  let him go," she pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to
+  him. Please promise me you'll let him go!"</p>
+
+  <p>Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.</p>
+
+  <p>"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save
+  Shaggy's life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out
+  of her den and shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when
+  I found him."</p>
+
+  <p>"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't
+  make any difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with
+  the argument.</p>
+
+  <p>"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't
+  live through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will
+  shoot him on sight."</p>
+
+  <p>"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the
+  girl. "We all have to take our chances in this life."</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.</p>
+
+  <p>"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill
+  the first animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of
+  that?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I
+  made him as he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to
+  be; and if he's bad, God alone is to blame." Her glance returned,
+  met the other fair. "I wish you'd let him go, How."</p>
+
+  <p>The man made no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You really wish it, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, very much."</p>
+
+  <p>Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a
+  sudden he arose.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, Bess," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more,
+  followed his lead down the path to the stable. At the door the
+  Indian whistled. But there was no response, no shaggy grey
+  answering shadow. A lantern hung from a nail near at hand. In
+  silence the man lit it and again led the way within. The
+  mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep, but at
+  the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise
+  there was no move. Look where one would within the building,
+  there was no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the
+  Indian led the way outside, made the circuit of the stable,
+  paused at the south end where a chain hung loose from a peg
+  driven into the wall. A moment he stood there, holding the light
+  so the girl could see; then, impassive as before, he extinguished
+  the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.</p>
+
+  <p>They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke;
+  then, detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."</p>
+
+  <p>They walked on so.</p>
+
+  <p>"You wanted him to go?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time there was no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.</p>
+
+  <p>"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I
+  thought I&mdash;understood."</p>
+
+  <p>For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm,
+  but neither stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob,
+  the hand dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his
+  chest. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.</p>
+
+  <p>"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess," repeated.</p>
+
+  <p>"But still you're not coming?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She
+  scarcely recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with
+  me again?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that,
+  Bess." A second halt. "Not until things between us are different,
+  at least."</p>
+
+  <p>"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped
+  the casing of the door. "Oh, How! How!"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a
+  breath; just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl
+  stood it, hoping against hope, praying for a miracle; then she
+  could stand it no longer. Gropingly clutching at every object
+  within reach, she made her way into the dark interior; flung
+  herself full dressed onto the bed, her face buried desperately
+  among the covers.</p>
+
+  <p>All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth
+  in front of the ranch house door; back and forth like an
+  automaton, back and forth in a motion that seemed perpetual.
+  Within the tiny low-ceiled room, in the fulness of time, the girl
+  sobbed herself into a fitful sleep; but not once did the sentinel
+  pause to rest, not once in those dragging hours before day did he
+  relax. With the coming of the first trace of light he halted, and
+  on silent moccasined feet stole within. But again he only
+  remained for moments, and when he returned it was merely to
+  stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before
+  the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did
+  everything, he rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into
+  the darkness to the west.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague
+  sense of depression and of impending evil. The door was open and
+  the bright morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance
+  stretched the open prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny
+  brown island, her own dooryard, in the foreground. With dull
+  listlessness, the girl propped herself up in bed and sat looking
+  about her. Absently, aimlessly, her eyes passed from one familiar
+  object to another. Without any definite conception of why or of
+  where, she was conscious of an impression of change in the
+  material world about her, a change that corresponded to the
+  mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the
+  sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering
+  joy. Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message
+  passed her by. Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a
+  haunting memory of the past night and of what it had meant. As a
+  traveller lost in this fog, she lay staring about, indecisive
+  which way to move, idly waiting for light. Ordinarily action
+  itself would have offered a solution of the problem, would have
+  served at least as a diversion; but this morning she was
+  strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no
+  adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything
+  more than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow
+  higher and, lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her
+  palm and lay with wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.</p>
+
+  <p>Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The
+  doorway faced south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had
+  entered therein began moving to the left across the floor.
+  Unconsciously, for the lack of anything better to do, she watched
+  its advance. It fell upon a tiny shelf against the wall, littered
+  with a collection of papers and magazines; and the reflected
+  light from the white sheets glared in her eyes. It came to the
+  supper table of the night before, the table she had not cleared,
+  and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of her
+  own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on;
+  crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live
+  thing, began climbing the wall beyond.</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched
+  its advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its
+  relentless stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny.
+  Like a hostile alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in
+  the tiny room for something definite, something it did not find.
+  Fatuous as it may seem, the impression grew upon her, augmented
+  until in its own turn it became a dominant influence. Her glance,
+  heretofore absent, perfunctory, became intense. The glare was
+  well above the floor by this time and climbing higher and higher.
+  Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat up free in
+  bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her
+  fairly.</p>
+
+  <p>The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light
+  was mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from
+  rough-fashioned wooden pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant
+  wardrobe. At first glance there seemed to the girl nothing
+  unusual revealed thereon, nothing significant; and, restlessly
+  observant, the inspection advanced. Then, ere the mental picture
+  could vanish, ere a new impression could take its place, in a
+  flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came realisation
+  complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute thereafter
+  she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and wider,
+  her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a
+  minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of
+  weariness and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place,
+  and covered her face from sight.</p><a name="XVII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XVII</h3>
+
+  <p>SACRIFICE</p>
+
+  <p>A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred
+  with the slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in
+  the barren dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover,
+  with each repetition the arrival had been earlier, the halt
+  longer. Though the weather was perfect, nevertheless the beast
+  had grown impatient under the long waits, and telltale, a glaring
+  black mound had come into being where he had pawed his
+  displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully concealed
+  the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
+  litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the
+  mound had grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared
+  to question the visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the
+  wolf was no longer present to stare his disapproval. Verily,
+  unchallenged, the king had come into his own in this realm of
+  one; and as a monarch absolute ever rules, Clayton Craig had
+  reigned, was reigning now.</p>
+
+  <p>For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never
+  been invited to enter, yet he had entered&mdash;and the girl had
+  spoken no word to prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding
+  stick hanging from a peg beside the few belongings of How Landor;
+  yet, likewise unchallenged, they were there. Not by the girl's
+  solicitation was he lounging intimately in the single rocker the
+  room boasted; yet once again the bald fact remained that though
+  it was not yet nine by the clock, he was present, his legs
+  comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids, whimsically
+  observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour of
+  putting the place to rights.</p>
+
+  <p>"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted
+  that unoffending table three times by actual count since I've
+  been watching. Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and
+  entertain your company?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl did not smile.</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you
+  were tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer&mdash;" She
+  drew another chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands
+  in her lap.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by
+  shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal
+  proprietary look he had grown to assume in her presence took its
+  place.</p>
+
+  <p>"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop
+  sarcasm when you and I are together? I know I've been a most
+  reprehensible offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your
+  idea of punishment?"</p>
+
+  <p>The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably
+  in the past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the
+  colour showed plain.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways
+  you've held me at arm's length until I'm beginning to
+  despair."</p>
+
+  <p>"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so
+  dull that I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the
+  role that the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too
+  effective to abandon at once.</p>
+
+  <p>"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week,
+  Bess," he objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again;
+  but that is all. Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were
+  when I first returned."</p>
+
+  <p>"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost
+  refused to appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least
+  I've gotten immeasurably farther away from another."</p>
+
+  <p>"Your husband you mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."</p>
+
+  <p>The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too
+  much to each other not to know everything there is to know."</p>
+
+  <p>"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now.
+  The inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly&mdash;and she herself
+  had chosen. "He's merely given me up."</p>
+
+  <p>"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face,
+  something else as well, something akin to exultation.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."</p>
+
+  <p>"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"</p>
+
+  <p>Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old
+  defiance, the old pride, broke forth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have
+  known before this if he objected?" she flamed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the
+  blaze had died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that.
+  I didn't mean to."</p>
+
+  <p>The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a
+  miracle, the last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had
+  counted upon blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence;
+  but a passive, conscious conformity such as this&mdash;The thing was
+  unbelievable, providential, too unnaturally good to last. The
+  present was a strategic moment, the time for immediate,
+  irrevocable action, ere there came a change of heart. It had not
+  been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to permit a meeting between
+  himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he</p>
+
+  <p>had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary
+  precautions to avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity
+  passed, he did not alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the
+  red man. He had proven to himself by an incontrovertible process
+  of reasoning that such was not the case. It was merely to avoid
+  unpleasantness for himself and for the girl&mdash;particularly for the
+  latter. Moreover, no possible object could be gained by such a
+  meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He merely
+  decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
+  that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he
+  spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break,
+  I mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."</p>
+
+  <p>"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this
+  way any longer. It's intolerable for both of us."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance
+  he had imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would
+  be easy. Now that the time had really arrived, he found it
+  strangely difficult. He hardly knew how to begin.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect,
+  very dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated,
+  "we've avoided the obvious long enough, too long. As I said,
+  you've succeeded in keeping me at arm's length all the last week;
+  but I won't be denied any longer. I'm willing to take all the
+  blame of the past, and all the responsibility of the future. I
+  love you, Bess. I've told you that before, but I repeat it now. I
+  want you to go away with me, away from this God-cursed land
+  that's driving us both mad&mdash;at least leave for a time. After a
+  while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we wish;
+  but for the present&mdash;I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
+  another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed
+  on; "but we can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and
+  forget it." He cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting
+  away that I've arranged for since I've been here. I've not been
+  entirely idle the last week, and every detail is complete. There
+  are three relays of horses waiting between here and the railroad.
+  One team is all ready at the ranch house the minute I give the
+  signal. They'll get us to town before morning. You've only to say
+  the word, and I'll give the sign." Again, nervously, shortly, he
+  repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say, not interfere;
+  but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been enough
+  tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
+  the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is
+  over at the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything
+  after we're gone. Things here are all in your name; you can do as
+  you please with them. There's no possible excuse for delay." He
+  bent over her, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes looking into
+  hers compellingly. "God knows you've been buried here long
+  enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to live, do you hear? We'll
+  be very happy together, you and I, Bess; happier than you ever
+  dreamed of being. Will you come?"</p>
+
+  <p>He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still;
+  still as the dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed,
+  motionless, the girl sat looking up at him. She did not speak;
+  she scarcely seemed to breathe. As she had chosen, so had it come
+  to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed. Deliverance from the
+  haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an evil dream was
+  beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden, within her
+  being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
+  instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a
+  woman than life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path.
+  Warning, pleading, distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice
+  sounded a negative in her ears. She tried to silence it, tried to
+  overwhelm it with her newborn philosophy; but it was useless.
+  Fear of the future, as she had said, she had none. Good or bad as
+  the man might be, she had chosen. With full knowledge of his
+  deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him so, without
+  sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
+  wife&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the
+  compelling face drew nearer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in
+  suspense. Will you go?"</p>
+
+  <p>With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew
+  back until she was free.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little
+  time to think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go
+  with you, yes; but to-day, now&mdash;I can't. We must see How first.
+  He must know, must consent&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he
+  digressed. "I can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between
+  How and myself you must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I
+  love you; but I'm not insane absolutely. I ask you again: will
+  you come?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't now, as things are."</p>
+
+  <p>"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for
+  me?"</p>
+
+  <p>For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>The man came a step forward, and another.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I have told you," said a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as
+  a human being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the
+  girl could move or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must
+  go then," he commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her
+  again, hungrily, irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer.
+  You will go."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's
+  impotent effort to be free. "You must not, we must not&mdash;yet. I'm
+  bad, I know, but not wholly. Please let me go."</p>
+
+  <p>Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught
+  save the moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory,
+  in her effort to escape. Save that one casual glance long before,
+  he had not looked out of doors. Had he done so, had he
+  seen&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four
+  walls. His back was toward the door. His own great shoulders
+  walled the girl in. Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure
+  that had drifted from out the prairie swiftly into the dooryard,
+  dreamed that that same all-knowing shadow, on soundless
+  moccasined feet, had advanced to the doorway, stood silent,
+  watching therein. As the first man and the first woman were
+  alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might have
+  exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just
+  gotten you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm
+  made of clay and not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and
+  closer, until she could no longer struggle, until she lay still
+  in his arms. "I'll never let you go again, girl, not if God
+  himself were to demand your release. You're mine, Bess, mine by
+  right of capture, mine&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an
+  unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening,
+  ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently
+  advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms.
+  Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly,
+  instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart.
+  Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent passions, the two guilty
+  humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder in breathless
+  expectation, breathless fascination.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated
+  the count, the three remained precisely as they were. While the
+  same mythical spectator could have counted ten more, the silence
+  held; but inaction had ceased. While time, the relentless,
+  checked off another measure, there was still no interruption;
+  then of a sudden, desperately tense, desperately challenging, a
+  voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened
+  his lips and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to
+  understand, I guess. What are you going to do about it?"</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first
+  moment when the two had sprang separate he had not even appeared
+  conscious of his presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize
+  plant, dressed once more in the flannels and corduroys of his
+  station, as tall and graceful, he merely stood there with folded
+  arms, looking down on the girl. More maddening than an
+  execration, than physical menace itself, was that passionless,
+  ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot blood
+  flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
+  his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his
+  neckband, tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took
+  a step forward menacingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last,
+  perhaps, not to dare me to take something of yours away from
+  you." Word by word his voice had risen until he fairly shouted.
+  "You've lost, fool; lost, lost! Are you blind that you can't see?
+  You've lost, I say!"</p>
+
+  <p>From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted;
+  and that instant the room became deathly still.</p>
+
+  <p>A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so;
+  then, white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two,
+  paused so, motionless:&mdash;for of a sudden a voice, an even,
+  passionless voice, was speaking.</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided.
+  Just a step the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he
+  recognised the white man's presence. His eyes were steady and
+  level. His voice, unbelievably low in contrast to that of the
+  other, when he spoke was even as before.</p>
+
+  <p>"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he
+  said. "I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One
+  thing I expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt
+  again. You may listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a
+  word to say to you; but now there is nothing to be said." Just a
+  moment longer the look held, a moment wherein the other man felt
+  his tongue grow dumb; then with the old impassivity, the old
+  isolation, the black eyes shifted until they rested on the face
+  of the girl.</p>
+
+  <p>But for still another moment&mdash;he was as deliberate as nature
+  herself, this man&mdash;he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he
+  had grown more so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of
+  one weary unto death. His black eyes were bright, mysteriously
+  bright, and on his thin hands, folded across his chest, the veins
+  stood out full and prominent; but look where one would on the
+  lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath the close-fitting
+  clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now, very grave,
+  very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
+  expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness,
+  infinite in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible
+  tolerance throbbed in the low-pitched voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began,
+  "and a request to make&mdash;and that is all. I didn't come back so,
+  unexpectedly, to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you
+  wish to do. I came because I fancied you were going to do an
+  unwise thing: because I had reason to believe you were going to
+  run away." Unconsciously, one of the folded hands loosened,
+  passed absently over his forehead; then returned abruptly to its
+  place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon for the
+  suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to do
+  so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and
+  into it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that
+  lingered in the girl's recollection while memory lasted.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he
+  went on. "Things are as they are&mdash;and final. I don't judge you,
+  I&mdash;understand. Above everything else in life, I wish you to be
+  happy; and I realise now I can't make you so. Another perhaps
+  can; I hope so and trust so. At least I shall not stand in your
+  way any longer. It is that I came to tell you. It is I who shall
+  leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he stepped back and lifted
+  one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment, please," he
+  requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to say."
+  His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers
+  compellingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said I had a request to make. This is it&mdash;that you don't
+  leave until you are married again. You won't have to wait long if
+  I leave. I have inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks
+  at the longest, and you will be free. Meanwhile stay here.
+  Everything is yours. I never owned anything except the house, and
+  that is yours also." For the last time he halted; then even,
+  distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise me this,
+  Bess?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had
+  listened through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that
+  he was silent, and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so,
+  passive, waiting. Ever in times of stress his will had dominated
+  her will; and the present was no exception. There was an infinity
+  of things she might have said. A myriad which she should have
+  spoken, would occur to her when he was gone. But at the present,
+  when the opportunity was hers, there seemed nothing to offer;
+  nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was expected to
+  answer at all, that he had asked a question.</p>
+
+  <p>"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the
+  voice gently. "I've never made a request of you before, and I
+  probably never shall again."</p>
+
+  <p>At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that
+  her lips were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her
+  tongue.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its
+  finality; but the girl did not break it, said no more&mdash;and
+  forever the moment, her moment, vanished into the past,</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly,
+  strangely different from his usual alert certainty, he moved
+  across the room. "There are just a few things here I'd like to
+  take with me," he explained apologetically. "They'd only be in
+  your way if I left them."</p>
+
+  <p>With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered
+  telescope satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He
+  moved about slowly here and there, his moccasined feet patting
+  dully on the bare floor. No one offered to assist him, no one
+  interrupted; and in dead silence, except for the sound he himself
+  made, he went about his work. Into the satchel went a few books
+  from the shelf on the wall: an old army greatcoat that had been
+  Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap which had been a
+  present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered in one of
+  his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
+  there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was
+  small, and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter
+  he stood beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put
+  on the cover and began tightening the straps. The leather was old
+  and the holes large, but he found difficulty even then in
+  fastening the buckles. At last, though, it was done, and he
+  straightened. Both the white man and the girl were watching him;
+  but no one spoke. For the second time, the last time, the Indian
+  stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from nook to nook,
+  taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
+  heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted
+  his burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and
+  held out his hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes,
+  deep into her very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God
+  bless you, girl; but I don't, so I'll only say good-bye&mdash;and&mdash;I
+  wish you happiness." Just a moment longer he remained so; then at
+  something he saw, he dropped her hand and drew away swiftly,
+  preventingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it&mdash;as you cared for me
+  once. Don't make things any harder&mdash;make them impossible!"
+  Desperately, without another pause, ere she could disobey, he
+  started for the door. Beside the entrance&mdash;for he was not
+  watching these last minutes&mdash;stood the white man; and just for a
+  moment at his side the Indian halted. Despite the will of Clayton
+  Craig, their eyes met. For an instant, wherein time lapsed, they
+  stood face to face; then swiftly as he did everything, now the
+  Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those words and
+  the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
+  grave.</p>
+
+  <p>"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing
+  only to say. Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to
+  prevent your doing so, if you will. If you do not&mdash;" a pause of
+  horrible ice-cold menace&mdash;"if you do not," repeated, "suicide."
+  Just for the fraction of a second not a civilised man but a
+  savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall know if you
+  fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times better, if
+  you do as I say."</p>
+
+  <p>Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse;
+  then, similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense
+  silence there broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was
+  gone.</p><a name="XVIII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XVIII</h3>
+
+  <p>REWARD</p>
+
+  <p>The month was late September. The time, evening. The place,
+  the ranch house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the
+  scene at the hour the supper table was spread appeared a
+  traveller in an open road waggon. The vehicle was covered with
+  dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained likewise, and in
+  addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
+  powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and
+  dried. Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality
+  of asking permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in
+  the barn. From a convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and
+  from a stack beside the eaves he brought them hay for the night.
+  This done, he started for the house. A minute later, again
+  without form of announcement or seeking permission, he opened the
+  ranch house door and stepped inside.</p>
+
+  <p>Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four
+  men were eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by
+  a stove in one corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door
+  opened.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the
+  proprietor, Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of
+  steel on heavy queensware proceeded.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched
+  along his chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up
+  and fall to, stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."</p>
+
+  <p>In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned
+  to his work.</p>
+
+  <p>Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was
+  complete was there further conversation. Then after, one by one,
+  the cowmen had filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob
+  pipes from a shelf on the wall and tendered one across the
+  littered table.</p>
+
+  <p>"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a
+  couple of cigars.</p>
+
+  <p>"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter&mdash;for cigars were a
+  rarity on the frontier&mdash;puffed half the length of the weed in
+  wordless content. The Mexican went impassively about his work,
+  cleared the table and washed the dishes methodically. The labour
+  complete, he rolled a cigarette swiftly and, followed by a
+  vanishing trail of blue, disappeared likewise out of doors. Then,
+  and not until then, the visitor introduced himself.</p>
+
+  <p>"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store
+  over at the Centre."</p>
+
+  <p>The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately,
+  reminiscently</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought there was something familiar about you," he
+  commented at last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I
+  remember you now. You're one of the bunch who was with Bill
+  Landor that time he picked up the two kids."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.</p>
+
+  <p>"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in
+  while you were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The
+  reminiscent look reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well
+  when we were on the other side of the river, before the country
+  settled up; but when we came over here we got too far apart and
+  lost track of each other."</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At
+  last he glanced up.</p>
+
+  <p>"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and&mdash;"
+  Hawkins laughed peculiarly&mdash;"made a fizzle of it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I
+  haven't even heard anything of them for six months now." He
+  twirled the cigar with his fingers in the self-consciousness of
+  unaccustomed gossip. "The girl went East with Landor's nephew,
+  Craig, afterward, I understood."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in
+  the cloud of smoke obscuring his companion's face.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised,
+  "but, knowing the circumstances, I've often wondered how the
+  affair ended. Did they hit it off well together?"</p>
+
+  <p>Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled
+  old hands fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.</p>
+
+  <p>"While the money lasted, yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another
+  cent."</p>
+
+  <p>"And then&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"It's the old story."</p>
+
+  <p>"They went to pieces?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Craig left her&mdash;for another woman." The clawlike hands closed
+  tighter and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He
+  couldn't. It seems he was supporting the other woman all the
+  time."</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a
+  lean-to the cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening
+  wall came the mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.</p>
+
+  <p>"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess came back."</p>
+
+  <p>"Alone?"</p>
+
+  <p>Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was
+  concealed by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy
+  brows his old eyes were blazing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, she was alone," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it
+  jerkily. The blaze of the match illumined a face that was not
+  pleasant to look upon.</p>
+
+  <p>"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"</p>
+
+  <p>"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town
+  yesterday, just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."</p>
+
+  <p>The rancher looked at the other meaningly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Back at the ranch&mdash;with the Indian?"</p>
+
+  <p>Equally directly Manning returned the look.</p>
+
+  <p>"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The
+  Indian is not there."</p>
+
+  <p>"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"</p>
+
+  <p>Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table
+  before him.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly.
+  "He came here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left
+  Bess. Do you mean to tell me you don't know where he is
+  gone?"</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds
+  from the lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each
+  other breathing. For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by
+  bit on the rancher's face incredulity merged into belief, and
+  belief into understanding perfect.</p>
+
+  <p>"Know where he is? Of course I do&mdash;now." He leaned back in his
+  chair. "To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time
+  he was here, or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"</p>
+
+  <p>He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the
+  last week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He
+  worked for me until about a month ago. Then he left and started
+  away alone. We never got a word out of him while he was here, not
+  even his name." Of a sudden came realisation complete, and his
+  great bony fist crashed on the board. "I'm dull as a post, but I
+  begin to understand at last, and I'm with you absolutely. I'll
+  take you there to-night, it won't be a two-hour drive. I'll hitch
+  up right now if you're ready."</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed.
+  The hand on the chair arm loosened its grip.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I
+  don't think we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket
+  and produced two fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to
+  the other man and lit its mate carefully. "I don't think we'd
+  better both go anyway. In the morning you can fit me out with a
+  fresh team, if you will. I crowded things a bit on the way
+  up."</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
+  unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only
+  eighty miles, and there's plenty of time."</p>
+
+  <p>Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in
+  the old storekeeper's deep-set eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, there's plenty of time&mdash;after How Landor knows," he
+  said.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a
+  tiny dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through
+  a spot a shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man,
+  had builded a dam. In the fulness of time the accumulated water
+  had formed a fair-sized pond that glittered and shimmered in the
+  sunlight, until from a little altitude it could be seen for
+  miles. To this pond, for open water was very, very scarce on the
+  prairie in September, came water fowl from near and afar; from no
+  man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet, they came,
+  and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in flocks
+  that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
+  been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by
+  smoke, was pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An
+  evil-looking mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but
+  for them a broncho had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously
+  fashioned from weeds and grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet
+  again even of this they were unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long
+  intervals, something happened, something startlingly sudden,
+  bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror they would take wing and
+  vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this something never pursued
+  them, never repeated itself the same day, and invariably after a
+  time they came back, to take up anew, with the confidence of
+  children, the careless thread of their life where it had been
+  interrupted.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain
+  morning in late September. Though it was ten of the clock, they
+  were still there: sleepy brown mallards, glossy-winged teal,
+  long-necked shovellers, greyish speckled widgeon: these and
+  others less common, representatives of all the native tribe.
+  Happy as nature the common mother intended, as irresponsibly
+  idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while time
+  drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view
+  within the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.</p>
+
+  <p>Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been
+  there. On soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an
+  inanimate thing, he had remained. Not two rods away the flock
+  were feeding. More than once the water they carelessly spattered
+  had fallen upon him; but he did not stir. He had no gun or weapon
+  of any kind. Though they were within stone's throw, he had not
+  brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he
+  merely lay there observing them. With that object he had come;
+  for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he peered
+  through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
+  instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting
+  in its revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding
+  unbroken prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute
+  isolation. Lonely beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of
+  language, was that silent human in their midst this autumn
+  day.</p>
+
+  <p>How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no
+  one could have told; the man himself could not have told; for at
+  last, interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering,
+  with a great quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock
+  sprang a-wing; and almost before the shower of water drops they
+  scattered in their wake had ceased, a road waggon, with a
+  greybearded old man on the seat, drew up beside the tent.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and
+  stretched himself. Still in silence he came back to where the
+  newcomer was waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white
+  man sat eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed
+  to be enough around when I came."</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being
+  misunderstood.</p>
+
+  <p>"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an
+  effort he dismounted.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he
+  digressed abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so
+  I thought before I went back I'd look you up." The man was not
+  accustomed to dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely.
+  "If you don't mind I'll go inside and smoke a bit."</p>
+
+  <p>In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned
+  back the flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it
+  impassively.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.</p>
+
+  <p>Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and
+  thereafter drew on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl
+  were aglow. Even then, however, he did not speak. That which had
+  been on his mind trembled now at the tip of his tongue. The one
+  for whose ear the information was intended was waiting,
+  listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of a revelation,
+  in those last minutes, there had come to the old storekeeper an
+  appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The message
+  of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
+  begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the
+  tent, with a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged
+  with infinite care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony.
+  The sight of the man himself, standing erect in the doorway,
+  gazing immovably out over the sunlit earth, looking and waiting,
+  but asking no question, completed the impression. He had known
+  this repressed human long and, as he fancied, well; but now of a
+  sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him at all.
+  Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a measure
+  he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
+  that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
+  emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
+  inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of
+  the white he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the
+  play actor of an inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible,
+  unforgivable injustice, with this being one of the injured, had
+  been done in the white man's sight; and instinctively he had come
+  to him as the agent of Providence calculated to mete out
+  retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless savage lurked
+  beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken for
+  granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
+  realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of
+  divine punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human
+  being, an equal, with wh ose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling.
+  Whatever the motive that had inspired his coming, however
+  justifiable in itself, his interference, as a mere spectator, was
+  under the circumstances unjustified and an impertinence. This he
+  realised with startling suddenness; and swift in its wake came a
+  new point of view, a readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under
+  its influence the dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From
+  out of concealment he came fair into the open. What he knew he
+  would reveal&mdash;if the other wished; but it was for the Indian to
+  request, not him to proffer. With the decision he aroused. In the
+  interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit it afresh
+  suggestively.</p>
+
+  <p>"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was
+  not Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."</p>
+
+  <p>The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought so," it said simply.</p>
+
+  <p>Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was
+  daylight, the glow lit up his face.</p>
+
+  <p>"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big
+  service&mdash;and I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you
+  wish."</p>
+
+  <p>Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the
+  careless, smiling infinite.</p>
+
+  <p>"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you
+  think I should know."</p>
+
+  <p>The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.</p>
+
+  <p>"I repeat, it is for you to choose."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning
+  felt his heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last
+  the Indian moved. Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally
+  deliberately he drew a robe opposite his visitor and, still very
+  erect, sat down on the ground&mdash;his long fingers locked across his
+  knees.</p>
+
+  <p>"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time, because he needs must be doing something,
+  the white man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco
+  pouch shook a bit now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown
+  flakes fell scattering outside the bowl onto his knee.</p>
+
+  <p>"About a month ago"&mdash;the speaker cleared his throat
+  raspingly&mdash;"on August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a
+  funeral in town. It started from the C-C ranch house and ended in
+  the same lot with Mary Landor. It wasn't much of a funeral,
+  either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one was there." Again
+  the voice halted; and following there came the sharp crackling of
+  a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker. "It was
+  the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go on, please," requested a voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Early yesterday morning"&mdash;again the narrator halted perforce,
+  to clear his throat&mdash;"just before I left three men went through
+  town on their way to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a
+  lawyer, the third a man who wished to buy. They were in a hurry.
+  They only stopped to water their team and to visit Red Jennings's
+  place. They are at the ranch house closing the bargain now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."</p>
+
+  <p>The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the
+  very aged when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have
+  contracted physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within
+  himself. The nervousness and uncertainty of a moment ago had
+  passed now absolutely. The deep-set eyes of him were of a sudden
+  glowing ominously as they had done when telling the same tale to
+  Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was all. His voluntary
+  offering was given; more than this must come by request.</p>
+
+  <p>"I have nothing more to say&mdash;unless you wish," he repeated in
+  the old formula.</p>
+
+  <p>For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the
+  crackling of a match in the white man's hand. Following, as
+  though prompted by the sound, came a question.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why,"&mdash;the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted
+  until they looked immovably into those of his companion,&mdash;"why,
+  please, was not the mother of the child at least at the
+  funeral?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less
+  than two days old."</p>
+
+  <p>"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some
+  time?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. Several weeks."</p>
+
+  <p>"She returned alone?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"And to stay?"</p>
+
+  <p>Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no
+  muscle of the inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a
+  light new to the other man, ominous in its belated appearance,
+  was kindling.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," answered Manning.</p>
+
+  <p>"She, Bess, had left her husband?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Craig had left her."</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but
+  neither man noticed the change.</p>
+
+  <p>"There was a reason?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."</p>
+
+  <p>The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing
+  white; white as the sunlight without.</p>
+
+  <p>"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her
+  ranch?"</p>
+
+  <p>"It is her ranch no more. It is his."</p>
+
+  <p>"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all
+  that he had done? You mean to tell me this?"</p>
+
+  <p>Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand,
+  the white man got to his feet, stood so silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face
+  standing clear against the white background of the tent wall.
+  "Did Bess do this thing?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."</p>
+
+  <p>"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another
+  way!" for the third time; and then a halt. For that moment
+  realisation had come. "There could be but one other way!"</p>
+
+  <p>Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the
+  face opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared
+  for the moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch
+  longer. To do so was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man
+  had been a hunter of big game. Of a sudden now, horribly
+  distinct, he had a vision of the expression in the eyes of a
+  great moose, mortally wounded, when at the end he himself had
+  drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted, waiting,
+  postponing the inevitable.</p>
+
+  <p>"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
+  repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not
+  right?"</p>
+
+  <p>To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity,
+  the blow fell.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is
+        dead."</p><a name="XIX"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIX</h3>
+
+  <p>IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE</p>
+
+  <p>An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to
+  the east whither he had taken his way not even a dot now
+  indicated his former presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon
+  the wheels of the old road waggon had temporarily blazed a trail
+  had returned normally erect. Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over
+  the parched earth, the storm had gathered and broken; and passed
+  on as though it had not been. All about smiled the sunshine;
+  sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing, heard nothing.
+  On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned, swam and
+  splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal breeze
+  of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
+  song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had
+  nature, the serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she
+  deviated from her customary course. Man alone it is who changes
+  to conform with the passing mood. Man alone it was amid this
+  primitive setting who had altered now.</p>
+
+  <p>For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming.
+  Instead, his every action was that of one with a definite
+  purpose. Yet even then he did not hurry. At first he seemed
+  merely to be going about the ordinary routine of his life.
+  Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself a generous
+  meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for the
+  first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
+  unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or
+  even touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward
+  the tent and disappeared inside.</p>
+
+  <p>For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to
+  place; and when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing
+  indeed. In his arms were several articles of clothing rolled into
+  a bulky bundle. Without a halt he made his way back to the place
+  where he had eaten. The fire which he had builded had burned low
+  ere this; and, standing there beside it, he scraped away the
+  ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until the glowing
+  embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had opened
+  with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which
+  it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a
+  battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A
+  moment the Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely;
+  then gently as though they were a lost child he was returning to
+  its mother's arms he laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool
+  is slow to catch ablaze and for the moment they lay there black
+  against the brown earth; then of a sudden, like the first lifting
+  of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column of blue went trailing
+  upward. Second by second it grew until with a muffled explosion
+  the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood watching;
+  now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned to
+  the tent.</p>
+
+  <p>This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with
+  an armful of books&mdash;and something more. The fire was crackling
+  merrily now, and volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for
+  the first time he hesitated. There was still something to
+  destroy, something which he had gathered in the old felt hat from
+  off his own head; yet he hesitated. Greedy as a hungry animal
+  deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept sending out spurts
+  of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he delayed. Like
+  the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into passive
+  waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
+  this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But
+  this time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head
+  glistening in the sunlight, he started away toward the now
+  expectant broncho; and back of him the pathetic little gathering
+  of useless trinkets, bearing indelibly the mark of a woman's
+  handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with the ashes of the things
+  which had gone before.</p>
+
+  <p>Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking
+  cayuse following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back;
+  waiting impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a
+  land where prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever
+  leaves fire alive when out of his sight; and to this instinct the
+  Indian was true. Minute after minute he waited; until the flame
+  vanished and in its stead there lay a mass of blazing coals. Then
+  with a practical hand he banked the whole with a layer of earth
+  until, look where one would, not a dot of red was visible. The
+  act was the last, the culmination of preparation. At its end,
+  with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his head
+  high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in anticipation.
+  Well he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was
+  there of a second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost
+  ere the taking of the single leap that put the rider in his seat
+  the little beast was away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing
+  deep of the prairie air, the patter of his tiny hoofs a
+  continuous song upon the close-cropped sod. As two human beings
+  living side by side grow to know each other, so this dumb menial
+  had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to the
+  dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He
+  did so now; and as time passed and the miles flowed monotonously
+  beneath his galloping feet the relentless determination of the
+  man himself was repeated in that undeviating pace.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the
+  dragging hours of the September afternoon it continued. Many a
+  time before the little beast had followed the trail from sun to
+  sun. As well as the rider knew his own endurance he knew the
+  possibilities of his mount, knew that now he would not fail. He
+  did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he check it. He
+  spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual drouth
+  of fall, and as time passed on the dust the pony raised collected
+  upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he
+  noticed it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the
+  broncho grew darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on
+  the diminutive beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was
+  unconscious. Silent as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his
+  place; his lithe body conforming involuntarily to the motion, to
+  the play of muscles beneath his legs; yet as unconsciously as one
+  breathes in sleep. Not until the sun was red in the west, until
+  of its own accord the broncho had drawn up at the first bit of
+  water they had met on the way&mdash;a shallow marshy pond&mdash;did he
+  move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the man
+  washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition,
+  shook the dust from his clothing.</p>
+
+  <p>For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by
+  side the man and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved
+  and ever southward. Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but
+  the sky was clear as it had been during the day, and the man
+  needed no guide but the stars to show him the way. As he moved
+  the hand of the Indian remained on the broncho's neck; and bit by
+  bit as the time passed he felt the moist hair grow stiff and dry.
+  Then, and not until then, came the final move, the beginning of
+  the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion,
+  apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and
+  again as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly,
+  that instant the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent
+  as before, a ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into
+  the night and the solitude.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch
+  had changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer
+  had driven about the place. One by one the cowboys had given
+  testimony of the fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At
+  first resignedly complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had
+  grown cumulatively impatient at the inevitably dragging
+  inventory. Nothing but necessity absolute in the shape of an
+  imminent foreclosure had brought him back to this land at all.
+  Delay had followed delay until at last immediate action was
+  imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in a
+  fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since
+  they had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had
+  been upon him. The team that had brought them out could not move
+  fast enough. The preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had
+  been, nevertheless dragged interminably. Strive as he might to
+  combat the impression, to ignore it, this land had of a sudden
+  become to him a land of terror. Every object which met his eye
+  called forth a recollection. Every minute that passed whispered a
+  menace. In a measure it had been so a half year ago ere he had
+  tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had occurred in
+  that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented
+  immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a
+  minute since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had
+  he been without a revolver at hand. All the previous night,
+  despite the grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had
+  bunked, a lamp had burned beside the bed; yet even then he could
+  not sleep. Whether or no he felt contrition for the past, this
+  man, he could not have told, he never paused to consider. All he
+  knew was that he had a deathly fear of this silent waste and of a
+  certain human who dwelt somewhere therein. Repugnant as
+  consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing compared
+  with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual</p>
+
+  <p>experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of
+  money, badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence.
+  Now that he was here he must needs see the transaction through;
+  he could not well do otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a
+  close and the necessity of tarrying a second night became
+  assured, the premonition of retribution, that had before lowered
+  merely as a possibility, loomed into the proportions of
+  certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink; not at
+  stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but
+  continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged
+  glances of understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal
+  was complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with
+  tobacco smoke, by the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene
+  lamp Craig had accomplished a sprawling signature and received in
+  return a check on a Chicago bank. It was already late, and very
+  soon the new owner, with a significant</p>
+
+  <p>look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt
+  "Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a
+  thinly veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself,
+  and Craig and his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes
+  thereafter the two men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite
+  his muddled brain, the former realised that the big Irishman was
+  observing him with a concentration that was significant. Ever
+  short of temper, the man's nerves were stretched to the jangling
+  point this night, and the look irritated him. Responsive, he
+  scowled prodigiously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer; only, if possible, the look became more analytic
+  than before.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous
+  staring that way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't
+  you like my selling and putting you out of a job?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, it's not that," refuted the Hibernian. "There are plenty
+  of other places I can get. I could stay right here for that
+  matter if I wanted to&mdash;but I don't. I wouldn't live in this house
+  any longer if my pay were doubled." As he spoke he had looked
+  away. Now of a sudden his glance returned. "I meant to quit
+  anyway, whether you sold or not."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why so?" queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was
+  repeated. "You seemed glad enough to come."</p>
+
+  <p>"I was&mdash;then," shortly.</p>
+
+  <p>"And why not now? Talk up, if you've any grievance. Don't sit
+  there like a chimpanzee, hugging it."</p>
+
+  <p>"You know why well enough," ignored the other. He passed a
+  knotty hand through his shock of red whiskers absently. "I've
+  expected the devil or worse here every night these last
+  weeks."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.</p>
+
+  <p>"God," he satirised, "who'd ever imagined you were the
+  superstitious sort! Weren't you ever in a place where anyone died
+  before?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I never was where a woman and her child were murdered,"
+  deliberately.</p>
+
+  <p>Quick as thought Craig's red face whitened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Damn you, O'Reilly," he challenged, "you're free with your
+  tongue." He checked himself. "I don't wish to quarrel with you
+  to-night, though," he conciliated.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nor I with you," returned the other impassively. "I was
+  merely telling you the truth. Besides, it's none of my affair;
+  and even if it were, I'm thinking you'll pay for it dear enough
+  before you're through."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude
+  supercilious.</p>
+
+  <p>"What the deuce do you mean, O'Reilly? You keep suggesting
+  things, but that is all. Talk plain if you know anything."</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't know anything," impassively; "unless it is that I
+  wouldn't be in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you've
+  made out of this cursed business."</p>
+
+  <p>Bit by bit Craig's face whitened. If anything the air of
+  conciliation augmented.</p>
+
+  <p>"You think circumstances weren't to blame?" he queried. "That,
+  in other words, I've brought things about as they are
+  deliberately?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't think anything. I know what you've done&mdash;and what
+  you've got to answer for."</p>
+
+  <p>Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he
+  arose unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a
+  jerk.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're beastly hard on me," he commented, "but let that pass.
+  It's probably the last time we'll ever see each other, and we may
+  as well part friends." He was back in his place again with the
+  flask before him, and with a propitiatory motion he extended the
+  liquor toward the other man. "Come, let's forget it," he
+  insinuated. "Have a drink with me."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not a drop."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if I requested it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if you got down on your knees and begged."</p>
+
+  <p>"All right." The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little
+  laugh. "I'll have to spoil it all myself, then."</p>
+
+  <p>The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down
+  swallow after swallow. The hand of the drinker trembled
+  uncontrollably, and a tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven
+  chin to the starched linen beneath.</p>
+
+  <p>"If you'll take a word of advice," commented the spectator at
+  last, "you'll cut that&mdash;for the time being at least." He
+  hesitated; then went on reluctantly. "I've been in your pay and
+  I'll try to be square with you. If you've got an atom of
+  presentiment you'll realise that this is no place for you to get
+  into the shape you're getting." Again he halted, and again with
+  an effort he gave the warning direct. "If I were you I wouldn't
+  be at this ranch a second longer than it took me to leave; not as
+  long as I had a broncho or a leg or a crutch to go on."</p>
+
+  <p>Slowly and more slowly came the words. Then followed silence,
+  with the two men staring each other face to face. Breaking it,
+  the overseer arose.</p>
+
+  <p>"I've said more than I intended already," he added, "and now I
+  wash my hands of you. Do as you please. I'm going to bed."</p>
+
+  <p>Preventing, of a sudden sobered, Craig was likewise on his
+  feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"In common decency, even if you're no friend of mine, don't
+  go, O'Reilly," he pleaded. He had no thought of superiority now,
+  no thought of malice; only of companionship and of protection. "I
+  know what you mean. I'm no fool, and what you suggest is exactly
+  what's been driving me insane these last two days. I'm going in
+  the morning, as soon as it's daylight; the team is all ordered;
+  but to-night, now&mdash;" instinctively he glanced at the window where
+  recollection pictured the darkness without&mdash;"I haven't nerve to
+  face it now. I'd go plumb mad out there alone."</p>
+
+  <p>The Irishman shrugged in silence and attempted to pass.</p>
+
+  <p>"Please don't go," repeated Craig swiftly. "I know I'm acting
+  like a child, but this cursed country's to blame. Stay with me
+  this last night. I couldn't sleep, and it's madness to be alone.
+  See me through this and I swear you'll not regret it. I swear
+  it!"</p>
+
+  <p>Just for a second O'Reilly paused; then of a sudden his face
+  flamed red through his untrimmed beard.</p>
+
+  <p>"To hell with your money!" he blazed. "I wouldn't lift my
+  finger for you if How Landor were to come this second." He
+  checked himself and took a step forward meaningly. "Besides, I
+  couldn't help you any if I would. God himself couldn't protect
+  you now unless He performed a miracle. Out of my way. I tell you
+  I'm done with you." Craig had not stirred. He did not now; and of
+  a sudden the overseer turned to pass around. As he did so for the
+  first time he faced the single window that looked north toward
+  the second ranch house: the house which How Landor had builded to
+  receive his bride. The curtain was still down, but to the
+  Irishman's quick eye there rested upon it now a dull glow that
+  was not a reflection of the light within. A second after he
+  noticed the man halted, looking at it, speculating as to its
+  meaning. Then of a sudden he realised; and in two steps he was
+  across the room and simultaneously the obscuring shade shot up
+  with a crash. Instantly following, startlingly unexpected, the
+  red glow without sprang through the glass and filled the
+  room.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fire!" announced the observer involuntarily to the sleepers
+  above. "The other ranch house is afire!" Then, as they were slow
+  in awakening, the cry was repeated more loudly: "Fire! Fire!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>A conflagration is the universal contagion, the one excitement
+  that never palls. Forth into the night, forgetful of his
+  companion, forgetful of all save the interest of the moment,
+  rushed O'Reilly. Half dressed, hatless, working with buttons as
+  they went, Parker, the new owner, and Mead, the lawyer, descended
+  the rickety stairs like an avalanche and without pausing to more
+  than look followed running in his wake. The unused ranch house
+  was dry as cardboard and was burning fiercely. Though there was
+  still no moon and the overseer had several minutes the start,
+  against the light they could see his running figure distinctly.
+  Standing in the living-room as they rushed through, white faced,
+  hesitant, was Clayton Craig; but though he had spoken to
+  them&mdash;they both recalled that fact afterward&mdash;neither had paused
+  to listen or to answer. That he would not follow never occurred
+  to them until minutes thereafter. Not until, panting, struggling
+  for breath after the unusual effort, they had covered the
+  intervening mile, and the heat of the already diminishing fire
+  was on their faces, did they think of him at all. Even then it
+  was not the first thought which occurred; for the moment they
+  arrived O'Reilly, who was waiting, turned, facing them
+  excitedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you see that?" he queried, pointing to a black band that
+  surrounded the building in a complete circle.</p>
+
+  <p>Parker nodded understandingly; but Mead, who was city bred,
+  looked mystified. "What is it?" he returned.</p>
+
+  <p>"A firebreak," explained the Irishman. "Someone didn't want
+  the blaze to spread and scattered earth clear around the place,
+  with a spade." Leaning over he picked up a clod and thumbed it
+  significantly. "It hasn't been done a half hour. The dirt isn't
+  even dry."</p>
+
+  <p>Brief as the time had been, already the frail walls were
+  settling to embers. There was nothing to do; and standing there
+  the three men looked understandingly into each other's faces. The
+  same thought stood clear on all; for all alike knew every detail
+  of the story.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Indian, How Landor," suggested Mead adequately.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," corroborated Parker, "and I'm glad of it. I'm not
+  squeamish, but the Lord knows I'd never have used the place
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden, O'Reilly, who had turned and was staring into the
+  blaze, faced about. That second he had remembered.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Craig?" he queried swiftly, glancing back the way
+  they had come. "Didn't he follow?"</p>
+
+  <p>Until that moment none of the three had thought of the other
+  man. Now they realised that they were alone. But even then two of
+  the trio did not understand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Evidently he didn't start," said Mead. "He couldn't have
+  missed the light if he did."</p>
+
+  <p>"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left,"
+  added Parker.</p>
+
+  <p>"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly.
+  "As there's a Heaven and a Hell he's not standing there now, I'll
+  wager!"</p>
+
+  <p>Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of
+  that meaning black band, the three spectators there beneath the
+  stars stood staring at each other. It was O'Reilly again who
+  broke the silence.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's
+  happened?" he interrogated unbelievingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no
+  doubt about that," said Mead.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor,
+  and he's been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone
+  back there in the ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you
+  see now? At last the Indian has found out!"</p>
+
+  <p>For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home,
+  not a man stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and
+  started back into the night.</p>
+
+  <p>"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We
+  can't get there a second too quick."</p>
+
+  <p>"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We
+  couldn't get there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over
+  before this, take my word for it."</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back
+  they were too late. As O'Reilly had anticipated, the ranch house
+  was empty, deserted. Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the
+  adjoining tool shed. Though they searched every nook, until a
+  mouse could not have escaped detection, they found not a trace of
+  him for whom they looked, nor a clue to his disappearance. Though
+  they shouted his name until they were hoarse not an answer came
+  back from the surrounding darkness. Within the ranch house
+  itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a
+  struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it
+  had been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap
+  and topcoat were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the
+  stable every horse was within its own stall: every piece of
+  saddlery was intact. While the three men were looking, attracted
+  by the blaze, the distant cowboys one by one began drifting in;
+  and when they had heard the tale joined in the search. All
+  through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns, like giant
+  fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a radius
+  of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming
+  of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches
+  appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on
+  the prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was
+  assembled. Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of
+  riders scoured the country for miles and miles. And once more,
+  from all, the testimony was as before. There was not a clue to
+  the disappearance, nor the semblance of a clue. As out of the
+  darkness of night surrounding, a great horned owl swoops down
+  upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the Indian had
+  come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as well
+  into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the
+  ranchers dispersed&mdash;and the search was over.</p>
+
+  <p>And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery
+  unsurmountable. One morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly
+  had gone, when the new master of the ranch arose it was to find a
+  wicked-looking mouse-coloured cayuse standing motionless by the
+  stable door. Upon him was neither saddle nor bridle nor mark of
+  any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless waste he had been
+  released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he had
+  returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He
+  could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out
+  there amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to
+  pass; but what it was only Nature and Nature's God, who alone
+  were witness, could ever know.</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Where the Trail Divides
+
+Author: Will Lillibridge
+
+Release Date: March 23, 2004  [eBook #11683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Jeremy Eble, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES
+
+By WILL LILLIBRIDGE
+
+Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.
+
+With Frontispiece in Colors
+By The Kinneys
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. PRESENTIMENT
+
+   II. FULFILMENT
+
+  III. DISCOVERY
+
+   IV. RECONSTRUCTION
+
+    V. THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+   VI. THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+  VII. A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+ VIII. THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+   IX. THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+    X. THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+   XI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XII. WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+ XIII. THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+  XIV. FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+   XV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XVI. THE RECKONING
+
+ XVII. SACRIFICE
+
+XVIII. REWARD
+
+  XIX. IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+PRESENTIMENT
+
+The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In
+addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
+limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
+throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
+effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
+the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
+country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
+man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
+rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
+his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
+rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
+sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
+wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
+the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
+repressed breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
+then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand gripping the
+butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, the other,
+big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a pendulum at his side.
+
+Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in civilisation,
+humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it here, solitary, exotic,
+no observer would have laughed. Fear, mortal dogging fear, impersonate,
+supreme, was in every look, every action. Somewhere back of that curved
+line where met the earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have
+been adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused. The
+sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop by drop from
+the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but apparently he never
+noticed it. Now and then he attempted to moisten his lips; but his
+tongue was dry as powder, and they closed again, parched as before.
+
+No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the way he was
+going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his only landmark; yet
+as hour after hour went by and the sun sank lower and lower he never
+halted, never seemed in doubt as to his destination. The country was
+growing more rolling now, almost hilly, and he approached each rise
+cautiously, vigilantly. Once, almost at his feet a covey of frightened
+prairie chickens sprang a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped
+like a stone in his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall
+grass; then, reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
+on.
+
+It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from absolute
+physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at last rebelled,
+and not even fear could suffice longer to stimulate him. The grass was
+wet with dew, and prone on his knees he moistened his lips therefrom as
+drinks many another of the fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back,
+not sleeping, but very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the
+return of strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat
+the sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and thicker,
+dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day had appeared the
+fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost brightened; until at last,
+like a curious face, the full moon, peeping above the horizon, lit up
+the surface of prairie.
+
+At last--and ere this the moon was well in the sky--the man arose,
+stretched his stiffened muscles profanely--before he had not spoken a
+syllable--listened a moment almost involuntarily, sent a swift,
+searching glance all about; then moved ahead, straight south, at the old
+relentless pace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls vacillated
+between vexation and solicitude.
+
+"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or not," he
+announced in ultimatum.
+
+Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid, folded his
+arms across his chest with an air of finality.
+
+"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the warning.
+I know your intentions are good, but you people are afraid of your own
+shadows. I know as well as you do that there are Indians in this part of
+the world, some odd thousands of them between here and the Hills, but
+they were here when I came and when you came, and we knew they were
+here. You expect to hear from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,'
+don't you?"
+
+The other made a motion of annoyance.
+
+"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he returned
+swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you were alone,
+Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine without another word;
+but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord she's down in Sioux City
+where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should be, and for her sake--"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned back.
+
+"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for little
+niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his
+son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy
+as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This isn't ancient history, man,
+but took place this very day. It's Indian massacre, and at our own
+throats. The boys are down below the falls getting ready to go right
+now. By night there won't be another white man or woman within
+twenty-five miles of you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here
+arguing. If you will stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and
+the girl. I'll take care of them myself and bring them back when the
+government sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
+reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should jump it
+there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come on."
+
+Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the tone of
+vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had appeared upon the
+scene.
+
+"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed. "Take my
+advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we leave you
+behind."
+
+"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked unemotionally.
+
+"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared. "Danger, with
+Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail! Is it possible you two
+don't realise things as they are?"
+
+"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the Tetons are
+hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us would rebel if we
+were hustled away into a corner like naughty little boys, as they are;
+but actual danger--" The woman threw a comprehensive, almost amused
+glance at the big man, her husband. "We've been here almost two years
+now; long before you and the others came. Half the hunters who pass this
+way stop here. It wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a
+whole antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
+those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would be in
+Sioux City."
+
+"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the other. "I
+don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own eyes."
+
+"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland glanced
+at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost superciliously.
+"Indians are like white people. They have their loves and hates the same
+as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran once before when everyone was
+going, and when we got back not a thing had been touched; but the weeds
+had choked our corn and the rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good
+to the Indians, and they appreciate it."
+
+A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came forward
+swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to the other.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and it's pure
+madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a big-eyed, solemn-faced
+mite of humanity, had come up now and stood staring the stranger
+silently from the side of her mother's skirts. "I hope for the best, but
+before God I never expect to see any of you again."
+
+"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right--when you return," commented
+Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and without a backward
+glance started at a rapid jog trot for the tiny settlement on the river
+two miles away.
+
+Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the departing
+frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes accentuated by the
+tightened lids.
+
+"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there ever
+was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual disturbance
+somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down at the settlement
+leaving--they'd go if they heard a coyote whistle; but Brown tells me
+there've been three different trappers from Big Stone gone through south
+in the last week, and when they leave it means something. If you say the
+word we'll leave everything and go yet."
+
+"If we do we'll never come back."
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not. We went
+before because the others went. If we left now it would be different.
+We'd be tortured day and night if we really feared--what happens now and
+then to some. We came here with our eyes wide open. We can't start again
+in civilisation. We're too old, and there's the past--"
+
+"You still blame me?"
+
+"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned toward
+the rough log shanty unemotionally.
+
+"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's hungry."
+
+A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.
+
+"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its feet, one
+hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the dishes on the rough
+pine dining table clattering with the suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who
+are you, man, and what's the trouble? Speak up--"
+
+The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced about the
+interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.
+
+His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but protruded.
+
+"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.
+
+"But who are you?"
+
+"Water!" fiercely, insistently.
+
+Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner, and
+without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made for it,
+grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after measure,
+the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping onto the sanded
+floor.
+
+"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"
+
+After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir; but at his
+side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering around the fortress of
+her skirts as when before she had argued with Frontiersman Brown, stood
+the little wide-eyed girl, type of the repressed frontier child.
+
+Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working unconsciously.
+
+"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
+Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you; you
+live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop to save
+anything."
+
+Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of perspiration.
+
+"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk so I can
+understand you."
+
+"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of the massacre
+along the Minnesota River?"
+
+"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"
+
+"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a trapper."
+Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive questioner
+doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell you along the
+way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw their signal smokes this
+very morning. They're murdering everyone--men, women, and children. It's
+Little Crow who started it, and God knows how many settlers they've
+killed. They chased me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave
+out yesterday; and since then--But come. It's suicide to chatter like
+this." He turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
+minute."
+
+Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a word; but at
+last the woman shook her head slowly.
+
+Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.
+
+"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.
+
+Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin folding over
+his soft flannel shirt.
+
+"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of amusement.
+
+"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed almost to
+roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."
+
+"There is no settlement."
+
+"What?"
+
+Rowland repeated his statement impassively.
+
+"They've--gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick again.
+
+"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of scorn.
+
+For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite tan and
+dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller whitened. The same
+expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all but insane, that had been
+with him alone out on the prairie returned, augmented. Heedless of
+appearances, all but unconscious of the presence of spectators, he
+glanced about the single room like a beaten rabbit with the hounds close
+on its trail. No avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope of
+protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his forehead, at
+the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he mopped it away with
+the back of a fat, grimy hand.
+
+In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated another
+vacant beside the board.
+
+"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be hungry as
+a coyote."
+
+"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless mood
+returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He started
+shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you think I lie.
+We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught like a beaver in a
+trap." Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did they go!"
+
+Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.
+
+"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City; part west
+toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the inevitable
+contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak. "You'd better take a
+lunch along. It's something of a journey to either place."
+
+Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous hospitality
+of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint Indian basket of
+coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely touched, from the table. A
+loaf of bread followed: a bottle of water from the wooden pail in the
+corner. "You're welcome, friend," she proffered.
+
+Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his eyes.
+
+"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm sorry--" He
+lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the doorway. "Good-bye."
+
+Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected dinner.
+
+"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think we'll run at
+sight of them," he commented.
+
+Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through which
+Mueller had gone, did not answer.
+
+"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.
+
+Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few mouthfuls,
+pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak, and, rising, the man
+made his way across the room to put an arm with rough affection around
+his wife's waist.
+
+"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.
+
+The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable after her
+former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd gone too; but
+now,"--her arms crept around his neck, closed,--"but now--now it's too
+late!"
+
+For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but involuntarily
+his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the woman could not have
+turned. He had been looking absently out the door, south over the
+rolling country leading to the deserted settlement.
+
+In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was
+still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the
+trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a
+spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank
+and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland
+watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the
+movement of a coyote or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was
+the only visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life
+responds to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late,"
+with the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the first
+time, to his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of fear, but
+near akin, as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and the red man its
+child. In a hazy way came the question whether after all it were not
+foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that invisible, intangible
+something before which, almost in panic, the others had fled. To be
+sure, precedent was with him, logic; but--of a sudden--but a minute had
+passed--his arms tightened; involuntarily he held his breath. Hans
+Mueller had been moving on and on; another half minute and he would have
+been behind the base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf
+at one's feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
+tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm of
+other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score--in front, behind, all
+about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had come,
+autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked his eyes; then,
+as came swift understanding, instinctively he shielded the woman in his
+arms from the sight, from the knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears
+from over the prairie: not a single call for help. That black swarm
+simply arose, there was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic
+through the curling heat waves; then one and all, the original dark
+figure, the score of others, disappeared--as suddenly as though the
+earth from which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
+spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
+green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.
+
+Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as pale as had
+been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against the lintel of the
+door.
+
+"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he echoed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it
+was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown
+of earth that filled the spaces between--like the longitudinal stripes
+of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough
+grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares
+of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork
+of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified
+by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature
+waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it, stretching
+northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod corn: the ears already
+formed, the ground whitened from the lavishly scattered pollen of the
+frayed tassels. In the dooryard itself was a dug well with a mound of
+weed-covered clay by its side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over
+its mouth. It was deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the
+surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a
+rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
+meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it
+was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the
+spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away the
+long, sultry afternoons.
+
+Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The single horse
+Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured, was breaking sod far
+to the west on the bank of the Jim River. Not a live thing other than
+human moved about the place. With them into this land of silence had
+come a mongrel collie. For a solitary month he had stood guard; then one
+night, somewhere in the distance, in the east where flowed the Big
+Sioux, had sounded the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately
+nearer and more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
+collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild they
+never knew, nor ever filled his place.
+
+Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that afternoon of
+late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he had seen; elaborately
+careful likewise to carry out the family programme as usual.
+
+"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.
+
+Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent corroboration.
+
+"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to all fours
+and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.
+
+"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the doorway as
+only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun and the dust;
+climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly about his neck, down
+the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the pillow and the patchwork quilt
+with a deftness born of experience.
+
+"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.
+
+"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.
+
+"Sing! I can't sing, kid."
+
+"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"
+
+"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."
+
+"Please, papa; pretty please!"
+
+The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do, braced himself
+in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he knew of the song again
+and again--his voice rough and unmusical as that of a crow, echoing and
+re-echoing in the narrow space--bent over at last, touched his bearded
+lips softly to the winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an
+irresistible catch in his breath, silently to the surface, sent one
+swift glance sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
+cabin.
+
+Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer shotgun,
+and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy beside the door.
+
+"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he overhauled
+the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not deceived. This done,
+notwithstanding the fact that the sun still beat scorchingly hot
+thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit his pipe, drew his
+weather-stained sombrero low over his face, through half-closed eyes
+inspected the lower lands all about, impassively silent awaited the
+coming of the inevitable. Of a sudden there was a touch on his shoulder,
+and, involuntarily starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret
+Rowland.
+
+The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.
+
+"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
+something."
+
+In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more brightly as
+Rowland drew hard.
+
+"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"
+
+The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded reluctant
+corroboration.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"You--saw them?"
+
+Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as well, after
+all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of the rise before
+them. "They waylaid Mueller there."
+
+"And you--"
+
+"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all he--Margaret!"
+
+"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous suggestion!"
+
+"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the quiver of her
+body against his, the involuntary catch of her breath. "Forgive me,
+Margaret."
+
+"You're not to blame. Perhaps--Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"
+
+Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above the
+scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very breath of
+prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or
+a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant
+drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf
+contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In
+sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of
+the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had
+done Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
+"Water! Water! Give us drink!"
+
+Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the woman; like
+children awed by the sudden realisation of their helplessness, their
+hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute understanding. Usually at this time
+of day with nothing to do they slept; but neither thought of sleep now.
+As passed the slow time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour
+of supper; but likewise hunger passed them by. Something very like
+fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at
+motionless impassive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that
+nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod corn
+again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded in
+preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out, out--.
+
+"Sam!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You saw, too?"
+
+An answering pressure of the hand.
+
+"The eyes of him, only the eyes--out there at the edge of the corn!"
+
+"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his breath
+tightened. "They're all about: a score at least--I don't know how many.
+The tall grass there to the east is alive--"
+
+"Sam! They're there again--the eyes! Oh, I'm afraid--Sam--baby!"
+
+"Hush! Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our only chance.
+Let them make the first move." Again the hand pressure so tight that,
+although she made no sound, the blood left the woman's fingers. "Tell me
+you forgive me, Margaret; before anything happens. I'm a criminal to
+have stayed here,--I see it now, a criminal!"
+
+"Don't!"
+
+"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."
+
+"I love you, Sam."
+
+Again in the expanse of grass to the east there was motion; not in a
+single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was visible, not a
+sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here and there it stirred,
+and became motionless, and stirred again.
+
+"And--Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take either of us
+alive. The last one--I can't say it. You understand."
+
+"Yes, I understand. The last load--But maybe--"
+
+"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this way
+if--Margaret, in God's name--"
+
+"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely beneath the
+grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see her again; must,
+must--"
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+"I must, I say!"
+
+"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless we show
+the way. Think--as you love her."
+
+"But if anything should happen to us--She'll starve!"
+
+"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come--now; and Landor
+knows."
+
+"Oh, Sam, Sam!"
+
+There was silence. No human being could give answer to that mother wail.
+
+Again time passed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that were a hell
+of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun sank from sight. In
+the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed red as from a distant
+conflagration. For and eternity previous it seemed to the silent
+watchers there had been no move; now again at last the grass stirred; a
+corn plant rustled where there was no breeze; out into the small open
+plat surrounding the house sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across
+the clearing, headed for the protecting grass, halted at the edge
+irresolute--scurried back again at something it saw.
+
+"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained, unnatural.
+"They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."
+
+"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural tone!
+
+"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man dies."
+
+"Sam Rowland--my husband!"
+
+"Margaret--my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes, regardless of
+everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how can you forgive me, can
+God forgive me!" Tight in his arms he kissed her again and again;
+passionately, in abandon. "I've always loved you, Margaret; always,
+always!"
+
+"And I you, man; and I you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on the field
+mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water hole, so it came.
+Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse call of a catbird where no
+bird was, and again, and again. In front of the maize patch, always in
+front, a dark form, a mere shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out
+clear against the light of sky. To right and left appeared others, as
+motionless as boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler
+Rowland been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No
+Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand.
+Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited
+passive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight
+before him, God alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again
+in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures
+against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch
+of the cabin roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in
+front. Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge
+pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in front.
+Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the rear, reached the
+edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the maize patch, out of the
+grass, seemingly out of space itself, came a new cry--the trilling call
+of the prairie owl. It was the signal. Like twin drops of rain from a
+cloudless sky fell the two figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter
+a sound, could offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere,
+everywhere, swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them
+forth in legion. In the multitude of hands he was as a child. Within the
+space of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything had
+happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the clearing
+before the door not a human being was visible, not a live thing; only on
+the thatched roof, silent as before, patient as fate, awaited two other
+shadows, darker but by contrast with the weather-coloured grass.
+
+Minutes passed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the silence.
+Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a thing of which
+insanity is made.
+
+"Sam!" called a voice softly.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Sam!" repeated more loudly.
+
+Again no answer of voice or of action.
+
+In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly fearful.
+
+"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped outside.
+
+A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The earth was
+not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie owl. As dropped
+the figures from above there broke forth the Sioux war-cry: long drawn
+out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely
+than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a
+score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth.
+Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they
+swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in
+their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they
+seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage abandon, of drunken
+exhilaration in the cunning that had won the game without a shot from
+the white man's gun, without the injury of a single warrior. They were
+in haste, and yet they were not in haste. They looted the cabin like
+fire and then fought among themselves for the plunder. They applied the
+torch to the shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then
+capered fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until, tinder
+dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all, purposely reserved
+as a climax, they gave their attention to the pair of half-naked, bound
+and gagged figures in their midst. Then it was the scene became an orgy
+indeed. The havoc preceding had but whetted their appetite for the
+finale. Savagery personified, cruelty unqualified, deadly hate,
+primitive lust--every black passion lurking in the recesses of the human
+mind stalked brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister,
+unashamed. But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand
+similar scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
+the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a nation's
+expansion, as its progression.
+
+It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle of
+prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
+unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
+irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their
+journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the
+print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows,
+forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth,
+they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little
+river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement,
+the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to
+other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man
+who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they
+moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
+almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat
+of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer
+rain, the rustle of their passing bodies against the dense vegetation a
+soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.
+Night and distance swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined
+grainfield, the smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the
+glaring white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the
+background of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for
+this, and one other thing--a single sound, repeated again and again,
+dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.
+
+"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its depths
+that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm afraid!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as
+necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To
+the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight
+feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped
+between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the
+square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close
+together and pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by
+numerous portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers
+near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated, mingled and
+intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as diverse a gathering of
+humans as ever graced a single structure even in this land of myriad
+types. Virtually the entire population of frontier Yankton was there.
+Likewise the settlers from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the
+far-away country of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground
+of the Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the
+peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild west of
+the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the Blackfeet, the
+Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the alarm of rapine and of
+massacre had spread afar. Very late to arrive, doggedly holding their
+own until rumour became reality unmistakable, was the colony from the
+Jim River valley to the east; but even they had finally surrendered, the
+dogging grip of fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their
+throats, had fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the
+Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as you
+please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux Falls.
+Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for with the actual
+retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow mile, thanking the
+Providence which had permitted them to arrive unmolested, a
+sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old smoothbore cannon
+before the big south gate and craved admittance. Out to them went
+Colonel William Landor, colonel by courtesy, scion of many generations
+of Landors, rancher at present, cattle king of the future. The
+conversation that followed there with the east reddening in the morning
+sun was very brief, very swift to the point.
+
+"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing them
+collectively, compellingly.
+
+"My name is McPherson."
+
+"Mine is Horton."
+
+"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."
+
+"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered McPherson who
+took the lead.
+
+"From where?"
+
+"Sioux Falls."
+
+"Any news?"
+
+Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now a day
+old.
+
+"And the rest of your settlement--where are they?"
+
+McPherson told him.
+
+"They all went, you say?"
+
+For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he
+qualified.
+
+"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company
+collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That you--men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl
+alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously.
+"You come here with that story and ask me to let you inside?"
+
+McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently, his
+shoulders squared.
+
+"We're here," he announced laconically.
+
+"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids. "Moreover,
+strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned forward involuntarily;
+his breath came quick. "It gives me the opportunity, sir, to tell you to
+your face that you're a damned coward." In spite of an obvious effort at
+repression, the great veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A
+damned coward, sir!"
+
+"What! You call me--"
+
+"Men! Gentlemen!"
+
+"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was
+himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood
+shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done
+with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When
+I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a
+time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the
+Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had
+been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight,
+every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here.
+If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade--not if
+the Santees scalped you before my eyes."
+
+For a second there was silence, inaction.
+
+"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried--"
+
+"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there
+are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned
+to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,--I'm afraid it is;
+but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me?
+Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"
+
+"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of
+speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're
+all with you--that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't
+cats, so we can't croak but once--and that might as well be now as ten
+years from now."
+
+"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the
+motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first
+twenty to return, go."
+
+From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.
+
+"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.
+
+No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.
+
+For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an inverted V;
+then silent as they, equally swiftly, he followed.
+
+Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle back. Not in
+ignorance of possibilities in store did they come. They had no delusions
+concerning the red brother, these frontiersmen. Nor in the hot
+adventurous blood of youth did they respond. One and all were
+middle-aged men; many had families. All save Landor were strangers to
+the man they went to seek. Yet at a moment's call they responded; as
+they took it for granted others would respond were they in need. Had
+they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it
+they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal
+brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated
+abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious,
+smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all
+to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant
+quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled,
+parchment-faced veteran, who alone had followed the Missouri to its
+source and, stranger to relate, had alone returned with his scalp. Then
+came Landor himself, the wiry little mustang he rode all but blanketed
+under the big army saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as
+though an event of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson,
+drew up in place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat
+appreciatively, but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one
+but many riders; a half dozen, a score,--enough to make up the
+allotment, and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly
+accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho, the
+mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of apparel,
+from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or saddleless,
+across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel of a long rifle, at
+the hip of every rider hung a holster, from every belt peeped the hilt
+of a great knife. Long ere this word of the unusual had passed about,
+and now, on the rise of ground at the back of the stockade, a goodly
+group had gathered. Silent as the prairies, as the morning itself, they
+watched the scene below, awaited the _denouement._ Not without influence
+was the taciturn example of the red man in this land from which he was
+slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to the east the red face of
+the morning sun was just peeping when Landor separated himself from the
+waiting group, led the way to the big gate and paused. "Twenty only,
+men," he repeated. "All ready."
+
+First through the opening went Crosby.
+
+"One."
+
+Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.
+
+"Two."
+
+From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came Scotchman
+McPherson; but though he passed fair before the leader's eyes and not a
+yard away, no number was spoken; no hint of recognition, of cognisance,
+crossed the latter's face. Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited
+the next in line, then voiced the one word: "Three."
+
+On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts silent--halting
+at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and twenty men who counted
+but as a score, started into motion, halted again; as by common consent
+every head save one of a sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the
+watching group back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All
+but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out
+where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
+tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the column one
+rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear. Implacable as
+Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that
+would bring with it renewed activity.
+
+And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its
+place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From his position by the
+gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind him, impassive again as
+figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line. At first a mere walk,
+the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot. By this time the
+confines of the tiny frontier town were passed. Before them on the one
+hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown
+from its coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
+glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad
+dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie. Straight
+into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the
+first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of
+civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier,
+which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off
+the passing miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.
+
+Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
+settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was the
+prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before; yet
+with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead, straight as a line drawn
+taut from point to point. Nothing stopped their advance, nothing made
+them turn aside. Seemingly destitute of animal life, the country fairly
+teemed at their approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the
+blue-faced anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks.
+Troops of antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away
+from the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the safety
+of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight. Every marshy
+spot, every prairie pond, had its setting of ducks. The teal, the
+mallard, the widgeon, the shoveller, the canvasback--all mingled in the
+loud-voiced throng that arose before the leader's approach, then, like
+smoke, vanished with almost unbelievable swiftness into the hazy
+distance. Prairie dog towns, populous as cities of man a minute before
+their approach, went lifeless, desolate, as they passed through. In the
+infrequent draws and creek beds between the low, rolling hills,
+great-eyed cotton tails scampered to cover or, like the antelope, just
+out of harm's way, watched the passage of this strange being, man.
+Wonder of wonders that display of life would have been to another
+generation; but of it these grim-faced riders were apparently
+unconscious, oblivious. Their eyes were not for things near at hand, but
+for the distance, for the possibility that lurked just beyond that
+far-away rise which formed their horizon, when they had reached that for
+the next beyond, and the next.
+
+Hour by hour the morning wore away. Hotter and hotter rose the sun above
+them. Instead of drops of dew, tiny particles of sun-dried grass flew
+away from beneath the leaders' feet, mingled with the dust of prairie,
+became a cloud shutting the leaders from the sight of those in the rear.
+From being a mere breath, the south wind augmented, became positive,
+insistent. Hot with the latent heat of many days, it sang in their ears
+as they went, bit all but scorching, at their unprotected hands and
+throats. Under its touch the horses' necks, dark before with sweat,
+became normal again: between their legs, under the, edges of the great
+saddles where it had churned into foam, dried into white powder, like
+frostwork amid the hair. Gradually with the change, their breathing
+became audible, louder and louder, until in unison it mingled with the
+dull impact of their feet on the heavy sod like the exhaust of many
+engines. No horseman who values the life of the beast between his legs,
+fails to heed that warning. Landor did not, but at the first dawdling
+prairie creek that offered water and, with its struggling fringe of
+willows, a suggestion of shade, he gave the word to halt, and for four
+mortal, blistering hours while, man and beast alike, the others slept,
+kept watch over them from the nearest rise. Relentless to others this
+man might be, but not even his dearest enemy could accuse him of sparing
+himself.
+
+It was three by the clock when again they took up the trail. It was 3.45
+when they swam what is now the Vermilion River, the last water-course of
+any size on their way. The dew was again beginning to gather when, well
+to the south, they approached the bordering hills that concealed the
+site of Sioux Falls settlement. Then for the first time since they
+began that last relay Landor gave an order.
+
+"It'll be a miracle if we don't find Sioux there in the bottom, men," he
+prophesied. "Perhaps there are a whole band, perhaps it'll only be
+stragglers; but no matter how many or how few there may be, charge them.
+If they run you know what to do--this is no holiday outing. If they
+stand, charge them all the harder." He faced his horse to the north and
+gave the word to go. "It's our only chance," he completed.
+
+What followed belongs to history. Over that last intervening rise they
+went like demons. The first to gain the crown, to look down into the
+valley beyond, was Landor. As he did so, grim Anglo-Saxon as he was, his
+whole attitude underwent a transformation. Back to the others he turned
+his face, and, plain as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage,
+and the lust of battle.
+
+"They're there; a hundred, if a single red!" he shouted. "Come on!" and
+the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse's flanks, dug until
+the blood spurted.
+
+But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction of the
+time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground. Outnumbering
+those who charged many times, it was not in savage nature to face that
+unformed oncoming motley of howling, bloodthirsty maniacs. Slowly at
+first began the retreat; then as, with great swiftness, the others
+shortened the distance intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a
+stampede. Every brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the
+dismantled ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling
+like their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for the
+thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in their
+ears, cutting at the vegetation about them. Into its friendly cover they
+plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the surface of a lake, and were
+swallowed from sight. That is, all but one. That one, unhorsed by
+accident, was left to face that oncoming flood. . . . But why linger.
+Like the charge itself, his fate is history. These men were but human,
+and thick about them were the ashes from the roof-trees of their
+friends.
+
+Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind, musical with the
+drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs from the low land
+adjoining the river, melancholy with the call of the catbird, with the
+infrequent note of the whip-poor-will, was upon the land of the Mandans
+when the score and one, their dripping ponies once more dry, took up the
+last relay of their journey. Night had caught them there in the deserted
+settlement, and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait. Now, far to
+the east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the face
+of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves through the heated
+air, slowly rising, lit up the level country softly as by early
+twilight. Lingeringly, almost reluctantly, Landor got into his saddle.
+Just to his left, impassive as the night, well to the front of the
+company as he had been that mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman
+McPherson. Not once since that early morning scene at Fort Yankton had
+he spoken a word, not once had he been addressed, had another man shown
+consciousness of his presence. A pariah, he had so far kept them
+company; a pariah, he now awaited the end. A moment, fair in his seat,
+Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for hours came
+to pass. Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein beside the other man.
+
+"McPherson," he said, "this morning I called you coward. That you are
+not such you have proven, you are proving now. For this reason I ask
+your pardon. For this reason as well, I give you warning. What we will
+find--where we are going, I do not doubt, now. I do not believe you
+doubt. For it I hold you responsible. You had best turn back before
+belief becomes certainty." Unnaturally precise, cold as November
+raindrops came the words, the sentences. Deadly in meaning was the pause
+that followed. "I repeat, you had best turn back."
+
+For a long half minute, face to face there in the moonlight, Landor
+waited; but no answer came. Just perceptibly he shifted in his place.
+
+"I may forget, give my promise of the morning the lie. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+Another half minute, ghastly in its significance, passed; then without a
+word Landor turned. "You have heard, men," he said, "and may God be my
+judge."
+
+The full moon was well in the sky, showing clear every detail in that
+scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter, patter sounded
+their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more loud they grew, muffled
+yet penetrating in the silence of night, always augmenting in volume.
+Out of the shadows figures came dimly into view, taking form against the
+background of constellations. The straining of leather, the music of
+steel in bit and buckle, the soft swish of the sun-dried grass
+proclaimed them very near; then across the trampled corn patch, into the
+open where had stood the shanty, where now was a thin grey layer of
+ashes, came the riders, and drew rein; their weary mounts crowding each
+other in fear at something they saw. Like a storm cloud they came; like
+the roll of thunder following was the oath which sprang to the lips of
+every rider save one. Good men they were, God-fearing men; yet they
+swore like pirates, like humans when ordinary speech is not adequate. In
+the pause but one man acted, and none intervened to prevent what he did.
+Out into the open, away from the others, rode Scotchman McPherson;
+halted, his hand on the holster at his hip. For a second, and a second
+only, he sat so, the white moonlight drawing clear every line of his
+grizzled face, his stocky figure. Then deliberately his hand lifted,
+before him there appeared a sudden blaze of fire, upon the silence there
+broke a single revolver report, from beneath his lifeless bulk the
+horse he rode broke free, gave one bound, by instinct halted, trembling
+in every muscle; then over all, the quick and the dead, returned
+silence: silence absolute as that of the grave.
+
+How long those twenty men sat there, gazing at that mute, motionless
+figure on the ground not one could have told. Death was no stranger to
+them. For years it had lurked behind every chance shrub they passed, in
+the depths of every ravine, in the darkness of night, from every tangle
+of rank prairie grass in broad daylight. To it from long familiarity
+they had become callous; but death such as this, deliberate,
+cold-blooded, self-inflicted--it awed them while it fascinated, held
+them silent, passive.
+
+"In God's name!" Again it was Landor who roused them, Landor with his
+hand on the holster at his hip, Landor who sat staring as one who doubts
+his own sight. "Am I sane, men? Look, there to your right!"
+
+They looked. They rubbed their eyes and looked again.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned," voiced Crosby; and no man had ever heard him
+express surprise before. To the north, from the edge of the tall
+surrounding grass, moving slowly, yet without a trace of hesitation or
+of fear, coming straight toward them across the trampled earth, were two
+tiny human figures, hand in hand. No wonder they who saw stared; no
+wonder they doubted their eyes. One, the figure to the right, was plump
+and uncertain of step and all in white; white which in the moonlight
+and against the black earth seemed ghostly. The other was slim and
+certain of movement and dark--dark as a copper brown Indian boy, naked
+as when he came on earth. On they came, the brown figure leading, the
+white following trustfully, until they were quite up to the watchers,
+halted, still hand in hand.
+
+"How," said a voice, a piping childish voice.
+
+Like rustics at a spectacle the men stared, turned mystified faces each
+to each, and stared anew. All save one. Off from his horse sprang
+Landor, caught the bundle of white in his arms.
+
+"Baby Rowland! Baby Bess! And you,"--he was staring the other from head
+to toe, the distance was short,--"who are you?"
+
+"Uncle Billy," interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of femininity
+nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa and mamma! I want them."
+
+Closer and closer the big bachelor arms clasped their burden; unashamed,
+there with the others watching him, he kissed her.
+
+"Never mind now, Kiddie. Tell me how you came here, and who this is with
+you."
+
+About the great neck crept two arms, clinging tightly.
+
+"He just came, Uncle Billy. I was calling for papa. Papa put me to sleep
+and forgot me. The boy heard me and took me out. I was afraid at first,
+but--but he's a nice boy, only he won't talk and--and--" The narrative
+halted, the tousled head buried itself joyously. "Oh, I'm so glad you
+came, Uncle Billy!"
+
+In silence Landor's eyes made the circle of interested watching faces,
+returned to the winsome brown face so near his own.
+
+"Aren't you hungry, Kid?" he ventured.
+
+On his shoulder the dark poll shook a negative.
+
+"No. We had corn to eat. The boy roasted it. He made a big fire. He's a
+nice boy, only--only he won't say anything."
+
+Again Landor's eyes made the circle, halted at the intrepid brown waif
+who, that first word of greeting spoken, had silently stared him back.
+
+"You're sure you don't know anything more, baby? You didn't hear
+anything until the boy came?"
+
+"No, Uncle Billy. I was asleep. When I woke up it was dark, and I was
+hungry and--and--" At last it had come: the spattering, turbulent tear
+storm. Her small body shook, her arms clasped tighter and tighter. "Oh,
+Uncle Billy, I want my papa and mamma. I tried to find them, and I
+couldn't. Please find them for me, Uncle Billy, Please! Please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well past midnight. The big full moon, high now in the sky, cast
+their shadows almost about their feet when, their labour complete, the
+party took up the homeward trail. But there were twenty no longer. At
+their head as before rode Landor, in his arms not a rifle but a blanket;
+a blanket from which as they journeyed on came now and anon a sound
+that was alien indeed: the sobs of a baby girl who wept as she slept.
+Back of him, likewise as when they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby;
+but he, too, was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in
+front of him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat,
+was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake
+indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him,
+every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there,
+what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know,
+could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew
+only the bizarre, with whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now,
+weary to death with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable
+reaction from the excitement of the past hours, they moved away, to the
+south, to the west. In front of them, glittering in the moonlight,
+seemingly infinite, stretched the waves of the rolling prairie, bare as
+the sea in a calm. Behind them, growing lesser and lesser minute by
+minute, merging into the infinite white, were three black dots like tiny
+boats on the horizon's edge. On they went, a half mile, a mile, looked
+behind; and, with an awe no familiarity could prevent, faced ahead anew.
+Back of them now as well as before, uniformly endless, uniformly
+magnificent, stretched that giant ocean: silent, serene, as mother
+nature, as nature's master, God himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+RECONSTRUCTION
+
+The day of the Indian terror had passed. No longer did the name of
+Little Crow carry stampede in its wake. The battles of Big Mound, of
+White Stone Hill, and of the Bad Lands had been fought, had become mere
+history; dim already to the newcomer as Lexington or Bull Run. Still in
+the memory, to be sure, was the half-invited massacre of Custer at the
+Little Big Horn; but the savage genius of Sitting Bull, of Crazy Horse,
+and of Gall, who had made the last great encounter bloodily unique in
+the conflict of the red man and the white, was never to be duplicated.
+Rightly or wrongly deprived of what they had once called their own,
+driven back, back on the crest of the ever-increasing wave of
+settlement, facing the alternative of annihilation or of submergence in
+that flood, the Sioux had halted like a wild thing at bay, with their
+backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot of earth on the face of
+the globe, the Black Hills country, and as a cornered animal ever
+fights, had battled ferociously for a lost supremacy. But, robbers
+themselves, holding the land on the insecure title of might alone,
+fighting to the end, they had at last succumbed to the inevitable: the
+all-conquering invasion of the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a
+name stood out: "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," "Little Crow,"
+"Sitting Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall,"
+"John Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic
+suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had long since
+passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to desperation, might
+incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an incorrigible by a
+harrowing reference to one or to another; yet to the incoming swarms of
+land-hungry settlers they were mere supplanted play actors, fit heroes
+for fiction, for romance perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small
+herds safe in the pasture of a reservation, preserved as a relic of a
+species doomed to extinction.
+
+A thing at which to marvel was the growth of the eastern border of
+Dakota Territory in this, the time of the great boom. History can
+scarcely find its parallel. In the space of a decade the census leaped
+from two-score thousand to nearly a half million. New towns sprang up
+like fungi in a night. Railroads reached out like the tentacles of an
+octopus, where a generation before the buffalo had tramped its tortuous
+trail. Prosperous farms came into being in the meadows where the
+antelope had pastured. Artesian wells, waterworks, electric lights,
+street railways, colleges, all the adjuncts of a higher civilisation,
+blossomed forth under the magic wand of Eastern capital. Doomed to
+reaction, as an advancing pendulum is doomed to retrace its cycle, was
+this premature evolution; but temporarily, as a springtime freshet
+bears onward the driftwood in its path, it carried its predecessor, the
+unconventional, fighting, wild-loving adventurer, before. On it went, on
+and on until at last, fairly blocking its path, was the big, muddy,
+dawdling Missouri. Then for the first time it halted; halted in a pause
+that was to last for a generation. But it had fulfilled its mission.
+High and dry on the western side of the barrier, imbued as when they had
+settled to the east, with the restless spirit of the frontier,
+unsubdued, unchanged, it cast its burden. There, as they had done
+before, the newcomers immediately took root, and, after the passage of a
+year, were all but unconscious of the migration. Over their heads was
+the same blue prairie sky. Around them, treeless, trackless, was the
+same rolling, illimitable prairie land. In but one essential were
+conditions changed; yet that one was epoch-making. Heretofore,
+surrounded by a common, an alien danger, compelled at a second's warning
+to band together for life itself, all men were brothers. Now, with the
+passing of the red peril, with eradication of necessity for any manner
+of restraint, an abandon of licence, of recklessness, born of the wild
+life, of overflowing animal vitality insufficiently employed, swept the
+land like a contagion. Unique in the history of man's development was
+this the era of the cowboy, as fantastic now as the era of the red
+peril, its predecessor; yet vital, bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously
+human, as no other period has ever been, as in all probability none
+will ever be again. Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed,
+chivalrous, fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate,
+wilful and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented,
+seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as
+certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied their own
+Hell and, impartial, chose from each to weave the web of their lives.
+
+Of this period, life of this life, was Colonel William Landor; colonel
+no longer, plain Bill, from the river to the Hills, husband these ten
+years now, but not father, Cattle King of an uncontested range. Of this
+life likewise, bred in it, saturated in it, was a dark young woman, his
+adopted daughter, two years past her majority, Elizabeth Rowland Landor
+by name. Of it most vitally of all, born of it, rooted in it through
+unknown centuries of ancestral domicile, was a copper-brown young man,
+destitute as a boy of twelve of a trace of beard, black as a prairie
+crow of hair and eyes, deep-lunged like a race-track thoroughbred, wiry
+as a mustang, garbed as a white man, but bearing the liquid name of a
+Teton Sioux, "Ma-wa-cha-sa, the lost pappoose," yet known wherever the
+Santee Massacre and the tale of his appearance was known, as "How"
+Landor. Of this period, last of all, was the great B.B.--Buffalo
+Butte--ranch, giant among the giants, whose brand was familiar as his
+own name to every cowboy west of the Missouri, whose hospitable ranch
+house, twenty-odd miles from the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote
+Centre, which in turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles
+from nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into
+this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the reverse
+side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one lunger," who, with
+gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie sun and prairie air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay Creek ranch
+had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the day previous they
+had suddenly blown in from the north; a great cloud of yellow dust,
+lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty panting of winded bronchos, a
+single demoniacal dare-man whoop heralding their coming, a groaning of
+straining leather, a jingle of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented
+stillness even in this silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was,
+Pete Sweeney, "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was
+who first entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who,
+ere ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only man
+who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute ownership. Pete
+it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared away, assisted in
+laying out that same misguided citizen, in decent fellowship, beneath
+the cottonwood bar, and thrust an adequate green roll in the stiffening
+hand for funeral expenses.
+
+"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I don't visit
+you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to make it square, and
+this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all. D'ye understand?" and from
+Manning, the greybearded storekeeper, to Rank Judge, the one-legged
+saddler, there was no one to say him nay, none to contest his right of
+authority.
+
+By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre. Under
+ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even aggressively, upheld by
+its representative, Marshal Jim Burton. Likewise there was no lack of
+pilgrims, who by devious and circuitous routes sought his residence on
+this occasion, with tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one
+and all departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
+not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an even more
+indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one regretted the
+mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who imparted the information,
+no one deplored the lost opportunity for distinction so much as she; but
+nevertheless the fact remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was
+thrown upon its own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as
+best it might.
+
+Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the beginning
+of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned, and that more than
+intermittently, all but continuously, the red liquor had flowed; to the
+alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins and his straw-haired Norwegian
+rival across the street--Gus Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were
+who fancied that ere this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity
+for absorption had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable
+intention of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
+themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town,
+all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where
+they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in
+peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master,
+had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of
+law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
+corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye
+and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of solid sustenance,
+was, to all visible indications, as fresh and aggressive as at the
+beginning.
+
+Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor down the
+single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its face. One and
+all had succumbed long before to the god of gunpowder. Not a stray dog,
+and Coyote Centre was plethoric of canines, raised its voice nor showed
+even a retreating tail near the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire
+for deepest obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden
+annihilation to the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a
+cyclone were imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They
+were a tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
+experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object lesson
+of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at last patience
+was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of the town hall a tiny
+group of men were gathered, a group who spoke scarcely above a whisper,
+who kept a sharp lookout all surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch
+of an eyelash to disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient.
+In the single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
+plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy bearded, had
+the floor.
+
+"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included indiscriminately. "You
+come here with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of
+you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand
+and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of
+the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including
+disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
+Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned
+cowards, I say."
+
+In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud Smith, the
+weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat hurt him.
+
+"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and agin p'raps
+you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new marshal, but as
+fer's I've been able to discover there's no one hereabouts hankerin' fer
+the job." He spat at a crack in the cottonwood floor meditatively,
+struck true, and seemed mildly pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin'
+comfortably rapidly as it is, without adding any marshals to the
+collection. I've known Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private
+advice is to let him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the
+river to supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
+feelin' as he's feelin' now."
+
+"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky Missourian,
+who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the first time he isn't
+looking."
+
+For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
+meditatively.
+
+"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he commented at
+last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of Pete not lookin'. I
+ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the feller who tackles that
+job to say his prayers before he starts. He won't have much time
+afterwards." With a swifter movement than he had yet made, the speaker
+slid from his place to the floor, involuntarily cast a glance into the
+street without. "I ain't perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and
+I ain't lookin' fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it
+ain't at all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound
+to peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better scatter
+and let it blow over."
+
+"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if you want
+to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying here as long as I
+see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."
+
+"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning with his
+deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well, maybe I've got
+something to say about that." He came out from behind the counter, faced
+the lanky figure before him, with deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty
+stiff-backed boy in the daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the
+dark--" He halted and his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if
+you're so anxious for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you
+take the job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth
+curled again.
+
+Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went white.
+Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered dog, and until
+it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.
+
+"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I might ask you
+the same question. I ain't no property interest here being destroyed
+like you have. Why don't you do the trick yourself, dad?"
+
+For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the old man
+stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to square his
+shoulders; but they remained round as before.
+
+"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand--minus the index and middle
+fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled with rheumatism.
+"Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny storeroom and back
+again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why don't I?" repeated for
+the third time. "Do you imagine for the fraction of a second, Walt
+Wagner, that if I was back twenty years and sound like you are, I'd be
+asking another man why he didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly,
+he stood there before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent,
+distorted senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
+and ask that question of me?"
+
+In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked nervously. His face
+went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud Smith it was, Bud Smith,
+five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie wind had made like a lobster
+display in a cafe window, who had halted at the door, but who now came
+back, he it was who spoke.
+
+"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested slowly, "you
+might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by intimatin' that I had cold
+feet. We'll listen to that, too, any time you see fit to explain,
+pardner."
+
+"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become normal
+again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his elbows back
+against the glass showcase, glancing the while down at the small man,
+almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your benefit, I was merely
+observing that you filled the bill of what dad here said a bit ago we
+all were." He smiled tantalisingly; again showing the vacancy in his
+dental arch. "You remember what that was, don't you?"
+
+"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit. To be dead
+sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."
+
+Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his place behind
+the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he moved. In it
+likewise there was an interruption from without; the subdued clatter of
+a horse's feet on the packed earth of the street, the straining of
+leather, as the man, its rider, alighted, a moment later the click of
+the door latch as the same man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered
+and halted abruptly at what he saw. But those within did not notice.
+Silent as the night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete
+Sweeney, they were staring at those two actors there before them.
+
+"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller of my own
+age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to hear you say it.
+I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt Wagner."
+
+Again within the room there was silence, and again from without there
+approached an interruption. From up the street, from out the door of Red
+Jenkins's joint it came; the patter, patter of many feet, leading it the
+heavy clump of mighty cowhide boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the
+jingle of spurs on those same boots at every step, the deep breathing of
+a cowman intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
+doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and nearer.
+Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had noticed. The
+arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In the depths of his
+pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly, nervously. His face had
+gone whiter than before. Once he had opened his lips to speak, revealing
+the blackness of the vacant tooth; but he had closed them again
+silently. Now at last he cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a
+long breath. Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew.
+What if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
+at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street swung
+open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it, blocking it,
+appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman, while upon their ears,
+like the menacing bellow of an enraged bull, burst a voice--the
+challenging, bullying voice of Pete Sweeney, inebriate.
+
+"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was no answer
+repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"
+
+For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction while
+every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker; at first
+almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the interruption
+came over them, with sensations as divergent as their various individual
+minds. There was no need to tell them who looked at that towering,
+intruding figure that tragedy lurked in the air, that death on the
+slightest provocation, at the twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in
+those big twin Colts lying menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic
+escaped was a pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with
+Pete Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god--bull
+mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
+hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad from the
+soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to the bulging
+holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt around his waist,
+to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red silk handkerchief about his
+throat, to the dark unshaven face, to the drink-reddened nose, to the
+mere slits of eyes, to the upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of
+wiry hair; bad in detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.
+
+"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence he came a
+step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart. "What've you got to say
+for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker meeting. Speak up. What're you all
+doin' here?"
+
+Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red Bud Smith.
+
+"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained evenly.
+
+"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes. "You lie by
+the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of skunks." From man to
+man he passed the look, halted at last at the figure of the lanky
+Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to pot me, and I'm lookin' to
+see the colour of his hair. Who was it, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as before Smith
+spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do. You can own the whole
+county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend to your knittin'. Dad here
+wants to close up, now."
+
+"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon as you
+name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted, dropped like
+claws on the figure of the little land man. "You know who it is I'm
+lookin' for. Tell me his name."
+
+"You don't know me very well, Pete."
+
+"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was inspecting
+the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its paws. "In other
+words, you mean you know, but won't tell me." Lingeringly, baitingly,
+almost exultingly, he was dragging the _denouement_ on and on. "That's
+what you mean to imply, is it?"
+
+"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's body
+twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even tone.
+There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime, knowing as he
+knew that but one man present could interfere to prevent, that that man
+wouldn't, he spoke those four words: "You've guessed it, Pete." And but
+minutes before Manning had called this man coward!
+
+For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain
+failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal;
+then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension,
+came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible,
+unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took
+place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it
+was done. They only knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had
+reached the single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at
+the same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that the
+odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting slowly
+toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a curtain that once
+raised made them shudder, made their blood run cold, for it revealed
+there, stretched on the floor, huddled as it had dropped, lifeless,
+motionless, the figure of the man who had refused, the weazened face of
+Land Man Bud Smith! All this they realised in that first second; then
+something that was almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man
+who had done this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the
+only means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two great
+revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now. As swiftly
+as that horrible thing had been done he had gone sober. Yet no man who
+saw him that instant feared him one whit less. Not a man present,
+believer or scoffer, but breathed a silent prayer. And there was reason.
+If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete, had possessed a real friend on earth, he
+possessed that one no more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but
+friends--there had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant
+of oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend; murdered
+him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his tracks. Not another
+had done this thing but he himself, he, Cowman Pete. Small wonder that
+they who watched this man prayed, that surreptitious glances sought for
+an avenue of escape where there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner
+went whiter and whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon
+the floor, there would be a reckoning,--and what that reckoning would be
+God alone could tell!
+
+And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary movement, he
+had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the
+breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at
+that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably,
+with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have
+forgotten the others' presence, seemed at their mercy; and to the mind
+of Walt Wagner there came a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand
+came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his
+hip; advanced and halted and advanced again, reached almost--almost--.
+
+"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a snarl: the
+snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your breeches or by
+God--"
+
+No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as though
+drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.
+
+"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had known was
+but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's son of you. Step
+lively."
+
+They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them
+there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a
+trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge,
+stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat
+market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the
+tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall,
+smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed,
+at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up
+they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons
+to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another
+time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that
+mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other
+menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous. It
+was ghastly in its confession of impotence, in its mute acquiescence to
+another's will.
+
+The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete
+did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling
+from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids
+narrowing, moment by moment. A long half minute he waited, gloating on
+their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption. A
+step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless. A
+hand tried the knob of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on
+the panel.
+
+Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but the
+narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the unshaven jaws
+tightened.
+
+Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.
+
+This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's hand moved to
+the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands," snarled a voice.
+
+Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted in air.
+
+"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another followed, until
+there were not two but twelve.
+
+"Make a move, damn you,"--one of the revolvers had returned to its
+holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,--"and I'll drop you, every
+cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I swing the next
+second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand
+returned to the holster. "Come in, you idiot," he challenged into the
+darkness without, "come in and take your medicine with the rest."
+
+Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open doorway,
+peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw nothing; then of a
+sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily, noiselessly on moccasined
+feet, entered a brand new actor, advanced half across the room, while
+his eyes adjusted themselves to the light, halted curiously. Back of him
+that instant the door again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty
+bolt grating in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded
+the snarl the others knew so well.
+
+"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin' here?"
+
+Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer turned. From
+his height of six feet one, an inch below that of Pete himself, he
+returned the other's look fixedly, without answer. He wore a soft
+flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown corduroy trousers, supported by
+a belt. Unconsciously, as though he were alone, he hitched the corduroys
+up over his narrow hips, in the motion of one who has been riding. That
+was all.
+
+Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable disfigurement.
+Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.
+
+"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his voice was
+almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to you. What the
+devil are you here for?"
+
+No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or a muscle.
+
+Ten seconds passed, fifteen.
+
+"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with an
+effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of a rusty
+spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the habit of doin'
+that either, pard." He halted and his great chest heaved with the effort
+of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned a bit forward. "Tell me what
+you want here, and tell me quick, or by the eternal I'll fill you so
+full of holes your own mother wouldn't recognise you."
+
+One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed
+upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the
+flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."
+
+At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant in the
+career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded room. No need to
+tell seven of them at least that it was a moment of life or death. If
+something, something which seemed inevitable, happened, if one of those
+curling, itching fingers on the triggers tightened, if but once that
+took place, their lives were not worth the wording of a curse. If once
+again that black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there
+would be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
+cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and man by
+man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The jaws of Bob
+Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from beneath their
+sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling
+pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips
+as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved,
+but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted
+from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like
+an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
+uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
+before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a
+somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the
+line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world.
+Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he--but for his clothes, his
+most intimate friend would not have recognised him at that moment. In
+him, blind, racking terror was personified. To have saved his soul he
+could not keep still, and his heavy walking shoes grated as they
+shuffled on the rough floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood
+in his mouth and trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes,
+like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
+constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.
+If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
+hundred times over and over that second.
+
+Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
+no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
+that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
+kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
+thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
+doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
+blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
+was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
+soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
+unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
+Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
+fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
+took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
+from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
+Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
+mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
+Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
+he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
+that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
+but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
+better--
+
+But we anticipate.
+
+"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.
+
+But he heard nothing:--yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe, catlike figure
+straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw this same figure look
+at him fully, squarely; as though for the first time really conscious of
+his presence. He saw two unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek
+bones, out of a copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them;
+hold them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
+owner of those eyes move--he did not hear, there was no sound, not even
+a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw--and move toward him. He
+saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to pass a prostrate body on
+the floor; always silent, but always coming, always drawing nearer. He
+saw this thing, he, Pete Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was
+terror. He knew what it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had
+sworn to do; the muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but
+he made no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
+unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this man. As
+his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
+preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the message
+that would make the muscles tense; but he could not. Those two eyes were
+holding him and he could not. All this he knew; and all the while that
+other was coming nearer and nearer. He began to have a horror of that
+coming that he could not halt. The great unshaven jaw of him worked;
+worked spasmodically, involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a
+sudden felt cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands.
+Something he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
+others like those six in the background, began to grip him; something
+that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden weak--weak as he
+had never felt before. And still those eyes were upon him, still that
+dark face came closer and closer. Once more his brain sent the message
+to kill, once more he battled against the inevitable; and that message
+was the last. There was no more response than if he were clay, than if
+his muscles were the muscles of another man. In that instant, without
+the voicing of a word, the deed was done. That instant came the black
+chaotic abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence,
+his arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now, so
+near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace himself,
+tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming, which he read on the
+page of that other face. But he was too late. Watching, almost doubting
+their own eyes, the six saw the end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden
+clench, shoot out like a brown light. They heard an impact, and a second
+later the thud of a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter
+lift, stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
+for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck true.
+That was all.
+
+For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence, inaction. Then
+for the first time the victor turned, facing the spectators.
+Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an instant almost
+curiously,--but he did not smile. Twelve arms, that had forgotten to
+lower, were still in the air--but he did not smile. Instead he sought
+out the stranger in knickerbockers and blouse.
+
+"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to the B.B.
+ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this he?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+Well out upon the prairie, clear of the limits of the tiny town, two men
+were headed due west, into the night, apparently into the infinite.
+There was no moon, but here, with nothing to cast a shadow, it was not
+dark. The month was late October, and a suggestion of frost was in the
+air: on the grass blades of the low places, was actually present. As was
+all but usual at that day, the direction they were going bore no trace
+of a road; but the man astride the vicious-looking roan cayuse who led
+the way, the same copper-brown man with the corduroys of Bob Manning's
+store, showed no hesitation. Like a hound, he seemed to discern
+landmarks where none were visible to the eye. He rode without saddle or
+blanket, or spur, or quirt; yet, though he had not spoken a word from
+the moment they had started, the roan with the tiny ears had not broken
+its steady, swinging, seemingly interminable lope, had scarcely appeared
+conscious of his presence. Almost as unit seemed this beast and human.
+It was as though the man were born in his place, as though, like a
+sailor on a tiny boat, accustomed through a lifetime to a rolling,
+uncertain equilibrium, the adjustment thereto had become involuntary as
+a heart beat, instinctive as breathing. A splendid picture he made there
+in the starlight and the solitude; but of it the man who followed was
+oblivious. Of one thing alone he was conscious, and that was that he was
+very tired; weary from the effect of an unusual exercise, doubly
+exhausted in the reaction from excitement passed. With an effort he
+urged his own horse alongside the leader, drew rein meaningly.
+
+"Let's hold up a bit," he protested. "I've come twenty-five miles to-day
+already, and I'm about beat." He slapped the breast pocket of his coat a
+bit obviously, and as his companion slowed to a walk, produced a
+silver-mounted, seal-covered flask and proffered it at arm's length.
+"The cork unscrews to the left," he explained suggestively.
+
+The dark figure of the guide made no motion of acceptance, did not even
+glance around.
+
+"Thanks, but I never drink," he declined.
+
+"Not even to be sociable,"--the hand was still extended,--"not when I
+ask you as--a friend?"
+
+"I am a Sioux," simply. "I have found that liquor is not good for an
+Indian."
+
+For a second the white man hesitated; then with something akin to a
+flush on his face, he returned the flask to his pocket untasted.
+
+Again, without turning, the other observed the motion.
+
+"Pardon me, but I did not mean to prevent you."
+
+He spoke stiffly, almost diffidently, as on unused to speech with
+strangers, unused to speech at all; but without a trace of embarrassment
+or of affectation.
+
+"I do not judge others. I merely know my people--and myself."
+
+Again the stranger hesitated, and again his face betrayed him. He had
+scratched an aborigine, and to his surprise was finding indications of a
+man.
+
+"I guess I can get along without it," shortly. "I--" he caught himself
+just in time from framing a self-extenuation. "I didn't have time--back
+there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for what you did. I wish to
+do so now." He was looking at the other squarely, as the smart civilian
+observes the derelict who has saved his life in a runaway. Already,
+there under the stars, it was difficult to credit to the full that
+fantastic scene of an hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real
+man, of condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a
+nasty mess, and I appreciate it."
+
+No answer. No polite lie, no derogation of self or of what had been
+done. Just silence, attentive, but yet silence.
+
+For the third time the white man hesitated, and for the third time his
+face shaded red; consciously and against his will. Even the starlight
+could not alter the obtrusive fact that he had cut a sorry figure in the
+late drama, and his pride was sore. Extenuation, dissimulation even,
+would have been a distinct solace. Looking at the matter now, the
+excitement past, palliation for what he had done was easy, almost
+logical. He had not alone conformed. He had but done, without
+consideration, as the others with him had done. But even if it were not
+so, back in the land from which he had come, a spade was not always so
+called. His colour went normal at the recollection. The habitual, the
+condescending pressed anew to the fore.
+
+He inspected the silent figure at his side ingenuously, almost
+quizzically; as in his schoolboy days he had inspected his plodding
+master of physics before propounding a query no mortal could answer.
+
+"I know I waved the white flag back there as hard as any of them," he
+proffered easily. "I'm not trying to clear myself; but between you and
+me, don't you think that Pete was merely bluffing, there at the end when
+you came?" The speaker shifted sideways on the saddle, until his weight
+rested on one leg, until he faced the other fair. "The fellow was drunk,
+irresponsibly drunk, at first, when the little chap stirred him up; but
+afterwards, when he was sober.... On the square, what do you think he
+would have done if--if you hadn't happened in?"
+
+For so long that Craig fancied he had not given attention to the
+question, the guide did not respond, did not stir in his seat; then
+slowly, deliberately, he turned half about, turned and for the first
+time in the journey met the other's eyes. Even then he did not speak;
+but so long as he lived, times uncounted in his after life, Clayton
+Craig remembered that look; remembered it and was silent, remembered it
+with a tingling of hot blood and a mental imprecation--for as indelibly
+as a red-hot iron seals a brand on a maverick, that look left its
+impress. No voice could have spoken as that simple action spoke, no
+tongue thrust could have been so pointed. With no intent of discourtesy,
+no premeditated malice was it given; and therein lay the fine sting, the
+venom. It was unconscious as a breath, unconscious as nature's joy in
+springtime; yet in the light of after events, it stood out like a signal
+fire against the blackness of night, as the beginning of an enmity more
+deadly than death itself, that lasted into the grave and beyond. For
+that silent, unwavering look set them each, the red man and the white,
+in their niche; placed them with an assurance that was final. It was a
+questioning, analytic look, yet, unconcealed, it bore the tolerance of a
+strong man for a weak. Had that look been a voice, it would have spoken
+one word, and that word was "cad."
+
+For a moment the two men sat so, unconscious of time, unconscious of
+place; then of a sudden, to both alike, the present returned--and again
+that return was typical. As deliberately as he had moved previously, the
+Indian faced back. His left arm, free at his side, hung loose as before.
+His right, that held the reins, lay motionless on the pony's mane. In no
+detail did he alter, nor in a muscle. By his side, the white man
+stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit, until his
+horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation, sent the rowels of
+his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank, with a curse held the
+frightened beast down to a walk. That was all, a secondary lapse, a
+burst of flowing, irresponsible passion like a puff of burning
+gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was enough. In that second was told
+the tale of a human life. In that and in the surreptitious sidelong
+glance following, that searched for an expression in the boyishly soft
+face of his companion. But the Indian was looking straight before him,
+looking as one who has seen nothing, heard nothing; and, silent as
+before the interruption, they journeyed on.
+
+A half hour slipped by, a period wherein the horses walked and galloped,
+and walked again, ere the white man forgot, ere the instinct of
+companionship, the necessity of conversation, urban-fostered, gained
+mastery. Then as before, he looked at the other surreptitiously, through
+unconsciously narrowed lids.
+
+"I haven't yet asked your name?" he formalised baldly, curtly.
+
+The guide showed no surprise, no consciousness of the long silence
+preceding.
+
+"The Sioux call me Ma-wa-cha-sa: the ranchers, How Landor."
+
+Craig dropped the reins over his saddle and fumbled in his pockets.
+
+"The Indian word has a meaning, I presume?"
+
+"Translated into English, it would be 'the lost pappoose.'"
+
+The eyebrows of the Easterner lifted; but he made no comment.
+
+"You have been with my uncle, with Mr. Landor, I mean, long?"
+
+"Since I can remember--almost."
+
+The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor produced a
+pipe and lit it. It took three matches.
+
+"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting a girl.
+Bess he called her, was it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in getting it
+alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking out of doors.
+
+"Do you like this country, this--desert?" he digressed suddenly.
+
+"It is the only one I know."
+
+"You mean know well, doubtless?"
+
+"I have never been outside the State."
+
+Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was habitual.
+
+"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere that it
+were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern cemetery than
+to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning to believe it."
+
+No comment.
+
+"I suppose you will leave though, some time," pressed the visitor. "You
+certainly don't intend to vegetate here always?"
+
+"I never expect to leave. I was born here. I shall die here."
+
+Once more the shoulders of the Easterner lifted in mute thanksgiving of
+fundamental difference. Of a sudden, for some indefinite reason, he felt
+more at ease in his companion's presence. For the time being the sense
+of antagonism became passive. What use, after all, was mere physical
+courage, if one were to bury it in a houseless, treeless waste such as
+this? The sense of aloofness, of tranquil superiority, returned. He even
+felt a certain pleasure in questioning the other; as one is interested
+in questioning a child. Bob Manning's store and Pete Sweeney were
+temporarily in abeyance.
+
+"Pardon me, if I seem inquisitive," he prefaced, "but I'll probably be
+here a month or so, and we'll likely see a good deal of each other. Are
+you married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will be, though." It was the ultimatum of one unaccustomed to
+contradiction. "No man could live here alone. He'd go insane."
+
+"I eat at the ranch house sometimes, but I live alone."
+
+"You won't do so, though, always." Again it was the voice of finality.
+
+The Indian looked straight ahead into the indefinite distance where the
+earth and sky met.
+
+"No, I shall not do so always," he corroborated.
+
+"I thought so." It was the tolerant approval of the prophet verified.
+"I'd be doing the same thing myself if I lived here long. Conformity's
+in the air. I felt it the moment I left the railroad and struck
+this--wilderness." Once again the unconscious shoulder shrug. "It's an
+atavism, this life. I've reverted a generation already. It's only a
+question of time till one would be back among the cave-dwellers. The
+thing's in the air, I say."
+
+Again no comment. Again for any indication he gave, the Indian might not
+have heard.
+
+Craig straightened, as one conscious that he was talking over his
+companion's head.
+
+"When, if I may ask, is it to be, your marriage, I mean?" he returned.
+"While I am here?"
+
+For an instant the other's eyes dropped until they were hid beneath the
+long lashes, then they returned to the distance as before.
+
+"It will be soon. Three weeks from to-day."
+
+"And at the ranch, I presume? My uncle will see to that, of course."
+
+"Yes, it will be at the ranch."
+
+"Good! I was wondering if anything would be doing here while I was
+here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and adjusted
+the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do you--your
+people--celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a bit ignorant on
+the point."
+
+"Celebrate? I don't think I understand." The Easterner glanced at his
+companion suspiciously but the other man was still looking straight
+ahead into the distance.
+
+"You have a dance, or a barbecue or--or something of that sort, don't
+you? It's to be an Indian wedding, is it not?"
+
+Pat, pat went the horses' feet on the prairie sod. While one could count
+ten slowly there was no other sound.
+
+"No, there will be no dance or barbecue or anything out of the ordinary,
+so far as I know," said a low voice then. "It will not be an Indian
+wedding."
+
+Craig hesitated. An instinct told him he had gone far enough. Lurking
+indefinite in the depths of that last low-voiced answer was a warning, a
+challenge to a trespasser; but something else, a thing which a lifetime
+of indulgence had made almost an instinct, prevented his heeding. He was
+not accustomed to being denied, this man; and there was no contesting
+the obvious fact that now a confidence was being withheld. The latent
+antagonism aroused with a bound at the thought. Something more than mere
+curiosity was at stake, something which he magnified until it obscured
+his horizon, warped hopelessly his vision of right or wrong. He was of
+the conquering Anglo-Saxon race, and this other who refused him was an
+Indian. Racial supremacy itself hung in the balance: the old, old issue
+of the white man and the red. Back into the stirrup went the leg that
+hung over the saddle. Involuntarily as before he stiffened.
+
+"Why, is it not to be an Indian wedding?" he queried directly. "You
+seemed a bit ago rather proud of your pedigree." A trace of sarcasm
+crept into his voice at the thinly veiled allusion. "Have you forsaken
+entirely the customs of your people?"
+
+Pat, pat again sounded the horses' feet. The high places as well as the
+low bore their frost blanket now, and the dead turf cracked softly with
+every step.
+
+"No, I have not forsaken the customs of my people."
+
+"Why then in this instance?" insistently. "At least be consistent, man.
+Why in this single particular and no other?"
+
+The hand on the neck of the cayuse tightened, tightened until the tiny
+ears of the wicked little beast went flat to its head; then of a sudden
+the grip loosened.
+
+"Why? The answer is simple. The lady who is to be my wife is not an
+Indian."
+
+For an instant Craig was silent, for an instant the full meaning of that
+confession failed in its appeal; then of a sudden it came over him in a
+flood of comprehension. Very, very far away now, banished into remotest
+oblivion, was Pete Sweeney. Into the same grave went any remnants of
+gratitude to the other man that chanced to remain. Paramount, beckoning
+him on, one thought, one memory alone possessed his brain: the
+recollection of that look the other had given him, that look he could
+never forget nor forgive. "Since you have told me so much," he
+challenged "you will probably have no objection to telling me the lady's
+name. Who is it to be?"
+
+Silence fell upon them. Far in the distance, so far that had the white
+man seen he would have thought it a star, a light had come into being.
+Many a time before the little roan had made this journey. Many a time he
+had seen that light emerge from the surface of earth. To him it meant
+all that was good in life: warmth, food, rest. The tiny head shook
+impatiently, shifted sideways with an almost human question to his rider
+at the slowness of the pace, the delay.
+
+"That light you see there straight ahead is in the ranch house,"
+digressed the Indian. "It is four miles away."
+
+Again it was the warning, not a suggestion, but positive this time; and
+again it passed unheeded.
+
+"You have forgotten to answer my question," recalled Craig.
+
+Swift as thought the Indian shifted in his seat, shifted half about;
+then as suddenly he remembered.
+
+"No, I have not forgotten," he refuted. "You tell me you have already
+heard of Bess Landor. It is she I am to marry."
+
+At last he had spoken, had given his confidence to this hostile stranger
+man; not vauntingly or challengingly, but simply as he had spoken his
+name. Against his will he had done this thing, despite a reticence no
+one who did not understand Indian nature could appreciate. Then at
+least it would not have taken a wise man to hold aloof. Then at least
+common courtesy would have called a halt. But Clayton Craig was neither
+wise nor courteous this night. He was a great, weary, passionate child,
+whose pride had been stung, who but awaited an opportunity to retaliate.
+And that opportunity had been vouchsafed. Moreover, irony of fate, it
+came sugar coated. Until this night he had been unconscious as a babe of
+racial prejudice. Now of a sudden, it seemed a burning issue, and he its
+chosen champion. His blood tingled at the thought; tingled to the tips
+of his well-manicured fingers. His clean-shaven chin lifted in air until
+his lashes all but met.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me,"--his voice was a bit higher than normal and
+unnaturally tense,--"do you mean to tell me that you, an Indian, are to
+marry a white girl--and she my cousin by adoption? Is this what you
+mean?"
+
+Seconds passed.
+
+"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss the matter
+further."
+
+"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the family it is
+my right, and I demand an answer."
+
+Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would not be long
+until they were home now.
+
+"Yes," answered the Indian.
+
+"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again the
+silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."
+
+Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a red flood,
+that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about him.
+
+"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I live, and
+if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is white, you'll not
+marry her. If it's the last act of my life, I'll prevent you!"
+
+The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not. Beat, beat,
+beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until the hot blood fairly
+roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not until the challenge was spoken
+did he realise to the full what he had done, that inevitable as time
+there would be a reckoning. Now in a perfect inundation, the knowledge
+came over him, and unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move.
+Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
+reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's store,
+the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding thereto,
+recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now
+irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might against the feeling, a
+terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind,
+unreasoning, primitive terror. But one impulse possessed him: to be
+away, to escape the outburst he instinctively knew was but delayed. In
+an abandon he leaned far forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur
+dug viciously into his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan
+from the surprised beast, a forward leap--then a sudden jarring halt.
+As by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another hand.
+
+"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do that. It will
+only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the same hand, stopped
+there on the prairie. The riders were face to face. "I have tried to
+prevent this, for the sake of the future, I have tried; but you have
+made an understanding between us inevitable, and therefore it may as
+well be now." The voice halted and the speaker looked at his companion
+fixedly, minutely, almost unbelievingly. "I know I am not as you white
+men," went on the voice. "I have been raised with you, lived my life so
+far with you; yet I am different. No Indian would have done as you have
+done. I cannot understand it. Not three hours ago I saved your life. It
+was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and yet already you have
+forgotten, have done--what you have done." So far he had spoken slowly,
+haltingly; with the effort of one to whom words were difficult. Now the
+effort passed. "I say I cannot understand it," he repeated swiftly. "Mr.
+Landor has been very good to me. For his sake I would like to forgive
+what you have done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it;
+but I cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your people
+have conquered my people, have penned them up in reservations to die;
+but that is neither your doing nor mine. We are here as man to man. As
+man to man you have offered me insult--and without reason." For the
+first time a trace of passion came into the voice, into the soft brown
+face. "I ask you to take back what you have just said. I do not warn
+you. If you do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to
+take it back."
+
+He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips were
+twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.
+
+Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
+perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's mane.
+
+"Will you not take it back?" he asked.
+
+Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+That was all--and it was not all. For an instant after the Easterner had
+spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they were, face to face;
+then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a very different scene: one
+as old and as new as the history of man. Just what happened in that
+moment that intervened neither the white man nor the red could have
+told. It was a lapse, an oblivion; a period of primitive physical
+dominance, of primitive human hate. When they awoke--when the red man
+awoke--they were flat on earth, the dust of the prairie in their
+nostrils, the short catch of their breath in each other's ears, out one,
+the dark-skinned, was above. One, again the dark-skinned, had his
+fingers locked tight on the other's throat. This they knew when they
+awoke.
+
+A second thereafter they lay so, flaming eyes staring into their
+doubles; then suddenly the uppermost man broke free, arose. In his ears
+was the diminishing patter of their horses' hoofs. They were alone there
+on the prairie, under the smiling satiric stars. One more moment he
+stood so; he did not turn; he did not assist the other to rise; then he
+spoke.
+
+"I do not ask your pardon for this," he said. "You have brought it upon
+yourself. Neither do I ask a promise. Do as you please. Try what you
+have suggested if you wish. I am not afraid. Follow me," and,
+long-strided, impassive as though nothing had happened, he moved ahead
+into the distance where in the window of the Buffalo Butte ranch house
+glowed a light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+It was very late, so late that the sun entering at the south windows of
+the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of his bed when
+Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long been over, but
+throughout the unplastered ranch house the suggestion of coffee and the
+tang of bacon still lingered. At home those odours would have aroused
+slight sensations of pleasure in the man, even at this time of day; but
+now and here they were distinctly welcome, distinctly inviting. With the
+aid of a tin pail of water and a cracked queensware bowl, he made a
+hasty toilet, soliloquised an opinion of a dressing-room without a
+mirror, and descended the creaking stairs to the level below.
+
+The main floor of the ranch house contained but three rooms. Of these,
+it was the living-room which he entered. No one was about. The pipe
+which he had smoked with his uncle before retiring the night before
+remained exactly as he had put it down. His cap and gloves were still
+beside it. Obviously there was no possibility of breakfast here, and he
+moved toward the adjoining room. On his way he passed a hook where upon
+arrival he had hung his riding blouse. Telltale with its litter of dust
+and grass stems, it hung there now; and unconsciously he scowled at the
+recollection it suggested.
+
+Opening the door, he was face to face with a little fast-ticking cheaply
+ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven, and the man grimaced
+tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human was present, but here the
+indications for material sustenance were more hopeful. It was the
+dining-room, and, although in the main the table had been cleared, at
+one end a clean plate, flanked by a bone-handled knife and fork and an
+old-fashioned castor, still remained. Moreover, from the third room, the
+kitchen, he could now hear sounds of life. The fire in a cook-stove was
+crackling cheerily. Above it, distinct through the thin partition, came
+the sound of a girlish voice singing. There was no apparent effort at
+time or at tune; it was uncultivated as the grass land all about; yet in
+its freshness and unconsciousness it was withal distinctly pleasing. It
+was a happy voice, a contented voice. Instinctively it bore a suggestion
+of home and of quiet and of peace; like a kitten with drowsy eyes
+purring to itself in the sunshine. A moment the visitor stood silent,
+listening; then, his heavy shoes clumping on the uncarpeted floor, he
+moved toward it. Instantly the song ceased, but he kept on, pushed open
+the door gently, stepped inside.
+
+"Good-morning!" he began, and then halted in an uncertainty he seldom
+felt among women folk. He had met no one but his uncle the previous
+night. Inevitably the preceding incident with his guide had produced a
+mental picture. It was with the expectation of having this conception
+personified that he had entered, to it he had spoken; then had come the
+revelation, the halt.
+
+"Good-morning!" answered a voice, one neither abnormally high nor
+repressedly low, the kind of voice the man seldom heard in the society
+to which he was accustomed--one natural, unaffected, frankly interested.
+The owner thereof came forward, held out her hand. Two friendly brown
+eyes smiled up at him from the level of his shoulder. "I know without
+your introducing yourself that you're Mr. Craig," she welcomed. "Uncle
+Landor told me before he left what to expect. He and Aunt Mary had to go
+to town this morning. Meanwhile I'm the cook, and at your service," and
+she smiled again.
+
+For far longer than civility actually required, to the extreme limit of
+courtesy and a shade beyond, in, fact, until it unmistakably sought to
+be free, Clayton Craig retained that proffered hand. Against all the
+canons of good breeding he stared. Answering, a trace of colour,
+appearing at the brown throat, mounted higher and higher, reached the
+soft oval cheeks, journeyed on.
+
+"I beg your pardon," apologised the man. He met the accusing eyes
+fairly, with a return of his old confidence. "You had the advantage of
+me, you know. I was not forewarned what to expect."
+
+It was the breaking of the ice, and they laughed together. The girl had
+been working with arms bare to the elbow, and as now of a sudden she
+rolled the sleeves down Craig laughed again; and in unconscious echo a
+second later she joined. Almost before they knew it, there alone in the
+little whitewashed kitchen with the crackling cook-stove and the
+sunshine streaming in through the tiny-paned windows, they were friends.
+All the while the girl went about the task of preparing a belated
+breakfast they laughed and chatted--and drew nearer and nearer. Again
+while Craig ate and at his command the girl sat opposite to entertain
+him, they laughed and chatted. Still later, the slowly eaten meal
+finished, while Elizabeth Landor washed the dishes and put everything
+tidy and Craig from his seat on the bottom of an inverted basket
+reversed the position of entertainer, they laughed and chatted. And
+through it all, openly when possible, surreptitiously when it were wise,
+the man gave his companion inspection. And therein he at first but
+followed an instinct. Very, very human was Clayton Craig of Boston,
+Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and very, very good to look upon was
+brown-eyed, brown-skinned, brown-haired Elizabeth Landor. Neither had
+thought of evil, had other thought than the innocent pleasure of the
+moment that first morning while the tiny clock on the wall measured off
+the swift-moving minutes. Good it is to be alive in sun-blessed South
+Dakota on a frosty warm October day, doubly good when one is young; and
+these two, the man and the girl, were both young. Months it takes, years
+sometimes, in civilisation, with barriers of out on the prairie, alone,
+with the pulse of nature throbbing, throbbing, insistently all about,
+the process is very swift, so swift that an hour can suffice. No, not
+that first hour wherein unconsciously they became friends, did the angel
+with the big book record evil opposite the name of Clayton Craig; not
+until later, not until he had had time to think, not until--.
+
+But again we anticipate.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," the girl had ejaculated, "now when you have."
+At last the work was over, and in unconscious comradery they sat side by
+side on the broad south doorstep; the sun shining down full upon their
+uncovered heads--smiling an unconscious blessing more potent than
+formula of clergy. She was looking out as she spoke, out over the level
+earth dazzling with its dancing heat waves, mysterious in its suggestion
+of unfathomable silence, of limitless distance. "It's such a little time
+now before I am going away, and Uncle Landor has talked of you so much,
+particularly of late." A pause, a hesitating pause. "I suppose you'll
+laugh at me, but I hope you'll stay here, for a time, anyway, after I'm
+gone."
+
+Clayton Craig, the listener, was not gazing out over the prairie. The
+object at which he was looking was very near; so near that he had leaned
+a trifle back the better to see, to watch. He shifted now until his
+weight rested on his elbow, his face on his hand.
+
+"You are going away, you say?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes. I supposed you knew--that Uncle had told you." Despite an effort,
+the tiny ears were reddening. She was very human also, was Elizabeth
+Landor. "I am to be married soon."
+
+"Married?" A long pause. "And to whom, please?" The voice was very low.
+
+Redder than before burned the tiny ears. No more than she could keep
+from breathing could she prevent telling her secret, her happiness, this
+prairie girl; no more than she could prevent that accompanying telltale
+scarlet flood.
+
+"You didn't know it, but you've met him already," she confided. "You met
+him last night." To her at this time there was no need of antecedent.
+There was but one to whom the pronoun might refer. "It was he who showed
+you here--How Landor."
+
+For a long time--for he was thinking now, was Clayton Craig, and did not
+answer--there was silence. Likewise the girl, her confession voiced,
+said no more; but her colour came and went expectantly, tantalisingly,
+and the eyes that still looked into the distance were unconscious of
+what they saw. From his place the man watched the transparent pantomime,
+read its meaning, stored the picture in his memory; but he did not
+speak. A minute had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was
+thinking of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had
+received--and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl, but it
+was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big shaggy-haired
+collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his aimless wandering about
+the place to thrust a friendly muzzle into the stranger's hand; but even
+then he did not respond. For almost the first time in his irresolute
+life a definite purpose was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig,
+and little things passed him by. A third minute passed. The colour had
+ceased playing on the face he watched now. The silence had performed its
+mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was
+prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the volume and
+made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke.
+
+"I met him last, night, you say?" It was the hesitating voice of one
+whose memory is treacherous, "I have been trying to recall--Certainly
+you must be mistaken. I saw no one last night except Uncle Landor and an
+Indian cow-puncher with a comic opera name." He met the brown eyes that
+were of a sudden turned upon him, frankly, innocently. "You must be
+mistaken," he repeated.
+
+Searchingly, at first suspiciously, then hesitatingly, with a return of
+the colour that came as easily as a prairie wind stirs the down of a
+milk-weed plant, Elizabeth Landor returned his look. It was an instinct
+that at last caused her eyes to drop.
+
+"No, I was not mistaken," she voiced. "How Landor is an Indian. It is he
+I meant."
+
+For a carefully timed pause, the space in which one recovers from
+hearing the unbelievable, Craig was silent; then swiftly, contritely he
+roused. "I beg a thousand pardons," he apologised. "I meant no
+disrespect. I never dreamed--Forgive me." He had drawn very near. "I
+wouldn't hurt you for the world. I--Please forgive me." He was silent.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive." The girl's colour was normal again and she
+met his eyes frankly, gravely.
+
+"But there is," protested the man humbly. "Because he happened to be
+minus a collar and had a red skin--I was an ass; an egregious,
+blundering ass."
+
+"Don't talk that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know him, was all.
+If you had been acquainted all your life as I have--" Against her will
+she was lapsing into a defence, and she halted abruptly. "You were not
+at fault."
+
+Again for a carefully timed pause the man was silent. Then abruptly,
+obviously, he changed the subject.
+
+"You said you were going away," he recalled. "Is it to be a wedding
+journey?"
+
+"Yes," tensely.
+
+"Tell me of it, please; I wish to hear."
+
+"You would not be interested."
+
+"Elizabeth--" syllabalised, reproachfully. "Am I not your cousin?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Haven't you forgiven me yet?" The voice was very low. Its owner was
+again very near.
+
+"You'd laugh at me if I told you," repressedly. "You wouldn't
+understand."
+
+Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away--resumed the former position;
+the place from which, unobserved, he could himself watch.
+
+"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly, reluctantly.
+Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right. "Just the two of us
+are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse and a tent and How's camp
+kit and stay out there alone until winter comes." Against her will she
+was warming to the subject, was unconsciously painting a picture to
+please the solitary listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and
+plenty to read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never
+carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game whenever we
+want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when we please." Again
+unconsciously she glanced at the listener to see the effect of her art.
+"We'll be together, How and I, and free--free as sunshine. There'll be
+nothing but winter, and that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's
+what I've always wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes
+away every year, and he's promised this once to take me along."
+Suddenly, almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her
+companion. "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.
+
+"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of listlessness
+in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want anything at any time you
+can go to the nearest ranch house. One always does forget something you
+know."
+
+"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly. "That's the
+best of it all. The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch that way, to the
+west, until you get to the Hills. We probably won't see another human
+being while we're gone. We'll be as much alone as though we were the
+only two people in the world."
+
+Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.
+
+"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I was
+thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for breakfast.
+And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly if I were changing
+my residence so frequently." He lifted from his elbow. "Pardon me again,
+though," he added contritely. "I always do see the prosaic side of
+things." The smile vanished, and for the first time he looked away,
+absently, dreamily. As he looked his face altered, softened almost
+unbelievably. "It would be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be
+alone, absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for
+most, the single person who always had the same likes and dislikes, the
+same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of such a thing before; it
+would be wonderful, wonderful!"
+
+No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face and her
+eyes were bright.
+
+"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig. Warmer and
+warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always envy other
+people the things we haven't ourselves; and I--" He checked himself
+abruptly.
+
+"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate, sympathetic,
+unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land. Just this she was; and
+another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad. Inevitably
+she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird
+responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.
+
+"Maybe it's true now--you think it is," she halted; "but there'll be a
+time--"
+
+"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed shortly,
+unmusically. "It's merely my lot."
+
+The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly for her
+as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it
+altered now under the cloud of another's unhappiness. But one suggestion
+presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her
+child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.
+
+The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.
+
+"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought differently,
+when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl I
+understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter how well
+I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch, never become
+necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm the only one of my
+kind, that I must go through life so--alone."
+
+Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as one child
+presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her companion's hands
+lay listless on his knee, and instinctively, compellingly, she placed
+her own upon it, pressed it softly.
+
+"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my own love,
+my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply couldn't help it,
+it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so sorry."
+
+Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at her. When
+he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his voice; but that
+was all.
+
+"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't know how
+lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a bit ago, shows
+me the other side of life, the happy side; and I wish I were dead." A
+mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The future looks so blank, so
+hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to me. Anything else would be
+preferable, anything. It's so to-day, now." He halted and of a sudden
+turned away so that his face was concealed. "God forgive me, but I wish
+it were over with, that I were dead!"
+
+"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful entirely, the
+girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could not prevent were in
+the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so good to be alive. You
+can't mean it. You can't."
+
+"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up. "What's
+the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else cares, ever will
+care. What's the use--"
+
+"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all of us here
+care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear to hear you." She
+halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose hinderingly in her throat.
+"I feel somehow as though I was to blame, as though if you should mean
+what you said, should--should--" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes
+glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her fingers
+locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless; then of a
+sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had suggested came
+over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve. Not the faintest
+suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his honesty, occurred to her, not
+the remotest doubt. In all her life no one had ever lied to her; she had
+never consciously lied to another. The world of subterfuge was an unread
+book. This man had intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant
+it. He would do it, unless--unless--
+
+"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still lying idle
+on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it, held it prisoner
+between her own. It was not a suggestion she was combating now. It was a
+certainty. "Promise me you won't do this thing." She shook the hand
+insistently; at first gently, then, as there was no response, almost
+roughly. "Tell me you won't do it. Promise me; please, please!"
+
+"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless absolutely; I
+never realised before how useless. You didn't intend to do it, but
+you've made me see it all to-day. I don't blame you, but I can't
+promise. I can't."
+
+Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a mountain,
+as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the prairie. For
+seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out, distorted seconds;
+then, interrupting, something happened. There was not a cloud in the
+sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun still shone bright as before;
+yet distinctly, undeniably, the man felt a great wet spattering drop
+fall from above upon his hand--and a moment later another. He glanced
+up, hesitated; sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of
+the little woman already standing.
+
+"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe it." He took
+her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's length; and the
+angel who watched halted with pen in air, indecisive. "We've known each
+other such a ludicrously short time--but a few hours. Can it be possible
+that you really meant that, that at least to someone it does really
+matter?" It was his turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no
+answer came. "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess,
+tell me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained
+its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively sought
+that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his ancestors, had
+done to similar chins in their day, lifted it until their eyes met. Had
+he been facing his Maker that moment and the confession his last,
+Clayton Craig could not have told whether it were passion or art, that
+action. "Tell me, Bess girl, is it mere pity, or do you really care?"
+
+Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers, meeting by
+chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's mind in the glitter
+of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so fantastic, so unexpected
+that for a moment the girl did not realise, did not understand. For an
+instant she stood so, perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and
+wider, opening wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what
+she feared--and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking,
+ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength of a
+captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second longer she stood
+there, not her chin alone, but her whole body trembling; then without a
+word she turned, mounted the single step, fumbled at the knob of the
+door. "Bess," said the man softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not
+glance back nor speak, and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard
+her slowly climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close
+behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain
+the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois
+and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception
+to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made
+his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob
+Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the
+free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held
+true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
+soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked
+above the knob of the door before him.
+
+"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like a strip
+of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the entrance, found it
+locked, and in lieu of entering tested the badge of sorrow between thumb
+and finger. "Pant stuff, sure enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob
+himself, or they'd have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now
+what in thunder, I wonder--"
+
+He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house. Like the
+general store, the door was closed, and just above the catch, flapping
+languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the mate to the black rag
+dangling at his back. The spectator's shaggy eyebrows tightened in
+genuine surprise, and with near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts
+of the short row of other buildings along the street.
+
+"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
+evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse with
+carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted, indecisive, and
+for the first time became conscious that not a human being was in sight.
+In the street before him a pair of half-grown cockerels with ludicrously
+long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from
+amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's
+meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
+physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of
+the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the
+present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet.
+Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin
+prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had
+hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal
+recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the
+sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead--.
+
+"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though another were
+listening. "There must have been a general cleanup this time. I fear
+that the report of my respected nephew--" He checked himself suddenly, a
+bit guiltily. Even though no one was listening, he was loath to voice an
+inevitable conclusion. Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at
+last, and, leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud
+citizens denominated the residence quarter--a handful of unpainted
+weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
+surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now, and as
+he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious satisfaction at
+the relief. At the second domicile, a residence as nearly like the first
+as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he turned in at the lane leading
+to the house unhesitatingly, and without form of knocking opened the
+door and stepped inside.
+
+The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its uncarpeted
+cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished, smoke-tinted walls. In it,
+to the casual observer, there were visible but four objects: an
+old-fashioned walnut desk that had once borne a top, but which did so no
+longer; two cane-bottomed chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one
+thereof, a man. The latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing
+an unshaven chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of
+which the lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie,
+and scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair
+was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though he
+looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the scrutiny,
+there was no salutation, not even when, without form of invitation, the
+rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and tossed his broad felt
+hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk. A moment they sat so, while
+with an effort the newcomer recovered his breath.
+
+"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated eventually. "I've
+noticed that the last place to look for a doctor is in the proximity of
+a funeral." He fumbled in his pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that
+in the other's mouth. "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather
+from the appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than
+ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face was
+concealed.
+
+"Rather," laconically.
+
+"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze had
+cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion appreciatively.
+"I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I think she can be trusted
+to attend to such little matters."
+
+Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes were
+observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two men known
+each other these five years.
+
+"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family," commented
+Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper, any time." Again
+the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't decided yet to prove the
+fact for yourself, have you?"
+
+Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that had
+brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent. Only too
+well he knew the signs--the good-natured satire that ill concealed a
+tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of trivialities that cleared the
+way later of non-essentials. In silence he waited; and, as he had known
+the moment that big figure appeared in the doorway, it came.
+
+Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as deliberately
+flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his side, inspected the
+burning tuck critically.
+
+"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow--an old fellow like
+myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his business as
+an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with canvas curtains such
+as you've seen me drive sometimes." The speaker paused a second to clear
+his throat. "Supposing this old fellow was just riding through the
+country easy, taking his time and with nothing particular on his mind,
+and all of a sudden he should feel as though someone had sneaked up and
+stuck him from behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should
+happen, and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go
+black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much later,
+and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig and the team
+stock still out in the middle of the prairie." Deliberately as it had
+left, the cigar returned to the speaker's lips, was puffed hard until
+it glowed furiously; and was again critically examined. "Supposing such
+a fat old fellow as myself should tell you this. As a doc and a
+specialist, would you think there was something worth while the matter
+with him?"
+
+Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his fingers
+sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a goodly collection
+of its mates, and the drooping eyelid tightened.
+
+"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the second time,
+and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking, should be spilled out
+and have to foot it home three miles. What would you think then?"
+
+One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash off his
+vest absently.
+
+"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.
+
+"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my nephew when
+the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I sent How over
+instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy to come a couple of
+weeks ago--that's when it caught me first."
+
+"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"
+
+Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the ranch. Mary'd
+have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out to shoot at a coyote,
+and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at the other explanatorily,
+deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's son and the only real relative I
+have, you know. I just asked him to come on general principles."
+
+Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he fumbled amid a
+litter of articles useful and useless, and, extracting a battered
+stethoscope, shifted his chair forward until it was close to the other
+and stuck the tiny tubes to his ears. Still without comment he opened
+the rancher's shirt, applied the instrument, listened, shifted it,
+listened, shifted and listened the third time--slid his chair back to
+the former position.
+
+"What else do you know?" he asked.
+
+Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.
+
+"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father went that
+way when he was younger than I am, and his father the same." The stogie
+had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a fresh one steadily. "I've
+been expecting it to catch up with me for years."
+
+"Your father died of it, you say?"
+
+"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in
+sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I
+remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed
+sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and
+Frances--that's my sister--were waiting, and they sent me running to
+call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself up and
+work. I was starved hungry, and I remember I hot-footed it proper
+upstairs to his den and threw open the door." Puff! puff! went the big
+stogie. "An Irish plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I
+recollect," he completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that
+day to this."
+
+"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.
+
+"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing the opening
+anthem at the time."
+
+The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared impassively out
+the single window. It faced the main street of the town.
+
+"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed evenly. "I
+see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's place."
+
+Landor did not look around.
+
+"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he recalled in mock
+sarcasm. "What I want to know is your opinion."
+
+"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.
+
+Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal agony.
+
+"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be before--" he
+halted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"before Bob and the rest
+will be doing that to me?"
+
+Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes beneath the
+other's drooping lids.
+
+"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.
+
+Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws closed
+tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned the other's
+gaze.
+
+"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed. "Tell me,
+and let's have it over with."
+
+For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black eyes
+bored the other through and through, at first impersonally, as, scalpel
+in hand, he would have studied a patient before the first incision in a
+major operation; then, as against the other's will, a great drop of
+sweat gathered on the broad forehead, personally, intimately.
+
+"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated evenly. He
+did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was about to say, did
+not qualify in advance by intimating that his prognosis might be wrong.
+"I think the next attack will be the last. Moreover, I believe it will
+come soon, very soon." Impassively as he had spoken, he produced a book
+of rice paper from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long
+fingers were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a
+machine. Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame
+was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly smoke
+separated him from the other.
+
+With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, passed his sleeve
+across his forehead clumsily.
+
+"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I said, I
+expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For the second time
+his cigar was dead, but he did not light it again. There was no need of
+subterfuge now. "I want you to do me a favour." He looked at the other
+steadily through the diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"
+
+"No," said Chantry.
+
+Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.
+
+"No!" he interrogated.
+
+"I said so."
+
+A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as, with an
+effort, he got to his feet.
+
+"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly. "I was
+labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."
+
+The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long fingers had
+locked over his knee. He did not move.
+
+"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am your friend
+that I will not promise."
+
+Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.
+
+"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm dense."
+
+"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one thing I
+can't promise you."
+
+Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.
+
+"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of your
+affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"
+
+"Yes. But how in the world--" "Don't ask it then, please," swiftly. He
+ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else, someone you've known
+for a long time."
+
+"I've known you for a long time--five years."
+
+"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry scouted the
+obvious. "If there should be need she could get a lawyer from the
+city--"
+
+"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to avoid.
+Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of taking care of
+themselves as they have of speaking Chinese. They'd be on the county
+inside a year, with no one interested to look out for them."
+
+"But How--"
+
+"He's as bad. He can ride a broncho, or stalk a sandhill crane where
+there isn't cover to hide your hat, or manage cattle, or stretch out in
+the sun and: dream; but business--He wouldn't know a bank cheque if he
+saw one; and, what's worse, he doesn't want to know."
+
+"Craig, then, your nephew--" It was not natural for Chantry to be
+perfunctory, and he halted.
+
+For a moment the big rancher was silent. In his lap his fingers met
+unconsciously, tip to tip, in the instinctive habit of age.
+
+"I anticipated that," he said wearily. "I realise it's the obvious thing
+to do. I never adopted How as I did the girl--I was willing to, but he
+didn't see the use--and so Craig's the only man kin I have." The life
+and magnetism, usually so noticeable in Landor's great figure, had
+vanished. It was merely an old man facing the end who settled listlessly
+into his seat. "I had big hopes of the boy. I hadn't seen him since he
+was a youngster, and Frances, while she lived, was always bragging about
+his doings. That's why I sent for him." Pat, pat went the big fingers in
+his lap against each other. "I've always felt that if worst came to
+worst the women folks would have someone practical to rely on; but
+somehow, when I saw him last night, from what he said and what he didn't
+say, from the way he acted and the way he explained--what happened here
+last evening--" The speaker caught himself. A trace of the old
+shrewdness crept into the grey eyes as he inspected his companion
+steadily. "I know How pretty well, and when someone intimates to me that
+he is a grand-stand player, or goes out of his way to pick a quarrel, or
+meddles with someone else's affairs--" Again the big man caught himself.
+The scrutiny became almost a petition. "I cut you off short about what
+went on here yesterday," he digressed. "I didn't want to hear. I guess I
+was afraid to hear. It's been foolish, I know, but I've depended a good
+deal upon the boy, and I'm afraid he's going to be a--disappointment."
+
+With the old machine-like precision Chantry rolled another cigarette,
+lit it, sent a great cloud of smoke tumbling up toward the ceiling. That
+was all.
+
+"You see for yourself how it is," said the rancher. "I wouldn't ask you
+again if there was anyone else I could go to; but there isn't. Maybe I'm
+only borrowing trouble, maybe there won't be anything for you or anyone
+to do; but it would be a big load off my mind to know that if anything
+should happen.--" He halted abruptly. It was not easy for this man to
+discuss his trouble, even to a friend. "It isn't such a big thing I'm
+asking," he hurried. "I'm sure if positions were reversed and you were
+to request me--"
+
+"I know you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I--" Of a sudden,
+interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin, ungainly figure in
+shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the point of caricature.
+Unconsciously he started pacing back and forth across the room,
+restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the years he had previously known
+the man had Landor seen him so, seen him other than the impassive,
+almost forbidding practitioner of a minute ago. For the time being his
+own trouble was forgotten in surprise, and he stared at the
+transformation almost unbelievingly. Back and forth, back and forth went
+the thin, ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved,
+paused at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a
+silhouette looking out over the desolate town. Watching, Landor shifted
+uncomfortably in his seat. Once he cleared his throat as if to speak. An
+instinct told him he should say something; but he was in the dark
+absolutely, and words would not come. Reaching over to the desk he took
+up his broad felt hat and sat twirling it in his fingers, waiting.
+
+As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his seat. His
+face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid drooped even more
+than normally.
+
+"I feel I owe you an apology," he said swiftly. "In a way we've been
+friends, and as you say, it's not a big thing you ask of me; but
+nevertheless I can't grant it. Please don't ask me."
+
+The hat in Landor's hands became still, significantly still.
+
+"I admit I don't understand," he accepted, "but of course if you feel
+that way, I shall not ask you again." Unconsciously a trace of the
+former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose heavily. "I think
+I'd better be going." His mouth twitched in an effort at pleasantry.
+"Mary'll be dying to give me the details."
+
+Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume his seat.
+Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest squarely.
+
+"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said repressedly.
+"Would you like to hear?"
+
+"Yes--if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to, however--"
+
+"No, I'd rather you--understood than to go that way." The doctor cleared
+his throat in the manner of one who smokes overmuch. "We all have our
+skeleton hid away somewhere, I suppose. At least I have mine, and it
+keeps bobbing out at times like this when I most wish--" He caught
+himself, met his companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you
+wondered why I ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried
+suddenly. "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
+don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there was
+something peculiar about it all?"
+
+"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving again. He
+had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it tolerantly, with a
+vague sense of commiseration--an attitude very similar to that with
+which the uninitiated observe a player at golf; but that there might be
+another, a sinister meaning--.
+
+"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem peculiar, now that
+you consider it?" The question came swiftly, tensely, with a
+significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell me, please."
+
+"Yes, perhaps; but--"
+
+"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but see." The
+speaker started anew the restless, aimless pace. "The country is full of
+us; all new countries are." He was still speaking hurriedly, tensely, as
+we tell of a murder or a ghastly tragedy; something which in duty we
+must confide, but which we hasten to have over. "It's easier to get here
+than to Mexico or to Canada, and until the country is settled, until
+people begin to suspect--" He halted suddenly opposite the other, his
+face deathly pale, deathly tortured. "In God's name, don't you
+understand now?" he questioned passionately. "Must I tell you in so many
+words why I refused, why I don't dare do anything else but refuse?"
+
+"No, you don't need to tell me." Absently, unconsciously, the rancher
+produced a red bandana handkerchief and wiped his face; then thrust it
+back into his pocket. "I think I understand at last." His eyes had
+dropped and he did not raise them again to his companion. "I'm sorry,
+very sorry, that I asked you; sorry most of all that--" He halted
+diffidently, his great hands hanging loose at his side, his broad
+shoulders drooping wearily. He was not glib of speech, at best, and this
+second blow was hard to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant,
+searching for words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the
+door. "I really must be going," he concluded.
+
+Chantry did not ask him to stay, made no motion to prevent his going.
+Tense, motionless, he stood where he had last paused, waited in silence
+until the visitor's hand was upon the knob.
+
+"Good-bye Landor," he said then simply.
+
+Not the words themselves, but something in the tone caused the rancher
+to halt, to look back.
+
+"Good-day, you mean, rather," he corrected.
+
+"No, good-bye. You will not see me again."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"No. I'm too much of a coward for that, or I should have done so long
+ago. I merely mean I'll move on to-morrow."
+
+Face to face the two men stood staring at each other. Seconds drifted
+by. It was the doctor who spoke at last.
+
+"God knows that if I could, I'd change with you even now, Landor," he
+said repressedly. "I'd change with you gladly." A moment he stood so,
+tense as a wire drawn to the point of breaking, ghastly tense; then of a
+sudden he went lax. Instinctively his fingers sought his pockets, and
+there where he stood he started swiftly to roll a cigarette.
+
+"Go, please," he requested. "Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+Eight miles out on the prairie, out of sight of the Buffalo Butte ranch
+house--save for a scattering herd of grazing cattle in the distance, and
+a hobbled mouse-coloured broncho feeding near at hand, out of sight of
+every living thing--a man lay stretched full length upon the ground. It
+was the time of day that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's
+store, and the broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to
+keep the glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket;
+an Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a blot
+of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his moccasined
+feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would have thought him
+asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes that looked forth
+motionless from beneath the hat brim, that apparently never for an
+instant left that scattering blot where, distorted, fantastic from
+distance and through the curling heat waves the herd grazed, were very
+wide awake indeed. They were not even drowsy or off guard. They were
+merely passive, absolutely passive. The whole body was passive,
+motionless, relaxed in every muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the
+marvel--to all save the thousandth human in this restless age, the
+impossibility. To be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely
+nothing, not even sleep--seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one
+of the most difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need
+is sufficient; but man, modern man--Here and there one retains the
+faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth; but
+here and there only. Yet it was such an one that lay alone out there on
+the Dakota prairie that October day; one who, as Craig had said, hinted
+unfortunately of comic opera, but who never, even in remotest
+conception, fancied that comic opera existed, a dreamer and yet,
+notwithstanding, a doer, an Indian, and still not an Indian;
+Ma-wa-cha-sa by name.
+
+With the approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now, wandering
+northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane and tail, set each
+individual hair of the little beast vibrating in unjustified ferocity;
+and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the brittle grass stalks at the
+man's feet with the muffled crackling of a far-distant prairie fire. The
+herd, a great machine cutting clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in
+its path, moved on and on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling
+country, and passed slowly from view; then, still moving forward, took
+shape on the summit of the next rise, more distinct than before.
+
+Time passed as the man lay there, time that to another would have been
+interminable, that to him was apparently unnoted. Gradually, as the full
+heat of the day approached, the breeze became stronger, set the heat
+waves dancing to swifter measure, sang audibly in the listener's ears
+its siren song of prairie and of peace. The broncho, its appetite
+temporarily satisfied, lay down fair in its tracks, groaned lazily in
+the action, and shut its eyes. It was the rest time of the wild, and the
+same instinct appealed to the leader of the distant herd. Down it went
+where it stood as the pony had done, disappeared absolutely from view. A
+moment later another followed, and another, and another. It was almost
+uncanny, there in the fantastic glimmer, that disappearance. In the
+space of minutes, look where one would, the horizon was blank. Where the
+herd had been there was nothing, not even a blot. It was as the desert,
+and the vanished herd a mirage. It was like the far northland tight in
+the grip of winter, like the ocean at night. It was the Dakota frontier
+at midday.
+
+Again time passed and, motionless as at first, wide eyed, the man lay
+looking out. The pony was sound asleep now. Its nostrils widened and
+narrowed rhythmically and it snored at intervals. Save for this and the
+soft crackle of the grass and the aeolian song of the wind the earth was
+still; still as death; so still that, indescribably soft as it was
+immeasurably distant, the man detected of a sudden against it a new
+sound. But he did not stir. The black eyes looked out motionless as at
+first. He merely waited a minute, two--and it came again; a bit louder
+this time, more distinct, unmistakable.
+
+This time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy
+blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his
+body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning
+back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the
+sky, motionless as a prairie boulder.
+
+Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley, a chorus.
+It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance; but nearer than
+before and approaching closer second by second. Not from the earth did
+it come, but from the air. Not by any stretch of the imagination was it
+an earthly sound, but aerial. It was an alien note and still it was not
+alien. There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
+distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote was the
+keynote of the time and place, its message was their message, the thrill
+it bore to the listener the thrill of the whole. It was not a musical
+call, that steadily approaching sound. No human being has ever been able
+to locate it in pitch or metre; yet to such as the listening man upon
+the ground, to those who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless
+the sweetest, most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note
+which will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
+the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
+impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the man heard
+drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was the swelling,
+diminishing note of the migrant on its way south, of the grey Canada
+honker en route from the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within a half
+mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its
+makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys,
+louder and louder, confused as children's voices at play; then in turn
+diminishing, retreating. Very mystifying to one who did not understand
+would have been that augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting
+human boulder it was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he
+knew every movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
+broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
+sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To all wild
+things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile high in the air as
+inevitably as to the beast on earth instinct had said "halt." They were
+still going southward, still drawing nearer and nearer; but it would not
+be for long. Already they were circling, descending, searching here and
+there for a place to alight, to rest. Suspicious even here, they were
+taking their time; but distinct now amid the confusion was the sound of
+their great wings against the denser air, and the "Honk! honk! honk!"
+was a continuous chatter.
+
+Circle after circle made the flock. Once their noise all but ceased, and
+the listener fancied for an instant they were down, but in a moment it
+was resumed louder than before, and he knew they were still a-wing.
+"Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" They were very near indeed, so
+near that the sleeping pony was aroused at the clamour and, lifting its
+head, looked about curiously.
+
+"Honk! honk! honk! Flap! flap! Swish!" Between the sun and the watcher
+there fell a moving shadow and another--then a multitude. The clamour
+was all-surrounding, the flap of great wings a continuous beating, the
+whistle of air like that in a room with a myriad buzzing electric fans.
+Temporarily the prairie breeze was lost; swallowed up in the greater
+movement. Surprised, for the moment frightened, the broncho sprang to
+his feet--paused irresolute. For an instant the sky was hid. Overhead,
+to right, to left, all-obscuring, was nothing but a blot of great grey
+bodies, of wide wings lighter on the under surface, of long, curious
+necks, of dangling feet; then, swiftly as it had come it passed; the sun
+shone anew; the cloud and the shadow thereof, going straight in the face
+of the wind, wandered on. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" they
+repeated; but it was the voice of departure. The thing was done. There
+on the level earth, fair in view, they had passed overhead within twenty
+feet of their arch-enemy, man; and had not known. Now less than a
+quarter of a mile away they were circling for the last time. One big
+gander was already down and stretching his long neck from side to side.
+Another, with a great flapping of wings, was beside him; and another,
+and another. The prairie wind carried along the sound of their chatter;
+but it was subdued now, entirely different from the clamour of a bit
+ago. Against the blue of the sky where they had been a blot only, the
+curling, dancing heat waves arose. One and all had answered the siesta
+call.
+
+Up to this time the man who watched had not stirred. As they had gone
+over, the wide-open eyes had stared up at them; but not in the twitching
+of a muscle had the long body betrayed him. Not even now that it was
+over did he move. Instead, low at first, then louder, a whistle sounded.
+The pony, wide awake now, was grazing contentedly; but he paused. The
+whistle sounded for the third time, and reluctantly he drew near, halted
+obediently. Then at last there was action. With one motion the Indian
+was on his feet. Swiftly as it was spread the blanket was rolled and
+replaced in the waterproof pouch with the remnants of the lunch and a
+book of odds and ends which he carried always with him. The whole was
+strapped to the pony's bare back. As swiftly the hobble was removed and,
+not a minute from the time the last bird was down, the man and the
+beast, the latter only visible from the direction in which they were
+going, were moving on a zigzag, circuitous trail toward the resting yet
+ever-watchful flock before them.
+
+On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his body even
+with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through the wind-tossed
+mane. First to the right, then to the left they tacked, halting at
+intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will halt now and then to feed;
+but never losing the general direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer
+and nearer. A half hour passed by and in it they covered forty
+rods--half the distance. Thirty minutes more elapsed and they had
+crossed an equal portion of the remaining space. Then it was they halted
+and a peculiar thing happened.
+
+The wind had gradually risen during the day, and now, the middle of the
+afternoon, was blowing steadily. Light objects unattached move easily
+across the level prairie at this time of year, and here and there under
+its touch one after another of a particular kind were already in motion.
+Fluffy, unsubstantial objects they were, as large as a bushel measure
+and rudely circular. Looking out over the level earth often a half dozen
+at a time were visible, rolling and halting and rolling again on an
+endless journey from nowhere to nowhere. They were the well-named tumble
+weeds of the prairie; as distinctive as the resting flock of late
+autumn, of approaching winter. One of these it was now that came
+tumbling in lazily from the south and, barely missing the indifferent
+birds themselves, dawdled languidly on toward the pony beyond. On it
+came, would have passed to the right; but, under an impulse he in no way
+understood, the broncho moved to intercept it. Fair in its path, the
+little beast would still have shifted to give it right of way, for the
+weed is very prickly; but again the authority he did not question held
+him in his place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came
+together. Then it was the _finale_ began, the real test, the matching of
+human cunning and animal watchfulness.
+
+Left alone there upon the prairie, the indifferent broncho resumed its
+feeding. Away from it, foot by foot, so slowly that a careful observer
+could barely have seen it stir, moved the great weed. No animal on the
+face of earth save man himself would have been suspicious of that
+natural blind; even he would have overlooked it had he not by chance
+noted that while every other of its kind was moving with the wind, it
+slowly but surely was advancing against it. The scene where the drama
+was taking place was level as a floor, the grazed grass that covered it
+scarcely higher than a man's hand; yet from in front not an inch of the
+Indian's long body was visible, not a sound marked its advance. In
+comparison with its movement time passed swiftly; a third half hour
+while it was advancing ten rods. Already the short autumn afternoon was
+drawing to a close. The sun was no longer uncomfortably hot. The heat
+waves had ceased dancing. In sympathy the prairie breeze, torn of the
+sun, was becoming appreciably milder. As certainly as it had come, the
+brief rest period was drawing to a close.
+
+But the long figure that gave the blind motion showed no haste. Inch by
+inch it advanced, never still, yet never hurrying. The great
+unsuspicious birds were very near now, so near that a white hunter
+would have lost his equanimity in anticipation. Through the meshwork of
+the blind the stalker counted them. Twenty-seven there were together,
+and near to him another, a sentinel. He was within half the distance of
+a city block of the latter, so close that he could see the beady,
+watchful eyes, the pencillings of the plumage, the billowing of feathers
+as the long neck shifted from side to side. Verily it was a moment to
+make a sportsman's blood leap--to make him forget; but not even then did
+the Indian show a sign of excitement, not for a minute did the lithe
+body cease in its soundless serpentine motion. It was splendid, that
+patient, stealthy approach, splendid in its mastery of the still hunt;
+but beyond this it was more, it was fearful. Had an observer been where
+no observer was, it would inevitably have carried with it another
+suggestion--the possibilities of such a man were a real object, one
+vital to his life, and not a mere pastime, at stake. What would this
+patient, tireless, splendid animal do then? What if another man, his
+enemy, were the object, the quarry?
+
+The rest time at last was over. Insidiously into the air had crept a
+suggestion of coolness, of approaching night. In the background the pony
+ceased feeding, stood patiently awaiting the return of its rider. Far in
+the distance, the herd, a darker blot against the brown earth, were once
+more upon their feet. The flock, that heretofore like a group of
+barnyard fowls in the dust and the sun had remained indolently resting
+and preening their plumage, grew alert. One after the other they began
+wandering here and there aimlessly, restlessly. The subdued chatter
+became positive. Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a
+challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings tentatively,
+and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The cycle was all but
+complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them south, that
+had for this brief time sent them to earth, was calling again. In
+sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went still. Another minute,
+another second even, perhaps, and they would be gone. Through the filmy
+screen the stalker saw it all, read the meaning. He had ere this drawn
+unbelievably near. Barely the width of a narrow street separated him
+from the main flock--less than the breadth of a goodly sized room the
+motionless sentinel. It was the moment for action.
+
+And action followed. Like a mighty spring the slim muscular body
+contracted in its length. Toes and fingers dug into the earth like a
+sprinter awaiting the starting pistol. He drew a long breath. Then of a
+sudden, straight over the now useless blind, unexpected, startling as a
+thunderclap out of a cloudless sky, directly toward the nearest bird
+bounded a tall brown figure, silent as a phantom. For a second the
+entire flock stared in dumb paralytic surprise; then following there
+came a note of terror from eight and twenty throats that rose as one
+voice, that over the now silent prairie could have been heard for
+miles. It was the signal for action, for escape, and, terror-mad, they
+broke into motion. But a flock of great Canada geese cannot, like quail,
+spring directly a-wing. They must first gather momentum. This they
+attempted to gain--in its accomplishment all but one succeeded. That
+one, the leader, the sentinel, was too near. Almost before that first
+note of terror had left his throat the man was upon him. Ere he could
+rise two relentless hands had fastened upon his beating wings and held
+him prisoner. Hissing, struggling, he put up the best fight he could;
+but it was useless. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" shrilled the
+flock now safe in the air. "Honk! honk! honk!" as with wings and feet
+they climbed into the sky. "Honk! honk! honk!" softer and softer. "Honk!
+honk! honk!" for the last time, faint as an echo; and they were gone.
+Behind them the human and the wild thing his prisoner stood staring at
+each other alone.
+
+For a long, long time neither moved. Its first desperate effort to
+escape past, the bird ceased to struggle, stood passive in its place;
+passive as the man himself had remained there on the ground a few hours
+before. Its long neck swayed here and there continuously, restlessly,
+and its throat was a-throb; but no muscle of the body stirred. It had
+made its fight--and lost. For the time being resistance was fatuous, and
+it accepted the inevitable. Silent as its captor, it awaited the move of
+the conqueror. It would resist again when the move came, resist to the
+last ounce of its strength; but until then in instinctive wisdom it
+would husband its energy.
+
+Yet that move was very slow in coming. It was the time of day when
+ordinarily the herder collected his drove and returned toward the home
+corral; still he showed no intention of haste. The broncho was shaking
+his head at intervals restlessly; too well trained to leave, yet
+impatient as a hungry child for the return--and was ignored. For the
+time being the man seemed to have forgotten all external considerations.
+Not savagely nor cruelly, but with a sort of fascination he stood gazing
+at this wild thing in his power. For a long, long time he did nothing
+more, merely looked at it; looked admiringly, intimately. No trace of
+blood hunger was in his face, no lust to kill; but pure
+appreciation--and something more; something that made the two almost
+kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike. Each was
+graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of its kind physical
+perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of the wild; of solitude,
+of magnificent distances. Each was a part of its setting; as much so as
+the all-surrounding silence. Last of all, each stood for one quality
+dominant, one desire overtowering all others; and that was freedom,
+unqualified, absolute.
+
+Long as it was they stood there so, the bird was true to its instinct of
+passive inaction. It was the human that made the first move. Gently,
+slowly, one hand freed itself, stroked the silky soft plumage; stroked
+it intimately, almost lovingly--as an animal mother caresses its young.
+The man did not speak, made no sound, merely repeated the motion again
+and again. Under the touch the restless head became still, the watchful
+black eyes more watchful. That was all. Slowly as it had moved before,
+the man's hand shifted anew, passed down, down, the glossy throat to the
+breast--paused over the heart of the wild thing. There it remained, and
+for the first time a definite expression came into the mask-like face; a
+look of pity, of genuine contrition. A moment the hand lay there; then,
+childish as it may seem, absurd, if you please, the man spoke aloud.
+
+"You're afraid of me, deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he queried
+softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a cannibal, I'm going
+to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into the black eyes--deep,
+mysterious as the wild itself. "You think this, and still you don't
+grovel, don't make a sound. You're brave, birdie, braver than most men."
+He paused, and one by one his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of
+you; so proud that I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his
+full height. Unconsciously his arms folded across his chest. "Go,
+birdie; you're free."
+
+A moment longer there was inaction. Unbelieving, still a captive, the
+great bird stood there motionless as before; then of a sudden it
+understood; it was free. By some chance, some Providence, this great
+animal, its captor, had lost the mastery, and it was free.
+Simultaneously with the knowledge the pent-up energy of the last minutes
+went active, fairly explosive. With a mighty rush it was away; feet and
+wings beating the earth, the air. Swifter and swifter it went, gaining
+momentum with each second. It barely touched the frost-brown prairie; it
+cleared it entirely, it rose, rose, with mighty sweeps of mighty wings.
+Oh, it was free! free! free! "Honk! honk!" Free! free! "Honk! honk!
+honk!"
+
+Like a statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot
+on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at last into the
+all-surrounding brown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor returned that
+evening. The herd safely corralled for the night, he rode slowly toward
+the ranch house, and, without leaving the pony's back, opened and closed
+the gate of the barb wire fence surrounding the yard and approached the
+house. There was a bright light in the living-room, and, still without
+dismounting, he paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs.
+Landor, looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her
+hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his feet
+on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking a cigarette,
+and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the room looked blue.
+Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not finding conversation easy,
+and the former appeared distinctly bored. Neither Landor himself nor the
+girl was anywhere visible, and, after a moment, the spectator moved on
+around the corner. The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the
+kitchen, and the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing
+at last under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It
+was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim light was
+burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the barebacked broncho
+hesitated, looking up; then rolling his wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder
+he moved very close to the weather-boarded wall. The building was low,
+and, by stretching a bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the
+second story. He tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.
+
+No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.
+
+Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.
+
+Still no answer.
+
+Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit frosty, the pony
+stamped impatiently.
+
+"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me good-night?"
+
+This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash was
+opened; a face appeared, very white against the black background.
+
+"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.
+
+The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was unrolled.
+
+"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not sick?"
+
+"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired, is all."
+
+For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his black head
+bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed human that he was,
+there seemed to him nothing now to say, nothing adequate. Meanwhile the
+pony was growing more and more impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the
+half-frozen ground rhythmically.
+
+"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit there in the
+window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."
+
+The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.
+
+"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade closed as
+before.
+
+For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of head,
+motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a sound, and
+at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own quarters.
+
+The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the Buffalo Butte
+ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room shack, grudgingly
+built according to government requirements to prove up on a homestead,
+it had recently been enlarged by the addition of a second larger room,
+and as a whole the place further improved by the building of a sod and
+weather-board barn. The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted
+with the tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had
+remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor himself
+could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for years, and in
+all that time, even in the coldest weather, the voluntary exile had
+never lived under a roof. Primitive or evolved as it might be, as youth
+and as man, the Indian was a tent-dweller. Just now the little house was
+being fitted up for occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of
+the day and at evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under
+eight by ten feet of canvas near at hand.
+
+A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against a dark
+horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house yard the man on
+the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that he had company; yet,
+characteristic in his every action, he did not hurry. Methodically he
+put up the pony in the new barn, fed and bedded him for the night. From
+the adjoining stall, out of the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish
+whine and the protest of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an
+observer would have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a
+pair of sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two
+gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible. It was
+to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps from his lunch
+remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the pony, he made a bed;
+then--though the little beast was only a grey prairie wolf, it was a
+baby and lonely--he knelt down and for a moment laid his own face
+against the other's softly shaggy face.
+
+When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there was a moist
+spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had inscribed its
+affection.
+
+On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man with his
+back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap and stepped
+inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the manner of one
+whose thoughts had been far away.
+
+"You're late to-night," he commented.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or expected,
+and the subject dropped.
+
+There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in silence the
+Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging opposite was burning
+low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the tin reflector so that the
+light would play on the scene of operations. Leaving the tent for a
+moment, he returned with a young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put
+it in a skillet to fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he
+produced a couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the
+opposite side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be
+dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that supper
+was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey red cloth was
+set, the odour of coffee--cheap coffee, yet surprisingly fragrant--was
+in the air, and the bird and potatoes were temptingly brown. It was
+almost uncanny the way this man accomplished things. Landor himself
+never ceased to marvel. How always seemed unconscious of what he was
+doing, seemed always thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a
+motion, and when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was
+so in small things. It was identical in large.
+
+Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a word had
+been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted hospitably.
+
+"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an early supper.
+I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."
+
+"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his seat
+wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."
+
+In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not press his
+invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's admission. Either
+would have been superfluous. Instead he ate with the hearty appetite of
+a healthy human, and thereafter, swiftly and methodically as he had
+prepared the meal, cleared the table and put all in order. Then at last,
+the fire replenished and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown
+within the radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the
+perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and awaited
+the something he knew had brought the other to him at this unusual hour.
+"There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of the little table at your
+right," he assisted.
+
+Landor roused with a trace of surprise.
+
+"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.
+
+"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the superfluous, the
+obvious explanation.
+
+Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and pressed the
+brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match he lit crackled
+explosively, and he started at the unexpected sound as one whose nerves
+were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still sat for a moment puffing hard.
+
+"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a favour.
+Will you promise me?"
+
+The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my power,
+yes, sir," he said.
+
+That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the relation of
+the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the younger, the trace of
+almost patriarchal respect that never left his manner when, addressing
+the elder. "If in my power, yes, sir."
+
+"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly. "It's
+simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of waiting until the
+day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though the speaker were uncertain
+whether or no to say more. "I have a particular reason for wishing it,"
+he completed inadequately.
+
+For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question was voiced;
+there was no probing of the confidence the other preferred not to give.
+
+"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.
+
+Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already glowing
+bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had done.
+
+"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong now, but
+nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day while I was in
+town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form, but I feel
+better to have things settled." With forced matter of factness he
+knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the grate and filled the
+bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any responsibility, so I left
+practically everything to Bess. I know that if anything should happen to
+me you'd take care of her mother."
+
+No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.
+
+"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very different
+from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher to-night, very
+obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear natural. "I know you'll
+make her happy, my boy."
+
+Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted uncomfortably.
+As well as he knew his own name he knew that his secret was secret no
+longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild thing that hides itself to die
+alone he avoided direct mention of the fact, direct wording of the
+inevitable. But something in the attitude of the motionless figure
+before him prevented further dissimulation. Some influence urged him to
+hasten the _denouement_ which he knew was but postponed. With an effort
+he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the other's black
+eyes steadily.
+
+"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned directly.
+
+"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is that I'm
+sorry you did as you did."
+
+"Sorry, How?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Very sorry."
+
+"And why?"
+
+No answer.
+
+The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon the Indian's
+face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the corner by the stove was
+in shadow.
+
+"I will tell you why." He returned to his place and stretched himself as
+before, his hands locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr.
+Landor, and Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you
+will compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have
+seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."
+
+For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with a
+fragment of coal from the grate.
+
+"I don't see why, How," he refuted.
+
+"You do, though, sir."
+
+"No. Tell me."
+
+There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other would not
+answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black eyes fixed upon him
+unshiftingly.
+
+"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As we are now
+I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because--I love her." He
+paused, and into the tent there came the long-drawn-out wail of the baby
+prisoner. Silence returned. "As surely as that little wolf is lonely,
+Bess will know the trouble money brings if you do as you intend. Not
+myself, but other men will teach her."
+
+Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his fingers.
+
+"Once more I ask why, How?"
+
+The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.
+
+"Because she is white and they are white, and I--am an Indian."
+
+At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto
+succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no
+longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true.
+Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing--as they would
+do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a
+child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make
+it possible!
+
+Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move
+about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by
+inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been
+dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great
+hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last
+he turned.
+
+"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and understand the way
+you feel. God knows I wish it were different, wish I did not believe
+what you say true; but things are as the are. What we have to do now is
+the best thing possible under the circumstances." He sat down in the
+chair again heavily, his hands still locked in his lap. "If wrong has
+been done I am to blame, I myself, in raising you and Bess together. I
+might have known that it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for
+each other; but I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess--"
+
+"Mr. Landor--"
+
+The big man halted. For the first time he realised the admission of what
+he had been saying, the inevitable implication--and he was silent. For
+seconds likewise the Indian was still; but in them he was looking at the
+other steadily, in a way he had never looked at him before, with an
+intensity that was haunting.
+
+"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There was no anger
+in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes, pathos--terrible,
+gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else felt so--everyone except
+Bess herself; but you--you--I did not know that before, Mr. Landor."
+
+Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the bottom of
+his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in self-defence; but
+he could not. There was nothing to say.
+
+"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the repressed voice,
+"not even when at first you were slow to give your consent to our
+marriage. I fancied it was merely because you thought me impractical,
+because I cared nothing for a life that was different, was not my own.
+Nor again, even a bit ago when you asked me to promise--what I did
+promise--I did not suspicion such a thing. I thought it a compliment,
+the sincerest compliment I had ever received in my life: the fact that
+you should trust me so, with all that was dear to you in the world."
+Just perceptibly he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's
+face. "But I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You
+are like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that we've
+lived together for half a generation makes no difference. You're square,
+square to the end. You even like me in a way. You've given your word and
+won't go back on it; but nevertheless you're sorry. Even while you urge
+us to marry, to have the thing over, to have a responsibility off your
+mind, you feel you are sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a
+second, and even at this time Landor was conscious that it was
+infinitely the longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't
+blame you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
+race; but nevertheless, nevertheless--"
+
+The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes were of a
+sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at the roof of the
+tent. No power on earth could have made him complete that sentence, made
+him admit the deadly hurt it suggested. From the unusual confidence of a
+bit ago he merely lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive
+self. Yet as plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the
+difference, realised as well that while outwardly there would be no
+change, from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
+the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to exist. He
+had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the knowledge for the
+first time in the years they two had lived together he realised how much
+after all he had grown to depend upon this laconic human, how much he
+had lost. It was the last drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing
+straw. His great ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in
+his hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
+marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with his
+deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them, silence that by
+word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from the stable there
+sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a moment later, muffled,
+echo-like from the distance, the answering call of one of its own kind
+free upon the infinite prairie; but apparently neither man noticed,
+neither man cared--and the silence returned. Long minutes passed. The
+fire in the stove burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a
+suggestion of the coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without
+a word he put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were
+unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a moment
+he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of attempting an
+explanation where none was possible; but he realised it would but make
+matters worse, and desisted. The Indian, too, had arisen, and
+repressedly courteous, stood ready to open the flap of the tent for the
+other to pass. For a moment, the last moment they were ever to see each
+other alive, they stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each
+knowing that the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly,
+Landor took a step forward.
+
+The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he passed; then
+closed again, shutting him out.
+
+For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man remained
+as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an inanimate thing. The
+kerosene lamp was burning low now and sputtered dismally; but he did not
+notice, did not hear. For the third time, tremulous against the
+background of night and of silence, came the wail of the lonely little
+captive. It was a kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the
+figure responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute
+later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey, bright-eyed
+something, happy as a puppy at release and companionship. Methodically
+the man banked the coal fire and put out the lantern. He did not make a
+bed, did not undress. Instead, weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid
+the buffalo robes, lay still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed,
+inquiring nose in the darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no
+response, and becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the
+silent being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly--and likewise
+became still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+The darkness that precedes morning had the prairie country in its grip
+when Howard, the gaunt foreman of the B.B. ranch, drew rein before the
+silent tent, and with the butt end of his quirt tapped on the heavy
+canvas.
+
+"Wake up," he called laconically. "You're wanted at the ranch house."
+
+Echo-like, startling in its suddenness, an inverted V opened in the
+white wall and in it, fully dressed, vigilant, appeared the figure of
+its owner.
+
+"What is it?" asked a voice insistently.
+
+The Texan stared in unconcealed surprise.
+
+"In Heaven's name, man, don't you ever sleep?" he drawled. "The boss is
+dead," he added baldly at second thought.
+
+The black V closed again, and distinct in outline against the white
+background appeared the silhouette of the listener. His arms were folded
+across his chest in a way that was characteristic, and his moccasined
+feet were set close together. He spoke no word of surprise, asked no
+question; merely stood there in the silence and the semi-darkness
+waiting.
+
+The foreman was by no means a responsive soul, yet, watching, there
+instinctively crept over him a feeling akin to awe of this other silent
+human. There was the mystery of death itself in that motionless,
+listening shadow.
+
+"It was just before I came over to tell you that Mrs. Landor raised the
+house," he explained. "She woke up in the night and found the boss
+so--and cold already." Unconsciously his voice had lowered. "She
+screamed like a mad woman, and ran down-stairs in her nightdress,
+chattering so we could hardly understand her." He slapped at his baggy
+chaperajos with his quirt absently. "That's all I know, except there's
+no particular use to hurry. It's all over now, and he never knew what
+took him."
+
+Silently as before the aperture in the tent opened and closed and the
+listener disappeared; to reappear a moment later with a curled-up woolly
+bundle in his arms. Without a word of explanation he strode toward the
+barn, leaving Howard staring after him uncertainly. Listening, the
+latter heard a suppressed little puppyish protest, as though its maker
+were very sleepy, a moment later the soft, recognising whinny of a
+broncho, and then, startlingly sudden as the figure had first emerged
+from the tent, it appeared again, mounted, by his side.
+
+For half the distance to the ranch house not a word was said; then of a
+sudden Howard drew his horse to a walk meaningly.
+
+"I suppose it's none of my business," he commented without preface, "but
+unless I'm badly mistaken there'll be hell to pay around the Buffalo
+Butte now."
+
+Again, as at the tent door, his companion made no answer; merely waited
+for the something he knew was on the other's mind. The east was
+beginning to lighten now, and against the reddening sky his dark face
+appeared almost pale.
+
+Howard shifted in his saddle seat and inspected the ground at his right
+as intently as though there might be jewels scattered about.
+
+"The boss's relative--Craig," he added, "has taken possession there as
+completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead of been a
+visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the man's face an
+unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted characteristically. "I like you,
+How, or I wouldn't stick my bill into your affairs. That boy is going to
+make you trouble, take my word for it."
+
+Even then there was no response; but the overseer did not seem surprised
+or offended. Instead, the load he had to impart off his mind, his manner
+indicated distinct relief. But one thing more was necessary to his
+material comfort--and that solace was at hand. Taking a great bite of
+plug tobacco, a chew that swelled one of his thin cheeks like a wen, he
+lapsed into his normal attitude of disinterested reverie.
+
+The ranch house was lighted from top to bottom, abnormally brilliant,
+and as the Indian entered the odour of kerosene was strong in his
+nostrils. In the kitchen as he passed through were the other two
+herders. They sat side by side in uncomfortable inaction, their big
+sombreros in their hands; and with the suppression of those unused to
+death nodded him silent recognition. The dining-room was empty, likewise
+the living-room; but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled
+catch of a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative,
+the voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
+even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of the
+three who were already present knew that he was there.
+
+Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one corner of
+the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She did not look up
+as he entered, apparently did not see him, did not see anything. The
+first wild passion of grief past, she had lapsed into a sort of passive
+lethargy. Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the loose dressing
+sack she had put on, and now and then her thin lips trembled; but that
+was all.
+
+Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to the bed;
+shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done when Howard first
+broke the news, his feet came close together and his arms folded across
+his chest in characteristic, all-observing attention. Not a muscle
+moved, he scarcely seemed to breathe. He merely watched.
+
+And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at first
+beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised until the face
+was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as she had thrown herself
+down, her head all but buried from view, was the girl Bess. She was
+sobbing as though her heart would break: sobbing as though unconscious
+of another human being in the world. Above her, leaning over her, was
+the form of a man: Craig. His uncle had brought his belongings from the
+tiny town the day before, and even at this time his linen and cravat
+were immaculate. He was looking down at the little woman before him,
+looking and hesitating as one choosing between good and evil.
+
+"Bess," he was saying, "you must not. You'll make yourself sick.
+Besides, it's nearly morning and people will be coming. Don't do so;
+please!"
+
+No answer, no indication that he had been heard; only the muffled,
+racking, piteous sobs.
+
+"Bess," insistently, "Bess! Listen to me. I can't have you do so. Uncle
+Landor wouldn't like it, I know he wouldn't. He'd be sorry if he knew.
+Be brave, girlie. You're not alone yet."
+
+Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty, curved
+shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.
+
+The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face went very
+close.
+
+"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't let you
+cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl; infinitely too
+much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly, hurts me more than I
+can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated, and like an inexperienced
+gambler his face went tense and white. "You must listen to me,
+Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are others who will take care of
+you. I myself will take care of you, girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's
+something I must tell you, something you make me tell you now." Swiftly,
+unhesitatingly, he leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed
+about her and he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle,
+could not prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you
+two days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is
+why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love you!"
+
+This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the roof,
+came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living actors
+remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the
+tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting
+before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking
+at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in
+bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him
+tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the
+climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself
+into a man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the
+close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a sound,
+one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate--and again the first.
+Unexpected as death itself would have been at that instant, Craig felt
+two mighty irresistible hands close on his shoulders; close with a grip
+that all but paralysed. Irresistibly again he felt himself turned about,
+put upon his feet; realised of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly
+even to admit of a cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot
+distant, he was staring into the face of the one being on earth from
+whom he had most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully
+intervening, a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came
+between. The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.
+
+"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he didn't.
+Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive him--for my
+sake."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test kerosene still
+hung about the closed living-room where the same four people sat in
+council. No effort had as yet been made to put the place to rights, and
+in consequence it was stuffy and disordered and proportionately
+depressing. The mound of cigarette stumps which Craig had builded the
+night before lay unsightly and evil of odour on the table. The faded rag
+carpet was littered with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding
+blouse and cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat,
+which he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a
+chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences of
+his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two days'
+residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete possession.
+Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority in the past,
+concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That voice was speaking
+now.
+
+"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is buried in
+Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's father." The voice
+halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his other sister, who died
+years and years ago, are both there." Obviously, too obviously, he
+turned away until his face was hid. Into the voice there crept a throb
+that was almost convincing. "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure,
+even though he wouldn't have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned
+it the first night I came, but of course I didn't realise--then--" The
+voice was silent.
+
+As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no emotion, did
+not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain awakened, had she
+grasped the full meaning of the thing which had happened to her. Later,
+indefinitely later, the knowledge would come, and with it the hour of
+reckoning; but for the present she was a mere puppet in the play. Craig,
+the dominant, had told her to dress, and she had dressed. He had
+summoned her to the council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her
+now that he had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had
+entered, stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had
+spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.
+
+"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who cares for him
+or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was becoming unmanageable
+and the girl halted, winking hard. "It seems cruel."
+
+"Not if he would have wished it, Bess."
+
+"But if he hadn't wished it--"
+
+"I repeat I think he would." Craig shifted until his back was toward the
+other man. "I think that his mentioning the possibility at all, the
+first night I came, proves that he wished it."
+
+"Perhaps.... I don't know." ... A long pause; then of a sudden the girl
+arose and walked to the window. But subterfuge was from her a thing
+apart, and she merely leaned her face against the casement. "I can't
+bear to think of it," she trembled.
+
+Craig moved half way toward her; then remembered, and halted.
+
+"Yes, let's decide, and not talk about it," he returned swiftly. "You
+agree with me after all, don't you, Bess?"
+
+The girl did not look up.
+
+"Don't ask me. You and How and Aunt Mary decide." With an effort she
+resumed her former place; but even yet she did not glance at him.
+"Wherever you take him I shall go along, is all."
+
+Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.
+
+"Yes, I think he would have liked that. I ... You agree with me too,
+don't you, Aunt Mary?"
+
+The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up vacantly.
+"What?" she queried absently.
+
+Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.
+
+"Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me," she returned
+monotonously.
+
+In sympathy, the girl's brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig turned away
+almost impatiently. "Let's consider it settled then," he said.
+
+For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at Craig that she
+looked. It was at that other figure in the background, the figure that
+not once through it all had stirred or made a sound. "What shall we do,
+How? what ought we to do?" she asked.
+
+For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig recognise
+the other's presence by so much as a glance. Only the look of exultation
+left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids tightened perceptibly.
+
+"Don't consider what I think, Bess," said a low voice at last. "Do what
+you feel is right."
+
+It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who brought the
+decision to pass. How Landor, the Indian, it was who, alone in the
+dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man out decently, and for
+five dragging minutes thereafter, before the others had come, stood like
+a statue gazing down at the kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own
+that no living human had ever seen or would ever see. How Landor, the
+Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with the closely drawn
+canvas curtains, drove all that day and half the night to the nearest
+undertaker at the railroad terminus beyond the river, seventy-five miles
+away. How Landor, the Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses,
+but barely a pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail,
+and ere it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre,
+knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of Mary
+Landor he knew. How Landor it was once more who, before twenty-four
+hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the unwilling visitor
+by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch yard. Last of all, How
+Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the old surrey once more to the
+east, and with still another team before him and a cold lunch in his
+pocket, sat waiting within the hour to take the departing ones away.
+
+Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was superfluous.
+What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew. That he had expected
+what had taken place in his absence, his bringing Mrs. Burton proved. At
+last realisation had come, and Mary Landor was paying the price of the
+brief lethargic respite; paying it with usury, paying it with the
+helpless abandon of the dependent. The dreary weather-coloured ranch
+house was not a pleasant place to be in that day. Craig left it
+thankfully, with a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting
+topcoat, as the door closed behind him. The other passenger, the one who
+should have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth--.
+
+How Landor it was again who, when minutes of waiting had passed, minutes
+wherein Craig consumed cigarettes successively, tied the team and
+disappeared within doors. What he said none save the girl herself knew;
+but when he returned he was not alone, and though the eyes of his
+companion were red, there was in her manner no longer a trace of
+hesitation.
+
+The two passengers comfortably muffled in the robes of the rear seat,
+the driver buttoned the curtains tight about them methodically. The day
+was very still, not a sound came to them from over the prairie, and of a
+sudden, startlingly clear, from the house itself there came an
+interruption: the piteous, hopeless wail of a woman in a paroxysm of
+grief, and a moment later the voice of another woman in unemotional,
+comforting monotone.
+
+"How," said a choking, answering voice, "I can't go after all, I can't!"
+
+Within the carriage, safe from observation, her companion took her hand
+authoritatively, pressed it within his own.
+
+"Yes, you can, Bess," he said low. "Aunt Mary will have to fight it out
+for herself. You couldn't help her any by staying."
+
+But already the Indian was gone. Within the house as before, even
+keen-eared Mattie Burton failed to catch what he said. Had she done so,
+she would have been no wiser, for apparently that moment a miracle took
+place. Of a sudden, the hysterical voice was silent. The man spoke again
+and--the watcher stared in pure unbelief--her own hand in her
+companion's hand, Mary Landor followed him obediently out to the surrey.
+
+"We haven't any time to lose," he said evenly, as he drew back the flap
+of the curtain. "You'd better say good-bye now."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Bessie, girl. Bessie!"
+
+Again within the ranch house, Mary Landor sank into a seat with the
+utter weariness of a somnambulist awakened. Fully a half minute the
+Indian stood looking down at her. For one of the few times in his life
+his manner indicated indecision. His long arms hung loose from his
+shoulders. His wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes. The watcher thought he
+looked very, very weary. Then of a sudden he roused. Bending over--did
+he foresee what was to come, that moment?--he did something he had never
+done before.
+
+"Good-bye, mother," he said, and kissed her on the lips.
+
+The door closed behind him noiselessly, and a half minute later the
+loose-wheeled old surrey went rumbling past the door. Mrs. Burton was
+feminine and curious, and she went to the window to watch it from sight.
+The Indian, alone on the front seat, sat looking straight ahead. The
+bronchos, fresh from the stall, and but a few weeks before wild on the
+prairie, tugged at the bit wickedly, tried to bolt; but the driver did
+not stir in his place. The left hand, that held the reins, rose and fell
+with their motion, as an angler takes up slack in his line; that was
+all. The woman had lived long on the frontier. She was appreciative and
+pressed her face against the pane the better to see. They were through
+the gate now, well out on the prairie. The clatter of the waggon had
+ceased, the figure of the driver was concealed by the curtains; but the
+bronchos were still tugging at the bit, still--.
+
+"Mary! In heaven's name!" The sound of a falling body had caught her ear
+and she had turned. "Mary Landor!" The dishes in the cupboard against
+the wall shook as something heavy met the floor. "Mary!" A pause and a
+tongue-tied examination. "My God! The woman is dead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was ten minutes before starting time. The old-fashioned engine,
+contemptuously relegated to the frontier before going to the junk heap,
+was puffing at the side of the low sanded station platform. The rough
+cottonwood box was already in the baggage car. How himself had assisted
+in putting it there, had previously settled for its transportation.
+Likewise he had bought the girl's ticket, and checked her scanty
+baggage. The usual crowd of loafers was about the place, and his every
+action was observed with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the
+spectators followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels
+for his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the
+vanquished--and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing upon
+the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop sounded; and
+when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was repeated intrepidly
+near at hand. They put themselves elaborately in his way, to move at his
+approach with grunts of guttural protestation. Already, even here on the
+frontier, the Sioux and his kind were becoming a novelty. Verily they
+were rare sportsmen, those mimicking loafers; and for Indians it was
+ever the open season. All about sounded the popping of their artillery;
+to be, when exhausted, as often reloaded and fired again.
+
+But through it all, apparently unseeing, unconscious, the man had gone
+about his business. Now as he left the ticket window and approached the
+single coach, it was nearly starting time. The girl had already entered
+and sat motionless in her seat watching him through the dusty window
+glass. Craig, his feet wide apart, stood on the platform smoking a last
+cigarette. He shrugged in silence as the other passed him and mounted
+the steps.
+
+Save for the girl, the coach was empty; but, destitute of courtesy, the
+spectators without stared with redoubled interest. Without a word the
+man handed over the ticket and checks. Still in silence he slipped a
+roll of bills into her passive hand. Until that moment the girl had not
+thought of money; but even now as she accepted it, there never occurred
+the wonder from whence it had come. Had she known how those few dollars
+had been stored up, bit by bit, month by month--But she did not know.
+Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless, was
+Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on the
+threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was entering,
+she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was merely passive,
+trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down from the prairie
+milkweed plant, she was to be the sport of every breath of wind that
+blew. And already that wind was blowing. She had watched the scene on
+the platform, had understood the intent of the mimicry, had seen the
+winks and nudges, had heard the mocking war whoop. All this she had
+seen, all this had been stored away in her consciousness to recur again
+and again in the future. Even now her cheeks had burned at the
+knowledge, and at last she had watched the man's coming with a feeling
+of repression she had never known before, whose significance she did not
+try to analyse, did not in the least understand. She did not thank him
+for the money. To do so never occurred to her. It was the moment for
+parting, but she did not throw her arms about his neck in abandon, as
+she would have done a week before. Something, she knew not what,
+prevented. She merely sat there, repressed, passive, waiting. A moment,
+by her side, the Indian paused. He did not speak, he did not move. He
+merely looked at her; and in his dark eyes there was mirrored a
+reflection of the look there had been in the eyes of the wild thing he
+had stalked and captured that day alone on the prairie. But the girl was
+not looking at him, did not see. A moment he stood so, unconsciously as
+so many, many times before, in pose; then deliberately, gently, ignoring
+the row of curious observant eyes, he took her hand and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said low. "Come back as soon as you can; and don't
+worry. Everything will come right." Gently as he had lifted the hand, he
+released it. A smile--who but he could have smiled at that
+moment?--played for an instant over his face. Then, almost before the
+girl realised the fact, before the repressive something that held her in
+its grip gave release, he was gone.
+
+As he left the coach, Craig, who was waiting, started without a word or
+a hint of recognition to enter. His foot was already on the step, when
+he felt a hand upon his arm; a hand with a grip whose meaning there was
+no misinterpreting. Against his will he drew back. Against his will he
+met the other, face to face, eye to eye. For what seemed to him minutes,
+but which in reality was only a second, they stood so. Not a word was
+spoken, of warning or of commonplace. There was no polite farce for the
+benefit of the spectators. The Indian merely looked at him; but as once
+before, alone under the stars, that look was to remain burned on the
+white man's memory until he went to his grave.
+
+"A'board," bawled the conductor, and as though worked by the same wire,
+the engineer's waiting head disappeared within the cab window.
+
+Side by side, Clayton Craig and Elizabeth Landor sat watching the
+weather-stained station and the curious assembled group, as apparently
+they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the alien figure of an
+Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless after them; and by his side,
+in baiting pantomime, one gawky urchin engaged in the labour of scalping
+a mate. The last sound that reached their ears was the ironic note of a
+war whoop repeated again and again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the girl had
+left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the bare lot
+adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith, the twelfth since
+How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny railway terminus. The one train
+from the East was due at 8:10 of the morning. It was now eight o'clock.
+Within the shambling, ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior
+and its wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and
+freshly dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the
+single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed according
+to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey, recently oiled and
+tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn up conveniently to the
+door. In a tiny room, designated the study, of the Methodist parsonage,
+on the straggling outskirts of the town, the only minister the
+settlement boasted sat staring at the unpapered wall opposite. He was a
+mild-featured young man of the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from
+a school of theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the
+frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared marriage
+licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time to time he
+glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to the tiny
+fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and frowned
+unconsciously.
+
+At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the arrival or
+departure of a train were congregated. In some way suggestions of the
+unusual had passed about, and this day their number was greatly
+augmented. Just what they anticipated they did not know; they did not
+care. Restless, athirst for excitement, they had dumbly responded to the
+influence in the air and come. In the foreground, where a solitary
+Indian stood motionless, waiting, there was being repeated the same
+puerile pantomime and horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals,
+from the rear, sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as
+that afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar
+even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily into the
+sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and lighter, became
+denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy, the humorists on the
+platform redoubled their efforts. The instinct of anticipation, of
+Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that had brought them there, urged them
+on. Not one throat but many underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection.
+A half dozen voices caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to
+throat. Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing
+became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before, who had
+come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd pressed closer and
+closer about the alien, the centre of attraction. When he moved farther
+along the platform to avoid them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the
+innate racial hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air
+jostled him--and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no
+retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion redoubled,
+drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators in the rear began
+mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to see. Within the station
+itself the shirt-sleeved agent surreptitiously locked the door to the
+ticket-room and sprung the combination of the safe. Beginning
+harmlessly, the incident was taking on a sinister aspect, and he had
+lived too long in this semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning
+to his place of observation at the window, he was just in time to see a
+decayed turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with
+enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear. Simultaneously, with
+a roar and a puff of displaced air, the light train drew into the
+station, on time.
+
+Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move twice
+farther away along the platform, he had not stirred. Unbelievable as it
+may seem, even when the missile had struck him, though it had left a
+great red welt, he gave no sign of feeling. For a space following the
+arrival of the train there was a lull, and in it, as though nothing had
+happened, he approached the single coach and stood waiting.
+
+It was the last of the week and travel was very light.
+
+A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip descended
+first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared with speed. A
+big rancher with great curling moustaches and a vest open save at the
+bottom button followed. He likewise took stock of the surroundings, and
+discreetly withdrew. Following him there was a pause; then of a sudden
+onto the platform, fair into view of the crowd, appeared one for whom
+apparently they had been looking, one who on the instant caused the
+confusion, temporarily stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a
+dainty brown girl with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth
+Landor returned alone!
+
+"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the refound voice
+of the expectant crowd.
+
+"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had introduced the
+jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her; we don't mind."
+
+A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far up the
+single street, and that brought curious faces to a half score of doors.
+
+"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!"
+
+Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had appeared. Her
+great eyes opened wider than before, her face shaded paler momentarily,
+the soft oval chin trembled. Another minute, another second even.
+
+"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll take
+care of you."
+
+It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure curiosity the
+crowd went silent, listening--silent until he was silent; then with the
+lack of originality ever manifest in a mob, they caught up his words
+themselves.
+
+"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't keep him
+waiting."
+
+But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that moment, she
+could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the chin had at first
+presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but she was beyond the reach
+of tears now. The complete meaning of the scene had come to her at last,
+the realisation of personal menace; and a fear such as she had never
+before known, gripped her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word;
+but her muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old
+telescope satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes,
+wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now rapidly
+accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.
+
+"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't stand there,
+come."
+
+At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly, with
+trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then of a sudden
+she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted defensively. But she was
+not quick enough, had seen too late; and that instant came the
+_denouement._ A second turnip, decayed like its predecessor, aimed
+likewise unerringly, caught her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke
+into fragments that fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain
+after a thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down
+her face.
+
+Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still prairie about
+them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had themselves wittingly or
+unwittingly done. Save one, not a human being stirred. That one, no need
+to tell whom, transformed visibly; transformed as they had never seen a
+human being alter before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself
+on the platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from
+sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically. In the
+stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear distinctly. For
+an instant after he had reached her the Indian stood so, his left arm
+about her, his back toward them. He did not say a word, he did not move.
+For the first time in his life he dared not. He did not see red that
+moment, this man; he saw black--black as prairie loam. Every savage
+instinct in his brain was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his
+free hand was clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind
+his right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone, it
+was nothing, he could forgive; but now--now--He stared away from them,
+stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky; but, listening, they,
+who almost with fascination watched, could hear beneath the catch of the
+girl's sobs the sound of his breathing.
+
+Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second or a
+minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell. What they
+did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them. All their lives
+they had seen passion, seen it in every phase, seen it until it was
+commonplace. It was in the very air of the frontier, to be expected,
+life of the life; but as this man shifted they saw a kind of which they
+had never dreamed. For How Landor was master of himself again, master,
+as well--they knew it, every man and youth who saw,--of them. For
+another indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them;
+looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face within the
+surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a drunken cowman, had
+seen that identical look. Now not one but a score saw it, felt a
+terrible ice-cold menace creep from his brain into their brains. Even
+yet he did not speak, did not make a sound; nor did they. Explain it as
+you will, he did this thing. Another thing he did as well; and that was
+the end. Slowly, deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out
+his hand. Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes
+were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but she had
+grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully calm--almost as much so
+as the man. Deliberately as he had stepped down into the spectators'
+midst, the Indian took the old telescope from the girl's hand and, she
+following by his side, moved a step forward. He did not touch her again
+nor did she him. They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up
+the single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were
+alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed;
+through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by magic
+closed behind them, until they were within a solid human square. But of
+all the assembled spectators that day, an aggregation irresponsible,
+unchivalrous as no other rabble on earth--a mob of the frontier,--not
+one spoke to challenge their action, not one attempted to bar their way.
+The complete length of the platform they went so, turned the corner by
+the station--and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view, hid
+by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl weakened.
+Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it fast.
+
+"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this with you and
+me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"
+
+But the man said never a word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire crackled
+cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room where the same two
+people sat alone. Already the world had taken on a different aspect. Not
+that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten that recent incident at the depot.
+She would never forget it. It had merely passed into temporary
+abeyance, taken its proper place in the eternal scheme of things.
+Another consideration, paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded
+it from the stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent
+far longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that at
+last prompted speech.
+
+"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried suddenly.
+
+"How did _you_ know I would be at the train to meet you?" echoed a
+voice.
+
+The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.
+
+"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow when you
+wrote as if I--I--" A swiftly gathered shower called a halt. Tear drops,
+ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell me," she completed.
+
+The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic life, so there
+was little to record of the death of Mary Landor. "It was best that you
+were away," he ended. "It was best for her that she went when she did."
+
+"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious query.
+"You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"
+
+"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."
+
+A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something more.
+
+"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would--go while I was
+away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me away on
+purpose."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How. I want to know."
+
+"I thought so, Bess," simply.
+
+For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new understanding
+of this solitary human stole over her, an appreciation that drowned the
+sadness of a moment ago. "How you must care for me," she voiced almost
+unconsciously. "How you must care for me!"
+
+She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again a silence
+fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she was thinking.
+Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were passively waiting. At the
+parsonage the young minister still sat scowling in his study. No time
+had been set for the visit he expected. There was no apparent reason why
+he should not have gone about his work; but for some reason he could
+not. Angry with himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket
+and, placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked
+over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.
+
+Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl shifted, dropped
+to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged slowly red.
+
+"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me to-day that
+I would come alone?"
+
+The Indian showed no surprise.
+
+"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."
+
+"Why, How?" The question was just audible.
+
+"Because I trusted you, Bess."
+
+Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes glanced
+up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance fell. A longer
+pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not have spoken if she
+would. A great preventing lump was in her throat, an obstacle that
+precluded speech. Many things had happened in the short time since she
+had last been with this man, some things of which she was not proud; and
+beside such a trust as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition
+upon her part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise
+without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The memory of
+that draught was with her now. Under its influence she spoke.
+
+"You are better than I am, How," she said.
+
+If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He did not
+even look at her. Time was passing, time which should have found them
+upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It was his day, his moment,
+his by right; but no one looking at him would have doubted that he
+himself would never first suggest the fact. Conditions had changed very
+rapidly in the recent past, altered until, from his view-point, it was
+impossible for him to make the move toward the old relation, to even
+intimate its desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In
+the fulness of time he was rewarded.
+
+"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed voice, "will
+you do me a favour?"
+
+"What is it, Bess?"
+
+The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the recall
+had come, and for the first time he was looking at her steadily.
+
+"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.
+
+"I promise."
+
+Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she wished to
+say.
+
+"You won't be--offended or angry, How?"
+
+"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me angry."
+
+"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you humour
+me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married to-day you'll
+be dressed--well, not the way you usually dress." Her colour came and
+went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed like--You understand, How."
+
+Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he checked
+himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the immaterial, went, as
+ever, straight to fundamentals without preface or delay. Scarce one
+human in a generation would have held aloof at that moment. It was his,
+his by every right; but even yet he would not take it, not until--.
+
+"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to
+answer me--as you would answer your mother were she alive." Once again,
+unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms across his breast, his great
+shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr. Landor's will. He has left you
+nearly everything. You are rich, Bess; I won't tell you how rich because
+you wouldn't understand. You are young and can live any life you wish.
+You know what marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You
+know what others, people of your own race, think when you are with me.
+They have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all
+this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish to come?
+Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer. Don't do it, or
+we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as you know I love you,
+whether you have thought of all this and still wish to marry me. Tell
+me." He was silent. Once again it was a climax, and once again came
+oblivion of passing time. For minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide
+open eyes, the girl made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision
+made, not as before in ignorance of what that decision meant.
+Deliberately, with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight
+of future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.
+
+"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I wish to
+marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's no one in the
+world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry you to-day, How."
+
+Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until then, he
+accepted his reward.
+
+"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise. "Bess!" That
+was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled with
+portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was gathered; only
+now it was not at the station, but at a place of far more sinister
+import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope" saloon. Again in
+personnel it was different, notably different from that of the first
+occasion. The same irresponsibles were there, as ever they are present
+at times of storm; but added to the aggregation now, outnumbering them,
+were others ordinarily responsible, men typical in every way of the time
+and place. A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
+gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had
+brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last, these
+dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously. Rumour,
+inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story
+buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to
+haunt the station at the time of the incoming train. The incident of the
+morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had
+followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become
+certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the
+point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its
+place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the
+girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street
+through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
+prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the
+ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet
+well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as
+on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet
+call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous
+familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an
+instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace. Not once did
+he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his
+side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when
+he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor
+realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as
+surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise--and
+that soon, very, very soon.
+
+Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever
+garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously
+grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and
+the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable
+unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying
+dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not
+the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the
+alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they
+went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them,
+at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and
+noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope
+saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
+William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where
+the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in
+sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to
+the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed--for they were
+in the residence section now--had its pair or multiple pairs peering out
+through the slats of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a
+performance, at the side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had
+spread; like turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their
+shells; yet everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to
+take a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the pedestrians
+were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding across the lawn to
+pause at a safe distance and growl a menace; and again the all-noting
+Indian had observed the cause of the unwonted bravery, had heard the low
+voice from the kitchen that had urged the beast on.
+
+Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm approached.
+Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the girl not been
+living in the future instead of the present, she would have recognised
+its coming. For the pursuers were gaining rapidly now. They had crossed
+onto the same street, the principal residence thoroughfare, and were
+coming as a crowd ever moves: swiftly, those in the rear exerting
+themselves to get to the fore, and so again. Far from silent by this
+time, the man ahead, the man who never deigned a backward glance, could
+hear their voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
+interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
+seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a commander, a
+directing spirit--and as well as he knew his own name he knew who that
+leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in the ways of the world was this
+man; but in the reading of his fellows he was a master.
+
+Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had congregated at
+the train, he had nevertheless observed them individual by individual;
+and in his own consciousness had known that the moment, his moment, had
+not come: for a leader, the leader, was not there. Again when the train
+had pulled in he had watched--and still the leader did not appear. But
+he was not deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had
+trusted in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that
+one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been right. For
+the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained on them so
+rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in those brief hours the
+Indian and the girl had been alone in the tiny room at the hotel had
+vitalised the lukewarm racial hostility into a thing of menace, was the
+same man whose life he had once saved, the same man about whose throat
+ere the identical night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig
+by name, one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master
+of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!
+
+Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was again
+looking out the single window. Time and time again he had tried to
+work--and as often failed. At last he had conformed to the inevitable
+and was merely waiting. The house was on the outskirts of the town and
+the window faced the open prairie; bare and rolling as far as the eye
+could reach. He was city bred, this mild-faced servant of God, and as
+yet the prairie country was a thing at which to marvel. He was looking
+out upon it now, absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and
+its silence--when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no longer
+silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by moment,
+penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an indistinct roar; rising,
+lowering, yet ever constant: a sound unlike any other on earth,
+distinctive as the silence preceding had been typical--the clamour of
+angry, menacing human voices _en masse._ Once, not long before, in a
+city street the listener had heard that identical sound; and
+recognition was instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike
+that had been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden
+appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate figure of
+the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment only, for life, in
+their midst. Swift as memory came that picture; and swift upon its
+heels, blotting it out, the present returned. Clifford Mitchell had not
+been among this people long; yet already he had caught the spirit of the
+place, and as he listened he knew full well what a similar gathering
+among them would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor;
+not a drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after
+moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first real
+terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind was there a
+doubt as to the destination of that oncoming multitude. Premonition had
+been too electric in the air that day for him to question its meaning.
+They were coming to him, to him, Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible
+menacing humans. It might be another for whom they had gathered; but he
+as well would share in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he
+was a party to the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from
+the time the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours
+of trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
+anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a certainty.
+Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring out on his
+forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand.
+Following came a purely physical weakness; and stumbling across the room
+he took the seat beside the desk. Unconsciously nervous, restless, his
+fingers fumbled with the pile of papers before him until they came to a
+certain one he had buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to
+do so he spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
+waiting.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
+cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by it
+alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He could hear
+them down the street at the other end of the block before the residence
+of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a certainty because part of those who
+came were on the sidewalk, and that was the only piece of cement in
+town. Again, by the same token, he knew when they passed the only other
+house in the block besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk
+there, and when the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps
+went suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in a
+moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own yard, the
+roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could even distinguish
+what they were saying now, could catch names, his own name.
+
+Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed before
+his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously faces, not a few
+but as many as could crowd into the space, appeared outside the panes,
+staring curiously in. Involuntarily he arose to draw the shade; and at
+that moment, interrupting, startlingly loud, there came a knock at his
+front door.
+
+Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood irresolute;
+and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of curious faces
+multiplied.
+
+The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but deliberately
+and with an insistence there was no misunderstanding.
+
+This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out the faces
+of the curious. The licence he had been absently holding was still in
+his hand; but he did not delay to put it down. There was something
+compelling in that knock; something that demanded instant obedience, and
+he obeyed. The living-room through which he passed on his way had two
+windows and, identical with that of his study, each was black with
+humanity; but he did not even glance at them. His legs trembled
+involuntarily and his throat was dry as though he had been speaking for
+hours; yet, nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly
+he turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto the
+street, looked out.
+
+While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the uncounted
+throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that October day, they
+remembered that moment, the moments that followed. As real life is ever
+stranger than fiction, so off the stage occur incidents more stirring
+than at the play. Standing there in the narrow doorway, white-faced,
+hesitant, awaiting a command, the minister himself exemplified the fact
+beyond question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had
+thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his consciousness for
+but one impression; and that was for the drama ready there before him.
+And small wonder, for, looking out, this was what he saw:
+
+An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass
+and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on
+fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In
+the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of
+his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was
+a solid zone of motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and
+untrimmed beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation
+and passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously aping
+their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments; all ages and
+conditions of the human frontier male were there--but in that zone not a
+single woman. Ranchers there were in corduroys and denims, cowboys in
+buckskin and flannel, gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of
+their kind, business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in
+anything and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the
+surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to bay.
+
+In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple of paces
+of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them, a rather small
+brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of ready-made clothes
+and a derby hat of the model of the year before, were nearest; so near
+that the door, which swung outward, all but touched them. The other, a
+well-built, smooth-faced Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands,
+was opposite. His dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat
+and patent leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his
+linen was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin.
+Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to prevent, as
+he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and left. One look told his
+story. He had been drinking, drinking for days; and, worst of all, he
+had been drinking this day, drinking in anticipation of this very
+moment, swallowing courage against the necessity of the now. All this
+the stage and its setting, upon which the white-faced minister raised
+the curtain. Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the
+real play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used
+front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not a
+sound marked the opening of the drama.
+
+A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could feel; then
+of a sudden it was broken--not by words, but by action. One step the
+white-skinned man took forward; a step toward the girl. A second step he
+advanced, and halted; for, preventing, the hand of the other man was
+upon his own.
+
+"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for
+congratulations yet. Stand back, please."
+
+Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a curse, a
+challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical terrified little
+cry the girl shrank back into the doorway itself. But none other, not
+even the minister, stirred.
+
+"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in the
+stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to stand back. I
+don't warn you, I merely request--but I shall not ask it again." Of a
+sudden the speaker's hand left the other's arm, dropped by his own side.
+"Stand back, please."
+
+Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working, passionate,
+menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky overhead. A moment they
+remained so while the breathless onlookers expected anything, while from
+the doorstep the minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then
+slowly, lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took
+silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still another, and
+was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first time he found voice.
+
+"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd have let
+you go if you'd given up the girl; but now--now--May God have mercy on
+your soul now, How Landor!"
+
+Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first meeting on
+the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It was the crisis,
+and as before an instinct which she did not understand, which she merely
+obeyed, brought her to the Indian's side; held her there motionless,
+passive, mysteriously unafraid. Her usually brown face was very pale and
+her eyes were unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably
+calm--calm as a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that
+solid zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or
+no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that motionless,
+dominant human by her side.
+
+A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear each other
+breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the minister's lips
+became audible; then came the end. Incredible after it was over was that
+_denouement_, inexplicable to a legion of old men, then among the boys,
+who witnessed it, to this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take
+place in this world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate
+other men it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first
+challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken. The
+only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life found
+voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that listening,
+expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion his arms folded
+across his chest.
+
+"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done my best to
+avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything at your hands,
+every insult which you could conceive, things which no white man would
+have permitted for a second; and so far without resentment. But I shall
+stand it no more. I'm one to a hundred; but that makes no difference.
+Bess Landor and I are to be married now and here; here before you all. I
+shall not talk to you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace;
+but as surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to
+me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I shall
+kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing." A
+moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms;
+then, still facing, he moved back a step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we
+are ready."
+
+And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred
+curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night
+itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married. The
+minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close
+before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the
+pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet it was done, and, save
+one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent
+stayed and listened to the end. That one, a tall, modish alien with a
+red, flushed face covered with a two-days' growth of bread, was likewise
+watching when it began. But when it was over he was not there; and not
+one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling,
+sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl
+of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of
+them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a
+straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling
+brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall,
+the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
+mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after
+three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though
+the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey
+flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the
+ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the
+ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at
+intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of
+the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried
+grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was
+no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny
+town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
+behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
+followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he
+was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce visible landmarks he
+alone distinguished was returning to his own, to the wild that lay in
+the distance beyond.
+
+Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went; and back of
+them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built terminus grew
+dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as completely as though it
+had never been. Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot
+against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three
+miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious
+motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind
+them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue
+surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there
+with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
+alone.
+
+As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From
+horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion
+of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or
+hate--and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she
+could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift
+her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of
+fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have
+been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so,
+did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch
+her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the
+last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something
+which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing
+taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of
+darkness. But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had
+awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they
+had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
+panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations,
+thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been
+hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare
+on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the
+experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events
+had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but _en masse_ the
+effect had been definite--startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may
+seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
+consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
+metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an
+adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place.
+Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself
+to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as
+existence itself, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back
+there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not,
+mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came
+to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing
+that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear
+again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
+taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the
+woman.
+
+Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the
+swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the
+personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into
+abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the
+hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent
+dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain
+itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by
+minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
+impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming
+bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it
+blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had
+done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that
+the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite
+loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a
+child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
+intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future
+endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied
+a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony
+would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature
+impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration
+intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
+distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled
+the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for
+worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was
+no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge
+overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born,
+became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first
+time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable.
+Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she
+sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her
+eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.
+
+"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"
+
+The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not
+yet completely returned.
+
+"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."
+
+"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a
+walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close.
+"I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."
+
+"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has
+never hurt it. It merely is."
+
+At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not
+move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change
+had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful
+as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The
+high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made
+a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious.
+Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a
+colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The
+black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
+of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of
+exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a
+standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour
+had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the
+truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was
+almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it
+should prove a myth.
+
+Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
+worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his
+God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus
+the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been
+eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his
+again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork,
+watched to the end; and then, observing that _finale_, laughed--and with
+the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
+understand, and I can't tell you."
+
+She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture
+she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly
+with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all
+right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She
+laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
+"It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
+someone else; even though that property were a girl."
+
+Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On
+his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that
+something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true
+to his instincts, waited.
+
+"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl,
+"even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
+anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to
+do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to
+you; not even as possibility."
+
+Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light
+came.
+
+"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never
+occur to me to do so."
+
+More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of
+Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the
+vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I
+hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than
+you; but now--now--" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap
+the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a
+sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"
+
+More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to
+fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled
+with the reins impotently.
+
+"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell
+me what it is, won't you?"
+
+"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?"
+Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is
+wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as
+you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone?
+Wrong: the preposterous idea!"
+
+She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to
+be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking
+at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible
+in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He
+did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the
+seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace
+of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
+the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab
+she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and
+contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood
+changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears.
+In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed
+close to his face.
+
+"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous
+and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the
+map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere
+to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.
+
+Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when,
+far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had
+seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short
+fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn,
+was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low
+sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the
+old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the
+tall frost-cured grass to feed.
+
+"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it
+face north, south, east, or west?"
+
+"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the
+morning."
+
+With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set
+about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box.
+The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More
+quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take
+shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself
+was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and
+swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed
+and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by
+legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed
+the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the
+frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task
+was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
+and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that
+light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole.
+Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless
+earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for
+her to descend.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a
+time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook
+supper and all. Come, girlie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel
+William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the
+same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light
+from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face.
+In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo
+robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was
+toward her. His eyes--eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature
+man--were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was
+living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was
+at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
+made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
+worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a
+devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they
+had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence
+at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had
+apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said,
+"we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day--" he had
+looked down as he had spoken--"to-day I felt somehow as though I could
+not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."
+
+Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time;
+and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing
+at her--and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return
+that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning,
+her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was
+afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
+gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths
+of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such
+confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it--and still she did
+not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save
+the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason
+therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to
+shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively,
+almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the
+way.
+
+"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly.
+"It makes me afraid of myself--afraid of dropping. Supposing I should
+fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you,
+could ever put the pieces together."
+
+"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be
+there to catch you."
+
+"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth,
+you know."
+
+"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in
+the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated,
+too, then."
+
+The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon,
+very carefully.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm
+perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very--bad at times."
+
+The other smiled; that was all.
+
+"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I
+don't like you and run away."
+
+"If you did you'd return very soon."
+
+"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"
+
+"I know so."
+
+"Why, How?"
+
+"Because you care for me."
+
+"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."
+
+"You'd find your mistake and come back."
+
+The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.
+
+"And when I did--come back--you'd forgive me, How?"
+
+"There'd be nothing to forgive."
+
+"It wouldn't be wrong--to leave you that way?"
+
+"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."
+
+"Not if I did anything, if I--ran away with another man?"
+
+The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.
+
+"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."
+
+"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no
+matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"
+
+For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the
+man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since
+they had been speaking his eyes dropped.
+
+"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have
+everything go on as before--I am human. I could not."
+
+A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of
+a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.
+
+"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say
+it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry
+a mortal, you know."
+
+The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
+
+"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the
+girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me
+anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run
+away? Would you forgive him, too?"
+
+Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
+
+"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't
+give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
+
+Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted
+in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood
+out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
+
+"Forgive _him_, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
+
+That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking
+at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no
+human being could have misread the answer. With the same little
+hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense
+hands went lax.
+
+"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day,
+you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things
+lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed
+before that I possessed them."
+
+Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man
+arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the
+girl to her feet.
+
+"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something
+you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now,
+girlie?"
+
+Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look
+up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long
+lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow
+of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.
+
+"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She
+smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for
+me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How,
+man; absolutely nothing."
+
+For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but,
+still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip
+that was a caress his hands dropped.
+
+"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel
+that you are unhappy, is all."
+
+"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so
+easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm
+very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't
+you?"
+
+"Forgive you!--Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast,
+the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as
+the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only
+realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you
+could only realise!"
+
+Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes,
+sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
+
+"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that
+you love me. Tell me! tell me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read
+and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth
+of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were
+left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only
+nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a
+tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once
+"unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the
+aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate
+not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had
+builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city
+bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
+could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my
+adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of
+greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned
+laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but
+incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other
+names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called
+How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred
+words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet
+was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
+who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William
+Landor of the Buffalo Butte.
+
+Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution.
+Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated
+manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that
+score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather
+case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a
+kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence
+he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
+Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took
+possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo
+Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place
+upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked
+to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
+
+Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a
+memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and
+wife--and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back
+from the land of nothingness they came--and again no one was at hand to
+welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that
+plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration
+of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced.
+Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay
+for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
+Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle
+against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew
+not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks
+she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The
+very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of
+change on the morrow. The next day it was the same--and the next. When
+they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
+time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her
+companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and
+the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day
+by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was
+struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way
+they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days
+that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the
+change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she
+lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
+precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it
+was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly.
+What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever
+know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man
+and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had
+there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another.
+That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could
+have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
+which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have
+questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed.
+The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown
+sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics.
+Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the
+first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had
+shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit
+the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this
+newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the
+prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
+returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.
+
+One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that
+was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax
+boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had
+intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch,
+and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its
+furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up
+in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable,
+in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that
+frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he
+led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he
+threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
+her.
+
+"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said,
+and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.
+
+A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and
+cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never
+before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl
+realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive
+human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his
+own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the
+knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms
+flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.
+
+"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"
+
+"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.
+
+For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening
+the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.
+The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision
+of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection
+of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch
+for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left
+astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark
+or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever
+considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and
+the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl
+stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into
+the darkness.
+
+"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone
+about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and
+that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.
+
+Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his
+manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a
+blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the
+obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by
+nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable.
+Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne
+what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;
+but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched
+linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant
+town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he
+polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly
+an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who
+knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from
+humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing
+at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in
+this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How
+Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it
+all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of
+a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered
+his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish
+undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes
+to observe, to pity perchance, then--But let it pass what he did then.
+It is another tale and extraneous.
+
+Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew
+shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No
+human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on
+pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had
+both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the
+execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a
+distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They
+accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further
+than that--they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
+whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on--whither no
+one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old
+Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had
+been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the
+olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor
+was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were
+gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did
+a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when
+by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His
+reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again,
+they were white and he was red--and between them the chasm yawned.
+
+Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It
+was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was
+one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and
+there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal
+white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights
+the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh
+layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more
+into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
+migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or
+at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the
+booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this
+impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God
+is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally
+manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite
+bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon
+beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of
+words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the
+girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
+at a time did not glance without.
+
+Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long
+before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its
+advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the
+range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound
+was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and
+frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page
+appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and _en masse_,
+wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of
+an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of
+prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies
+branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on
+the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were
+changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though
+soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
+white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day,
+as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they,
+and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky
+now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of
+his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed
+through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.
+After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
+in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks;
+flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not
+only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white
+blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long
+absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on
+motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their
+five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders,
+appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and
+grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last,
+the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable,
+with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
+whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
+following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in
+their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with
+their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's
+advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical
+as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie
+and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
+that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive,
+alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and
+re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it
+repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each
+to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung
+slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the
+stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no
+sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the
+newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable,
+did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway,
+he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his
+long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.
+
+The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in approved riding
+togs, halted likewise and returned the look; equally minutely, equally
+suspiciously. The horse he rode was one of a kind seldom seen on the
+ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider
+sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another
+life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance
+they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective
+"smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness
+of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general
+youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there,
+have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so, taking in every detail
+of the commonplace surroundings. Then, apparently satisfied, he
+dismounted and, tying the animal to the wheel of an old surrey drawn up
+in the yard, he approached the single entrance of the house and rapped.
+
+To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a
+frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a plain gingham gown.
+A moment they looked at each other; then the man's riding cap came off
+with a sweep and he held out his hand.
+
+"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was all. Then he
+looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see your husband," he
+exclaimed. "Is he at home?"
+
+The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched hand.
+
+"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that you had
+returned."
+
+A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his hand
+dropped; but his eyes held their place.
+
+"Yes. I only came yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to
+talk over with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"
+
+Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.
+
+"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man. "Aren't we to
+be even neighbourly?"
+
+"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be otherwise."
+
+"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming positive
+now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."
+
+"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately. "Answer?" She
+undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by courtesy, that after
+I've lived the last four months I'm still such a child as that? Do you
+really wish me to answer, Neighbour Craig?"
+
+For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins in his
+trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously. Then again he
+looked up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave an hour
+ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It was you I came
+to see. May I stay?"
+
+Again the girl ignored the question.
+
+"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you wouldn't have
+come, that nothing you know of could have made you come? Let's
+understand each other in the beginning. You admit this?"
+
+"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"
+
+The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the eyes;
+silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could not fathom,
+could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as deliberately she released
+him, looked away.
+
+"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."
+
+"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an obvious effort
+he checked himself "Thank you," he completed repressedly.
+
+This time the girl did not smile.
+
+"Don't you realise yet that sort of thing is useless?" she queried
+unemotionally.
+
+It was the man this time who was silent.
+
+"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so; but for
+once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us good, we're both
+living a lie; but at least we understand each other. Let's not waste
+energy in pretending--when there's no one to be deceived."
+
+Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too much a part
+of his life to shake off instantly. Then he laughed.
+
+"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway be it so.
+And now, that I'm to stay--" A meaning glance through the open door.
+"You were working, weren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch. You
+remember another morning once before, don't you--a morning before you
+grew up--"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."
+
+"I am quite deficient in imagination."
+
+"At least, though, dishes must be washed."
+
+"Not necessarily--this moment at least. They have waited before."
+
+"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or interfere."
+
+"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and enjoy the
+sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated? They're clean, I
+know. I scrubbed them this very morning myself."
+
+The man hesitated. Then he sat down.
+
+"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm going to
+return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit--the way you are now.
+You've changed terribly."
+
+"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely as I am
+this moment for--a lifetime."
+
+"For--how long, Bess?"
+
+"A lifetime, I think."
+
+"For four months, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps--it's all the same."
+
+"Since you did a foolish thing?"
+
+"I have done many such."
+
+"Since the last, I mean."
+
+"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened. "The last
+was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in the smallest
+possible manner since then."
+
+The man inspected his boots.
+
+"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at length.
+
+"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took a place
+beside him. "I had forgotten."
+
+They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real perplexity.
+
+"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."
+
+"I have not denied it," evenly.
+
+The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for anything;
+but he was finding his mistake.
+
+"This life you've--selected, is wearing on you," he added. "Frankly, I
+hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and happy."
+
+"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin mine. You're
+dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the signs."
+
+The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank criticism
+than to receive it.
+
+"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said intimately, "nor
+attempt to deny it. There is a reason, however."
+
+"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually is an
+explanation for everything we do in this life."
+
+"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."
+
+"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."
+
+"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."
+
+The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back against the
+lintel of the door. She looked very young that moment--and very old.
+
+"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my explanation for
+being--as I am. What is yours?"
+
+"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"
+
+"I wish to know the reason."
+
+"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be here."
+
+"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you have
+married?"
+
+"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life, and--the man you
+have named."
+
+"I don't believe I understand, Bess."
+
+"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence I
+possessed, for two weeks."
+
+"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.
+
+"I repeat you have the compliment--if you consider it such."
+
+Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all the time,
+the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them now, steadily,
+immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without, against the background
+of the dark interior his eyes shone as though they were afire.
+
+"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I have
+made you unhappy."
+
+"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a voice.
+
+"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"
+
+"No. I merely understand you--now. You're not sorry, because otherwise
+you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be here--even though my
+husband were away."
+
+Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly a novelty
+in his life to be treated as he was being treated this day. Ordinarily
+glib of speech, for some reason in the face of this newfound emotionless
+characterisation, he had nothing to say. It is difficult to appear what
+one is not in the blaze of one's own fireside. It was impossible under
+the scrutiny of this wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events
+gone by.
+
+"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've got other
+things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway." He looked at her
+openly, significantly. "Your own self, for instance."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I'm listening. Tell me everything."
+
+"You really fancy I will after--the past?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And why, please?"
+
+"You've already told me why."
+
+"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to be
+ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."
+
+"I'm still listening."
+
+"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"
+
+"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your husband?
+You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"
+
+The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively, impassively.
+Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an untrained eye, a black dot
+stood out above the horizon line. Her eyes paused upon it.
+
+"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Never, Bess."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"I swear."
+
+Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.
+
+"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still perjure
+yourself. To answer your question, I really don't know."
+
+"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll stand a lot
+from you, but there's a limit--"
+
+"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's not a soul
+but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be seated."
+
+From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily,
+resentfully--then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were
+mingled. He sat down.
+
+The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and on.
+
+"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my soul, if I
+have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make the exchange, no
+one who can give me light. Does that answer your question?"
+
+Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.
+
+"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"
+
+"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are why."
+
+No answer, only silence.
+
+"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl. "A little
+tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit? You're not plural,
+but nevertheless you personified that pack. You and the unknown things
+you represented were pressing me close. I was confused and afraid. I was
+a babe four months ago. I was not afraid of How, I had loved him--at
+least I thought I had, I'm sure of nothing now--and, as I say, I was
+afraid of you--then."
+
+"And now--"
+
+Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she looked
+away.
+
+"I'm not in the least afraid of you now--or of anything."
+
+"Not even of your husband?"
+
+"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."
+
+Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.
+
+"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I made a
+mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am afraid of
+something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are of death, of this
+infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip deep, unconsciously. "I
+sometimes think the old fear of everything were preferable, were the
+lesser of the two evils."
+
+Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose skin under
+his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.
+
+"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think you've
+gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked away; but
+unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the landscape that
+spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you realise what a mess
+you've made of your life."
+
+The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.
+
+"Yes, I think I do," she said.
+
+"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a brute after
+all in attempting to prevent your doing as you did."
+
+"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't been a
+brute."
+
+Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.
+
+"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then, Bess? Cared
+for me myself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that I frightened you back here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.
+
+"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it now?"
+
+The girl looked away in silence.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"
+
+"I can't tell you. I don't know."
+
+"Don't know?"
+
+"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days--anything except
+that I'm afraid."
+
+"Of the future?"
+
+"Yes--and of myself."
+
+For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said nothing. A
+long silence fell between them. It was the girl herself who broke it.
+
+"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and the voice
+was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with Uncle Landor."
+
+"Was I to blame, Bess?"
+
+"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."
+
+"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."
+
+The girl said nothing.
+
+"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can restore
+the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making you unhappy?"
+
+"Yes. I admit it."
+
+The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.
+
+"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.
+
+"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't. You're too
+selfish."
+
+"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.
+
+"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.
+
+The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.
+
+"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively maddening!"
+
+"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be ourselves
+to-day. I merely told you things as they are."
+
+Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in silence. One of
+his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay in his lap. Against
+his will now and then a muscle contracted nervously; and of a sudden he
+thrust the telltale member deep into his trousers pocket.
+
+"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't go on
+this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Haven't you ever thought of it?"
+
+"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else--for an age."
+
+"And you've decided nothing?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing."
+
+Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his voice
+trembled.
+
+"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.
+
+"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By what right
+should you be permitted to decide?"
+
+The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His eyes were
+steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that he would win,
+that the moment was his moment.
+
+"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said simply.
+
+"Love me, after what you have done?"
+
+"Yes. I have been mad--and done mad things. But I've discovered my
+fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you so--and to make amends."
+
+Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look; but the
+man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure that he voiced a
+challenge.
+
+"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you ran away,
+in spite of the fact that you are married, you love me!"
+
+Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her lips
+parted, but she said no word.
+
+"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't--because it is true."
+
+A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second time that day
+Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise. While yet he was
+master of the situation, while yet the time was his, he arose.
+
+"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He looked at her
+deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say, for I've told you
+that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember this: If I've stolen
+your happiness, I'll give it all back. As God is my witness, I'll give
+it all back with interest." Swiftly, before she could answer, he turned
+away and strode toward the impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he
+undid the tie strap and mounted. Without another word, or a backward
+glance, he rode away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the
+damp spring earth.
+
+Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not move. She
+did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at the C-C ranch
+house, until the buildings hid the owner from view, did her eyes leave
+him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she looked away over the
+prairie, away where the last time she had glanced a tiny black dot stood
+out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not
+find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not.
+Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the
+unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes.
+With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable
+doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening, and as he
+came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled his feet as one
+unconsciously will when very weary. He was wearing his ready-made
+clothes and starched collar; but the trousers were deplorably baggy at
+the knees from much riding, and his linen and polished shoes were soiled
+with the dust of the prairie.
+
+Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared. Serving
+it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the
+slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and
+throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek. A
+young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his
+hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the
+buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace
+just outside the ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly,
+continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year
+before. To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her
+companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned,
+unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a
+note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted
+colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every
+motion. Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing
+human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation:
+yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the
+unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never
+was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive,
+sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not remarkable.
+He had never done so except when she had not. When he looked at her
+there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that
+also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery in the depths of his
+steady black eyes. Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious
+was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the
+girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring
+night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes
+intimately close.
+
+Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south
+breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears;
+about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the
+subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing
+things. But not even then could the girl be still. Far too full of this
+day's revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be
+silent. The mood of her merely changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless,
+ceased. In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a
+definite question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed
+arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown,
+when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she did not alter her
+position.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "whether if one has made a mistake, it were better
+to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to
+admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay
+the penalty?" She paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do
+you think, How?"
+
+In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the lighter sky her
+face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a silhouette.
+
+"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he answered.
+
+"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from suffering?"
+
+"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."
+
+The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.
+
+"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the truth makes
+one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any difference, How?"
+
+The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with his steady
+eyes.
+
+"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he said. "I
+think this is one of them."
+
+Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.
+
+"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.
+
+"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with
+ourselves or not."
+
+"You think that, really?"
+
+"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."
+
+Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last,
+abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new
+query.
+
+"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
+
+"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no
+irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain.
+"How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at
+all?"
+
+Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words
+themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
+
+"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
+
+This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where
+the running might read.
+
+"Yes, I have an idea--and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness,
+has always been the first thing in my life."
+
+Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by
+step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she
+was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched
+her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he
+made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately
+from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was
+filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke
+no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not
+but have admired her child that night.
+
+One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had
+walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no
+hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.
+
+"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I
+haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She
+paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been
+watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become
+restless week by week. Last night,--you didn't notice, but I did,--I
+heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see
+what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and
+I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn.
+It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost
+as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but
+all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere
+away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing
+there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that
+second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he
+could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He
+didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he
+couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the
+chain stretched across his back--" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat
+up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she
+pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me
+you'll let him go!"
+
+Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.
+
+"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save Shaggy's
+life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out of her den and
+shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when I found him."
+
+"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't make any
+difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him here."
+
+Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with the
+argument.
+
+"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't live
+through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will shoot him on
+sight."
+
+"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the girl. "We
+all have to take our chances in this life."
+
+For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.
+
+"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill the first
+animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of that?"
+
+The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.
+
+"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I made him as
+he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to be; and if he's bad,
+God alone is to blame." Her glance returned, met the other fair. "I wish
+you'd let him go, How."
+
+The man made no answer.
+
+"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"
+
+"You really wish it, Bess?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a sudden he
+arose.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said.
+
+Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more, followed his
+lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But
+there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung
+from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the
+way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep,
+but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise
+there was no move. Look where one would within the building, there was
+no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the Indian led the way
+outside, made the circuit of the stable, paused at the south end where
+a chain hung loose from a peg driven into the wall. A moment he stood
+there, holding the light so the girl could see; then, impassive as
+before, he extinguished the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.
+
+They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke; then,
+detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.
+
+"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."
+
+They walked on so.
+
+"You wanted him to go?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.
+
+"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.
+
+For the second time there was no answer.
+
+"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.
+
+"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I thought
+I--understood."
+
+For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither
+stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the hand dropped.
+
+"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.
+
+Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his chest.
+That was all.
+
+The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.
+
+"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.
+
+"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.
+
+"No, Bess," repeated.
+
+"But still you're not coming?"
+
+"No."
+
+Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.
+
+"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She scarcely
+recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with me again?"
+
+"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that, Bess." A
+second halt. "Not until things between us are different, at least."
+
+"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped the casing
+of the door. "Oh, How! How!"
+
+No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a breath;
+just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl stood it, hoping
+against hope, praying for a miracle; then she could stand it no longer.
+Gropingly clutching at every object within reach, she made her way into
+the dark interior; flung herself full dressed onto the bed, her face
+buried desperately among the covers.
+
+All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth in front
+of the ranch house door; back and forth like an automaton, back and
+forth in a motion that seemed perpetual. Within the tiny low-ceiled
+room, in the fulness of time, the girl sobbed herself into a fitful
+sleep; but not once did the sentinel pause to rest, not once in those
+dragging hours before day did he relax. With the coming of the first
+trace of light he halted, and on silent moccasined feet stole within.
+But again he only remained for moments, and when he returned it was
+merely to stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before
+the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did everything, he
+rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into the darkness to the
+west.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague sense of
+depression and of impending evil. The door was open and the bright
+morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance stretched the open
+prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny brown island, her own
+dooryard, in the foreground. With dull listlessness, the girl propped
+herself up in bed and sat looking about her. Absently, aimlessly, her
+eyes passed from one familiar object to another. Without any definite
+conception of why or of where, she was conscious of an impression of
+change in the material world about her, a change that corresponded to
+the mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the
+sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering joy.
+Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message passed her by.
+Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a haunting memory of
+the past night and of what it had meant. As a traveller lost in this
+fog, she lay staring about, indecisive which way to move, idly waiting
+for light. Ordinarily action itself would have offered a solution of the
+problem, would have served at least as a diversion; but this morning she
+was strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no
+adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything more
+than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow higher and,
+lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her palm and lay with
+wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.
+
+Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The doorway faced
+south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had entered therein began
+moving to the left across the floor. Unconsciously, for the lack of
+anything better to do, she watched its advance. It fell upon a tiny
+shelf against the wall, littered with a collection of papers and
+magazines; and the reflected light from the white sheets glared in her
+eyes. It came to the supper table of the night before, the table she had
+not cleared, and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of
+her own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on;
+crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live thing,
+began climbing the wall beyond.
+
+Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched its
+advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its relentless
+stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny. Like a hostile
+alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in the tiny room for
+something definite, something it did not find. Fatuous as it may seem,
+the impression grew upon her, augmented until in its own turn it became
+a dominant influence. Her glance, heretofore absent, perfunctory, became
+intense. The glare was well above the floor by this time and climbing
+higher and higher. Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat
+up free in bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her
+fairly.
+
+The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light was
+mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from rough-fashioned wooden
+pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant wardrobe. At first glance
+there seemed to the girl nothing unusual revealed thereon, nothing
+significant; and, restlessly observant, the inspection advanced. Then,
+ere the mental picture could vanish, ere a new impression could take its
+place, in a flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came
+realisation complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute
+thereafter she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and
+wider, her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a
+minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of weariness
+and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place, and covered her
+face from sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+SACRIFICE
+
+A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the
+slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren
+dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition
+the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was
+perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long
+waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he
+had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully
+concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
+litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had
+grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the
+visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer
+present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had
+come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever
+rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.
+
+For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been
+invited to enter, yet he had entered--and the girl had spoken no word to
+prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a
+peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged,
+they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging
+intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the
+bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was
+present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids,
+whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour
+of putting the place to rights.
+
+"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that
+unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching.
+Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"
+
+The girl did not smile.
+
+"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were
+tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer--" She drew another
+chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.
+
+A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the
+whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had
+grown to assume in her presence took its place.
+
+"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm
+when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible
+offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
+
+"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of
+punishment?"
+
+The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the
+past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed
+plain.
+
+"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held
+me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
+
+"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that
+I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
+
+For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that
+the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to
+abandon at once.
+
+"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he
+objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all.
+Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
+
+"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to
+appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten
+immeasurably farther away from another."
+
+"Your husband you mean?"
+
+"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
+
+The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to
+each other not to know everything there is to know."
+
+"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The
+inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly--and she herself had
+chosen. "He's merely given me up."
+
+"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something
+else as well, something akin to exultation.
+
+"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
+
+"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
+
+Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old
+pride, broke forth.
+
+"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before
+this if he objected?" she flamed.
+
+"Bess!"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had
+died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean
+to."
+
+The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the
+last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon
+blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive,
+conscious conformity such as this--The thing was unbelievable,
+providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic
+moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a
+change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to
+permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he
+had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to
+avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not
+alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to
+himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not
+the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the
+girl--particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be
+gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He
+merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
+that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.
+
+"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"
+
+"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."
+
+"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any
+longer. It's intolerable for both of us."
+
+"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."
+
+Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had
+imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now
+that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He
+hardly knew how to begin.
+
+"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very
+dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided
+the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in
+keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any
+longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the
+responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that
+before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from
+this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad--at least leave for a
+time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we
+wish; but for the present--I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
+another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.
+
+"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we
+can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He
+cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've
+arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last
+week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses
+waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the
+ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before
+morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again,
+nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say,
+not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been
+enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
+the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at
+the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.
+Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.
+There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on
+her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows
+you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to
+live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess;
+happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"
+
+He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the
+dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat
+looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As
+she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.
+Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an
+evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden,
+within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
+instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than
+life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading,
+distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her
+ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn
+philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she
+had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full
+knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him
+so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
+wife--.
+
+The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face
+drew nearer.
+
+"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense.
+Will you go?"
+
+With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back
+until she was free.
+
+"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to
+think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes;
+but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must
+consent--"
+
+"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I
+can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you
+must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not
+insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"
+
+The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.
+
+"I can't now, as things are."
+
+"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"
+
+For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.
+
+The man came a step forward, and another.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"
+
+"I have told you," said a low voice.
+
+Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human
+being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move
+or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he
+commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily,
+irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."
+
+"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent
+effort to be free. "You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but
+not wholly. Please let me go."
+
+Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the
+moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to
+escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out
+of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.
+
+But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His
+back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in.
+Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out
+the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same
+all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the
+doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first
+woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might
+have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.
+
+"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten
+you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and
+not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could
+no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you
+go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're
+mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--"
+
+The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible
+muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the
+shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside
+them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the
+invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent
+poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent
+passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder
+in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count,
+the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical
+spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction
+had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure,
+there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense,
+desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.
+
+"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips
+and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I
+guess. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the
+two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his
+presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once
+more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful,
+he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More
+maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that
+passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot
+blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
+his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband,
+tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward
+menacingly.
+
+"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps,
+not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word
+his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost,
+lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"
+
+From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that
+instant the room became deathly still.
+
+A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then,
+white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so,
+motionless:--for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was
+speaking.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step
+the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the
+white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice,
+unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was
+even as before.
+
+"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said.
+"I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I
+expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may
+listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but
+now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a
+moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the
+old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they
+rested on the face of the girl.
+
+But for still another moment--he was as deliberate as nature herself,
+this man--he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more
+so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death.
+His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands,
+folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but
+look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath
+the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now,
+very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
+expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite
+in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in
+the low-pitched voice.
+
+"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a
+request to make--and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly,
+to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came
+because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had
+reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the
+folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned
+abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon
+for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to
+do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into
+it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the
+girl's recollection while memory lasted.
+
+"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on.
+"Things are as they are--and final. I don't judge you, I--understand.
+Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now
+I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At
+least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to
+tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he
+stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment,
+please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to
+say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.
+
+"I said I had a request to make. This is it--that you don't leave until
+you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have
+inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you
+will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned
+anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he
+halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise
+me this, Bess?" he asked.
+
+Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened
+through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent,
+and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever
+in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was
+no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A
+myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was
+gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed
+nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was
+expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.
+
+"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently.
+"I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall
+again."
+
+At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips
+were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.
+
+"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."
+
+Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality;
+but the girl did not break it, said no more--and forever the moment, her
+moment, vanished into the past.
+
+"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely
+different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room.
+"There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he
+explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."
+
+With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope
+satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly
+here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No
+one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence,
+except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the
+satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army
+greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap
+which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered
+in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
+there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small,
+and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood
+beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover
+and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes
+large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At
+last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and
+the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the
+last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from
+nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
+heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his
+burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out
+his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her
+very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but
+I don't, so I'll only say good-bye--and--I wish you happiness." Just a
+moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her
+hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.
+
+"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it--as you cared for me once.
+Don't make things any harder--make them impossible!" Desperately,
+without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door.
+Beside the entrance--for he was not watching these last minutes--stood
+the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted.
+Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant,
+wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did
+everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those
+words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
+grave.
+
+"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say.
+Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so,
+if you will. If you do not--" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace--"if
+you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not
+a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall
+know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times
+better, if you do as I say."
+
+Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then,
+similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there
+broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+REWARD
+
+The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch
+house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the
+supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The
+vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained
+likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
+powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried.
+Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking
+permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a
+convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the
+eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the
+house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking
+permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
+
+Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were
+eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one
+corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
+
+Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor,
+Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy
+queensware proceeded.
+
+"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his
+chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to,
+stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
+
+In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his
+work.
+
+Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete
+was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had
+filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on
+the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
+
+"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
+
+The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of
+cigars.
+
+"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
+
+Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter--for cigars were a rarity on
+the frontier--puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content.
+The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and
+washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a
+cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue,
+disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor
+introduced himself.
+
+"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the
+Centre."
+
+The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
+
+"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at
+last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now.
+You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up
+the two kids."
+
+It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
+
+"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you
+were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look
+reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other
+side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over
+here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
+
+The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he
+glanced up.
+
+"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and--" Hawkins
+laughed peculiarly--"made a fizzle of it."
+
+"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
+
+"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even
+heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with
+his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl
+went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud
+of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
+
+"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing
+the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they
+hit it off well together?"
+
+Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands
+fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
+
+"While the money lasted, yes."
+
+"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
+
+"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
+
+"And then--"
+
+"It's the old story."
+
+"They went to pieces?"
+
+"Craig left her--for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter
+and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he
+was supporting the other woman all the time."
+
+Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the
+cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the
+mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
+
+"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
+
+"Bess came back."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed
+by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes
+were blazing.
+
+"Yes, she was alone," he said.
+
+The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The
+blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
+
+"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
+
+"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday,
+just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
+
+The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
+
+"Back at the ranch--with the Indian?"
+
+Equally directly Manning returned the look.
+
+"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not
+there."
+
+"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
+
+Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
+
+"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came
+here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to
+tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
+
+Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the
+lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing.
+For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face
+incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
+
+"Know where he is? Of course I do--now." He leaned back in his chair.
+"To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here,
+or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
+
+He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
+
+"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last
+week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for
+me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We
+never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a
+sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the
+board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm
+with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a
+two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
+
+For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand
+on the chair arm loosened its grip.
+
+"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think
+we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two
+fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its
+mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the
+morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded
+things a bit on the way up."
+
+For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
+unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
+
+"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty
+miles, and there's plenty of time."
+
+Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old
+storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
+
+"Yes, there's plenty of time--after How Landor knows," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny
+dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a
+shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam.
+In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized
+pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little
+altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was
+very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near
+and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet,
+they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in
+flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
+been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was
+pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking
+mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho
+had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and
+grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were
+unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened,
+something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror
+they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this
+something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and
+invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the
+confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had
+been interrupted.
+
+Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late
+September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy
+brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish
+speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all
+the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as
+irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while
+time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within
+the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
+
+Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On
+soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing,
+he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than
+once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did
+not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within
+stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an
+Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that
+object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he
+peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
+instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its
+revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken
+prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely
+beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent
+human in their midst this autumn day.
+
+How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could
+have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last,
+interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great
+quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost
+before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had
+ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up
+beside the tent.
+
+Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched
+himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was
+waiting.
+
+They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat
+eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
+
+"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be
+enough around when I came."
+
+The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
+
+"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
+
+A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he
+dismounted.
+
+"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed
+abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before
+I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to
+dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind
+I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
+
+In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the
+flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
+
+Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew
+on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then,
+however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now
+at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was
+intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of
+a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old
+storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The
+message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
+begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with
+a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite
+care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man
+himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the
+sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the
+impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied,
+well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him
+at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a
+measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
+that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
+emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
+inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white
+he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an
+inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice,
+with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's
+sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence
+calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless
+savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken
+for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
+realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine
+punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal,
+with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that
+had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his
+interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances
+unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling
+suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a
+readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the
+dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came
+fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal--if the other wished;
+but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the
+decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit
+it afresh suggestively.
+
+"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not
+Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
+
+The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
+
+"I thought so," it said simply.
+
+Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight,
+the glow lit up his face.
+
+"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service--and
+I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
+
+Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless,
+smiling infinite.
+
+"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I
+should know."
+
+The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
+
+"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
+
+Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his
+heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved.
+Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe
+opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground--his
+long fingers locked across his knees.
+
+"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
+
+For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white
+man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit
+now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering
+outside the bowl onto his knee.
+
+"About a month ago"--the speaker cleared his throat raspingly--"on
+August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started
+from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It
+wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one
+was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp
+crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker.
+"It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
+
+Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
+
+"Go on, please," requested a voice.
+
+"Early yesterday morning"--again the narrator halted perforce, to clear
+his throat--"just before I left three men went through town on their way
+to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man
+who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water
+their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch
+house closing the bargain now."
+
+"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
+
+The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged
+when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted
+physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness
+and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set
+eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when
+telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was
+all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by
+request.
+
+"I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old
+formula.
+
+For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a
+match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the
+sound, came a question.
+
+"Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they
+looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the
+mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
+
+"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two
+days old."
+
+"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
+
+"Yes. Several weeks."
+
+"She returned alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to stay?"
+
+Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the
+inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the
+other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
+
+"Yes," answered Manning.
+
+"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
+
+"No, Craig had left her."
+
+Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither
+man noticed the change.
+
+"There was a reason?"
+
+"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
+
+The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as
+the sunlight without.
+
+"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
+
+"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
+
+"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had
+done? You mean to tell me this?"
+
+Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white
+man got to his feet, stood so silent.
+
+"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear
+against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
+
+"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
+
+"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the
+third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come.
+"There could be but one other way!"
+
+Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face
+opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the
+moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so
+was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big
+game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the
+expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the
+end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted,
+waiting, postponing the inevitable.
+
+"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
+repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
+
+To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow
+fell.
+
+"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to the east
+whither he had taken his way not even a dot now indicated his former
+presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon the wheels of the old road
+waggon had temporarily blazed a trail had returned normally erect.
+Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over the parched earth, the storm had
+gathered and broken; and passed on as though it had not been. All about
+smiled the sunshine; sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing,
+heard nothing. On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned,
+swam and splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal
+breeze of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
+song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had nature, the
+serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her
+customary course. Man alone it is who changes to conform with the
+passing mood. Man alone it was amid this primitive setting who had
+altered now.
+
+For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming. Instead, his
+every action was that of one with a definite purpose. Yet even then he
+did not hurry. At first he seemed merely to be going about the ordinary
+routine of his life. Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself
+a generous meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for
+the first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
+unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or even
+touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward the tent and
+disappeared inside.
+
+For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to place; and
+when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing indeed. In his arms
+were several articles of clothing rolled into a bulky bundle. Without a
+halt he made his way back to the place where he had eaten. The fire
+which he had builded had burned low ere this; and, standing there beside
+it, he scraped away the ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until
+the glowing embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had
+opened with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which
+it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a
+battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A moment the
+Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely; then gently as
+though they were a lost child he was returning to its mother's arms he
+laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool is slow to catch ablaze and
+for the moment they lay there black against the brown earth; then of a
+sudden, like the first lifting of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column
+of blue went trailing upward. Second by second it grew until with a
+muffled explosion the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood
+watching; now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned
+to the tent.
+
+This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with an armful
+of books--and something more. The fire was crackling merrily now, and
+volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for the first time he
+hesitated. There was still something to destroy, something which he had
+gathered in the old felt hat from off his own head; yet he hesitated.
+Greedy as a hungry animal deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept
+sending out spurts of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he
+delayed. Like the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into
+passive waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
+this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But this
+time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head glistening
+in the sunlight, he started away toward the now expectant broncho; and
+back of him the pathetic little gathering of useless trinkets, bearing
+indelibly the mark of a woman's handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with
+the ashes of the things which had gone before.
+
+Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking cayuse
+following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back; waiting
+impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a land where
+prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever leaves fire alive
+when out of his sight; and to this instinct the Indian was true. Minute
+after minute he waited; until the flame vanished and in its stead there
+lay a mass of blazing coals. Then with a practical hand he banked the
+whole with a layer of earth until, look where one would, not a dot of
+red was visible. The act was the last, the culmination of preparation.
+At its end, with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his
+head high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in anticipation. Well
+he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was there of a
+second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost ere the taking of
+the single leap that put the rider in his seat the little beast was
+away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing deep of the prairie air, the
+patter of his tiny hoofs a continuous song upon the close-cropped sod.
+As two human beings living side by side grow to know each other, so this
+dumb menial had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to
+the dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He did
+so now; and as time passed and the miles flowed monotonously beneath his
+galloping feet the relentless determination of the man himself was
+repeated in that undeviating pace.
+
+Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the dragging hours of
+the September afternoon it continued. Many a time before the little
+beast had followed the trail from sun to sun. As well as the rider knew
+his own endurance he knew the possibilities of his mount, knew that now
+he would not fail. He did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he
+check it. He spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual
+drouth of fall, and as time passed on the dust the pony raised collected
+upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he noticed
+it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the broncho grew
+darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on the diminutive
+beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was unconscious. Silent
+as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his place; his lithe body
+conforming involuntarily to the motion, to the play of muscles beneath
+his legs; yet as unconsciously as one breathes in sleep. Not until the
+sun was red in the west, until of its own accord the broncho had drawn
+up at the first bit of water they had met on the way--a shallow marshy
+pond--did he move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the
+man washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition,
+shook the dust from his clothing.
+
+For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by side the man
+and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved and ever southward.
+Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but the sky was clear as it
+had been during the day, and the man needed no guide but the stars to
+show him the way. As he moved the hand of the Indian remained on the
+broncho's neck; and bit by bit as the time passed he felt the moist hair
+grow stiff and dry. Then, and not until then, came the final move, the
+beginning of the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion,
+apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and again
+as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly, that instant
+the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent as before, a
+ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into the night and the
+solitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch had
+changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer had driven
+about the place. One by one the cowboys had given testimony of the
+fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At first resignedly
+complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had grown cumulatively
+impatient at the inevitably dragging inventory. Nothing but necessity
+absolute in the shape of an imminent foreclosure had brought him back to
+this land at all. Delay had followed delay until at last immediate
+action was imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in
+a fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since they
+had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had been upon him.
+The team that had brought them out could not move fast enough. The
+preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had been, nevertheless
+dragged interminably. Strive as he might to combat the impression, to
+ignore it, this land had of a sudden become to him a land of terror.
+Every object which met his eye called forth a recollection. Every minute
+that passed whispered a menace. In a measure it had been so a half year
+ago ere he had tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had
+occurred in that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented
+immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a minute
+since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had he been
+without a revolver at hand. All the previous night, despite the
+grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had bunked, a lamp had
+burned beside the bed; yet even then he could not sleep. Whether or no
+he felt contrition for the past, this man, he could not have told, he
+never paused to consider. All he knew was that he had a deathly fear of
+this silent waste and of a certain human who dwelt somewhere therein.
+Repugnant as consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing
+compared with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual
+experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of money,
+badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence. Now that he
+was here he must needs see the transaction through; he could not well do
+otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a close and the necessity of
+tarrying a second night became assured, the premonition of retribution,
+that had before lowered merely as a possibility, loomed into the
+proportions of certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink;
+not at stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but
+continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged glances
+of understanding.
+
+To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal was
+complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with tobacco smoke, by
+the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene lamp Craig had accomplished
+a sprawling signature and received in return a check on a Chicago bank.
+It was already late, and very soon the new owner, with a significant
+look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt
+"Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a thinly
+veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself, and Craig and
+his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes thereafter the two
+men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite his muddled brain, the
+former realised that the big Irishman was observing him with a
+concentration that was significant. Ever short of temper, the man's
+nerves were stretched to the jangling point this night, and the look
+irritated him. Responsive, he scowled prodigiously.
+
+"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"
+
+No answer; only, if possible, the look became more analytic than before.
+
+"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous staring that
+way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't you like my selling
+and putting you out of a job?"
+
+"No, it's not that," refuted the Hibernian. "There are plenty of other
+places I can get. I could stay right here for that matter if I wanted
+to--but I don't. I wouldn't live in this house any longer if my pay were
+doubled." As he spoke he had looked away. Now of a sudden his glance
+returned. "I meant to quit anyway, whether you sold or not."
+
+"Why so?" queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was repeated. "You
+seemed glad enough to come."
+
+"I was--then," shortly.
+
+"And why not now? Talk up, if you've any grievance. Don't sit there like
+a chimpanzee, hugging it."
+
+"You know why well enough," ignored the other. He passed a knotty hand
+through his shock of red whiskers absently. "I've expected the devil or
+worse here every night these last weeks."
+
+Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.
+
+"God," he satirised, "who'd ever imagined you were the superstitious
+sort! Weren't you ever in a place where anyone died before?"
+
+"I never was where a woman and her child were murdered," deliberately.
+
+Quick as thought Craig's red face whitened.
+
+"Damn you, O'Reilly," he challenged, "you're free with your tongue." He
+checked himself. "I don't wish to quarrel with you to-night, though," he
+conciliated.
+
+"Nor I with you," returned the other impassively. "I was merely telling
+you the truth. Besides, it's none of my affair; and even if it were, I'm
+thinking you'll pay for it dear enough before you're through."
+
+Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude
+supercilious.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean, O'Reilly? You keep suggesting things, but
+that is all. Talk plain if you know anything."
+
+"I don't know anything," impassively; "unless it is that I wouldn't be
+in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you've made out of this
+cursed business."
+
+Bit by bit Craig's face whitened. If anything the air of conciliation
+augmented.
+
+"You think circumstances weren't to blame?" he queried. "That, in other
+words, I've brought things about as they are deliberately?"
+
+"I don't think anything. I know what you've done--and what you've got to
+answer for."
+
+Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about him.
+
+The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he arose
+unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a jerk.
+
+"You're beastly hard on me," he commented, "but let that pass. It's
+probably the last time we'll ever see each other, and we may as well
+part friends." He was back in his place again with the flask before him,
+and with a propitiatory motion he extended the liquor toward the other
+man. "Come, let's forget it," he insinuated. "Have a drink with me."
+
+"Not a drop."
+
+"Not if I requested it?"
+
+"Not if you got down on your knees and begged."
+
+"All right." The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little laugh. "I'll
+have to spoil it all myself, then."
+
+The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down swallow
+after swallow. The hand of the drinker trembled uncontrollably, and a
+tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven chin to the starched linen
+beneath.
+
+"If you'll take a word of advice," commented the spectator at last,
+"you'll cut that--for the time being at least." He hesitated; then went
+on reluctantly. "I've been in your pay and I'll try to be square with
+you. If you've got an atom of presentiment you'll realise that this is
+no place for you to get into the shape you're getting." Again he halted,
+and again with an effort he gave the warning direct. "If I were you I
+wouldn't be at this ranch a second longer than it took me to leave; not
+as long as I had a broncho or a leg or a crutch to go on."
+
+Slowly and more slowly came the words. Then followed silence, with the
+two men staring each other face to face. Breaking it, the overseer
+arose.
+
+"I've said more than I intended already," he added, "and now I wash my
+hands of you. Do as you please. I'm going to bed."
+
+Preventing, of a sudden sobered, Craig was likewise on his feet.
+
+"In common decency, even if you're no friend of mine, don't go,
+O'Reilly," he pleaded. He had no thought of superiority now, no thought
+of malice; only of companionship and of protection. "I know what you
+mean. I'm no fool, and what you suggest is exactly what's been driving
+me insane these last two days. I'm going in the morning, as soon as it's
+daylight; the team is all ordered; but to-night, now--" instinctively he
+glanced at the window where recollection pictured the darkness
+without--"I haven't nerve to face it now. I'd go plumb mad out there
+alone."
+
+The Irishman shrugged in silence and attempted to pass.
+
+"Please don't go," repeated Craig swiftly. "I know I'm acting like a
+child, but this cursed country's to blame. Stay with me this last night.
+I couldn't sleep, and it's madness to be alone. See me through this and
+I swear you'll not regret it. I swear it!"
+
+Just for a second O'Reilly paused; then of a sudden his face flamed red
+through his untrimmed beard.
+
+"To hell with your money!" he blazed. "I wouldn't lift my finger for you
+if How Landor were to come this second." He checked himself and took a
+step forward meaningly. "Besides, I couldn't help you any if I would.
+God himself couldn't protect you now unless He performed a miracle. Out
+of my way. I tell you I'm done with you."
+
+Craig had not stirred. He did not now; and of a sudden the overseer
+turned to pass around. As he did so for the first time he faced the
+single window that looked north toward the second ranch house: the house
+which How Landor had builded to receive his bride. The curtain was still
+down, but to the Irishman's quick eye there rested upon it now a dull
+glow that was not a reflection of the light within. A second after he
+noticed the man halted, looking at it, speculating as to its meaning.
+Then of a sudden he realised; and in two steps he was across the room
+and simultaneously the obscuring shade shot up with a crash. Instantly
+following, startlingly unexpected, the red glow without sprang through
+the glass and filled the room.
+
+"Fire!" announced the observer involuntarily to the sleepers above. "The
+other ranch house is afire!" Then, as they were slow in awakening, the
+cry was repeated more loudly: "Fire! Fire!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A conflagration is the universal contagion, the one excitement that
+never palls. Forth into the night, forgetful of his companion, forgetful
+of all save the interest of the moment, rushed O'Reilly. Half dressed,
+hatless, working with buttons as they went, Parker, the new owner, and
+Mead, the lawyer, descended the rickety stairs like an avalanche and
+without pausing to more than look followed running in his wake. The
+unused ranch house was dry as cardboard and was burning fiercely. Though
+there was still no moon and the overseer had several minutes the start,
+against the light they could see his running figure distinctly. Standing
+in the living-room as they rushed through, white faced, hesitant, was
+Clayton Craig; but though he had spoken to them--they both recalled that
+fact afterward--neither had paused to listen or to answer. That he would
+not follow never occurred to them until minutes thereafter. Not until,
+panting, struggling for breath after the unusual effort, they had
+covered the intervening mile, and the heat of the already diminishing
+fire was on their faces, did they think of him at all. Even then it was
+not the first thought which occurred; for the moment they arrived
+O'Reilly, who was waiting, turned, facing them excitedly.
+
+"Do you see that?" he queried, pointing to a black band that surrounded
+the building in a complete circle.
+
+Parker nodded understandingly; but Mead, who was city bred, looked
+mystified. "What is it?" he returned.
+
+"A firebreak," explained the Irishman. "Someone didn't want the blaze to
+spread and scattered earth clear around the place, with a spade."
+Leaning over he picked up a clod and thumbed it significantly. "It
+hasn't been done a half hour. The dirt isn't even dry."
+
+Brief as the time had been, already the frail walls were settling to
+embers. There was nothing to do; and standing there the three men looked
+understandingly into each other's faces. The same thought stood clear on
+all; for all alike knew every detail of the story.
+
+"The Indian, How Landor," suggested Mead adequately.
+
+"Yes," corroborated Parker, "and I'm glad of it. I'm not squeamish, but
+the Lord knows I'd never have used the place myself."
+
+Of a sudden, O'Reilly, who had turned and was staring into the blaze,
+faced about. That second he had remembered.
+
+"Where's Craig?" he queried swiftly, glancing back the way they had
+come. "Didn't he follow?"
+
+Until that moment none of the three had thought of the other man. Now
+they realised that they were alone. But even then two of the trio did
+not understand.
+
+"Evidently he didn't start," said Mead. "He couldn't have missed the
+light if he did."
+
+"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left," added Parker.
+
+"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly. "As
+there's a Heaven and a Hell he's not standing there now, I'll wager!"
+
+Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of that meaning
+black band, the three spectators there beneath the stars stood staring
+at each other. It was O'Reilly again who broke the silence.
+
+"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's happened?"
+he interrogated unbelievingly.
+
+"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no doubt
+about that," said Mead.
+
+"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor, and he's
+been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone back there in the
+ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you see now? At last the
+Indian has found out!"
+
+For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home, not a man
+stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and started back into
+the night.
+
+"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We can't get
+there a second too quick."
+
+"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We couldn't get
+there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over before this, take my
+word for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back they were too
+late. As O'Reilly had anticipated, the ranch house was empty, deserted.
+Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the adjoining tool shed. Though
+they searched every nook, until a mouse could not have escaped
+detection, they found not a trace of him for whom they looked, nor a
+clue to his disappearance. Though they shouted his name until they were
+hoarse not an answer came back from the surrounding darkness. Within the
+ranch house itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a
+struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it had
+been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap and topcoat
+were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the stable every horse
+was within its own stall: every piece of saddlery was intact. While the
+three men were looking, attracted by the blaze, the distant cowboys one
+by one began drifting in; and when they had heard the tale joined in
+the search. All through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns,
+like giant fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a
+radius of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming
+of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches
+appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on the
+prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was assembled.
+Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of riders scoured the
+country for miles and miles. And once more, from all, the testimony was
+as before. There was not a clue to the disappearance, nor the semblance
+of a clue. As out of the darkness of night surrounding, a great horned
+owl swoops down upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the
+Indian had come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as
+well into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the
+ranchers dispersed--and the search was over.
+
+And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery unsurmountable. One
+morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly had gone, when the new
+master of the ranch arose it was to find a wicked-looking mouse-coloured
+cayuse standing motionless by the stable door. Upon him was neither
+saddle nor bridle nor mark of any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless
+waste he had been released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he
+had returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He
+could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out there
+amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to pass; but what it
+was only Nature and Nature's God, who alone were witness, could ever
+know.
+
+
+
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+eBook #11683 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11683)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Where the Trail Divides
+
+Author: Will Lillibridge
+
+Release Date: March 23, 2004  [eBook #11683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Jeremy Eble, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES
+
+By WILL LILLIBRIDGE
+
+Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.
+
+With Frontispiece in Colors
+By The Kinneys
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. PRESENTIMENT
+
+   II. FULFILMENT
+
+  III. DISCOVERY
+
+   IV. RECONSTRUCTION
+
+    V. THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+   VI. THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+  VII. A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+ VIII. THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+   IX. THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+    X. THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+   XI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XII. WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+ XIII. THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+  XIV. FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+   XV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XVI. THE RECKONING
+
+ XVII. SACRIFICE
+
+XVIII. REWARD
+
+  XIX. IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+PRESENTIMENT
+
+The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In
+addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
+limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
+throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
+effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
+the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
+country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
+man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
+rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
+his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
+rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
+sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
+wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
+the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
+repressed breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
+then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand gripping the
+butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, the other,
+big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a pendulum at his side.
+
+Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in civilisation,
+humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it here, solitary, exotic,
+no observer would have laughed. Fear, mortal dogging fear, impersonate,
+supreme, was in every look, every action. Somewhere back of that curved
+line where met the earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have
+been adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused. The
+sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop by drop from
+the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but apparently he never
+noticed it. Now and then he attempted to moisten his lips; but his
+tongue was dry as powder, and they closed again, parched as before.
+
+No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the way he was
+going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his only landmark; yet
+as hour after hour went by and the sun sank lower and lower he never
+halted, never seemed in doubt as to his destination. The country was
+growing more rolling now, almost hilly, and he approached each rise
+cautiously, vigilantly. Once, almost at his feet a covey of frightened
+prairie chickens sprang a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped
+like a stone in his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall
+grass; then, reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
+on.
+
+It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from absolute
+physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at last rebelled,
+and not even fear could suffice longer to stimulate him. The grass was
+wet with dew, and prone on his knees he moistened his lips therefrom as
+drinks many another of the fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back,
+not sleeping, but very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the
+return of strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat
+the sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and thicker,
+dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day had appeared the
+fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost brightened; until at last,
+like a curious face, the full moon, peeping above the horizon, lit up
+the surface of prairie.
+
+At last--and ere this the moon was well in the sky--the man arose,
+stretched his stiffened muscles profanely--before he had not spoken a
+syllable--listened a moment almost involuntarily, sent a swift,
+searching glance all about; then moved ahead, straight south, at the old
+relentless pace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls vacillated
+between vexation and solicitude.
+
+"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or not," he
+announced in ultimatum.
+
+Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid, folded his
+arms across his chest with an air of finality.
+
+"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the warning.
+I know your intentions are good, but you people are afraid of your own
+shadows. I know as well as you do that there are Indians in this part of
+the world, some odd thousands of them between here and the Hills, but
+they were here when I came and when you came, and we knew they were
+here. You expect to hear from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,'
+don't you?"
+
+The other made a motion of annoyance.
+
+"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he returned
+swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you were alone,
+Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine without another word;
+but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord she's down in Sioux City
+where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should be, and for her sake--"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned back.
+
+"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for little
+niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his
+son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy
+as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This isn't ancient history, man,
+but took place this very day. It's Indian massacre, and at our own
+throats. The boys are down below the falls getting ready to go right
+now. By night there won't be another white man or woman within
+twenty-five miles of you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here
+arguing. If you will stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and
+the girl. I'll take care of them myself and bring them back when the
+government sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
+reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should jump it
+there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come on."
+
+Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the tone of
+vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had appeared upon the
+scene.
+
+"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed. "Take my
+advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we leave you
+behind."
+
+"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked unemotionally.
+
+"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared. "Danger, with
+Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail! Is it possible you two
+don't realise things as they are?"
+
+"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the Tetons are
+hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us would rebel if we
+were hustled away into a corner like naughty little boys, as they are;
+but actual danger--" The woman threw a comprehensive, almost amused
+glance at the big man, her husband. "We've been here almost two years
+now; long before you and the others came. Half the hunters who pass this
+way stop here. It wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a
+whole antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
+those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would be in
+Sioux City."
+
+"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the other. "I
+don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own eyes."
+
+"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland glanced
+at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost superciliously.
+"Indians are like white people. They have their loves and hates the same
+as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran once before when everyone was
+going, and when we got back not a thing had been touched; but the weeds
+had choked our corn and the rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good
+to the Indians, and they appreciate it."
+
+A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came forward
+swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to the other.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and it's pure
+madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a big-eyed, solemn-faced
+mite of humanity, had come up now and stood staring the stranger
+silently from the side of her mother's skirts. "I hope for the best, but
+before God I never expect to see any of you again."
+
+"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right--when you return," commented
+Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and without a backward
+glance started at a rapid jog trot for the tiny settlement on the river
+two miles away.
+
+Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the departing
+frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes accentuated by the
+tightened lids.
+
+"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there ever
+was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual disturbance
+somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down at the settlement
+leaving--they'd go if they heard a coyote whistle; but Brown tells me
+there've been three different trappers from Big Stone gone through south
+in the last week, and when they leave it means something. If you say the
+word we'll leave everything and go yet."
+
+"If we do we'll never come back."
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not. We went
+before because the others went. If we left now it would be different.
+We'd be tortured day and night if we really feared--what happens now and
+then to some. We came here with our eyes wide open. We can't start again
+in civilisation. We're too old, and there's the past--"
+
+"You still blame me?"
+
+"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned toward
+the rough log shanty unemotionally.
+
+"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's hungry."
+
+A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.
+
+"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its feet, one
+hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the dishes on the rough
+pine dining table clattering with the suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who
+are you, man, and what's the trouble? Speak up--"
+
+The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced about the
+interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.
+
+His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but protruded.
+
+"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.
+
+"But who are you?"
+
+"Water!" fiercely, insistently.
+
+Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner, and
+without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made for it,
+grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after measure,
+the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping onto the sanded
+floor.
+
+"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"
+
+After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir; but at his
+side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering around the fortress of
+her skirts as when before she had argued with Frontiersman Brown, stood
+the little wide-eyed girl, type of the repressed frontier child.
+
+Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working unconsciously.
+
+"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
+Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you; you
+live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop to save
+anything."
+
+Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of perspiration.
+
+"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk so I can
+understand you."
+
+"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of the massacre
+along the Minnesota River?"
+
+"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"
+
+"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a trapper."
+Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive questioner
+doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell you along the
+way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw their signal smokes this
+very morning. They're murdering everyone--men, women, and children. It's
+Little Crow who started it, and God knows how many settlers they've
+killed. They chased me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave
+out yesterday; and since then--But come. It's suicide to chatter like
+this." He turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
+minute."
+
+Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a word; but at
+last the woman shook her head slowly.
+
+Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.
+
+"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.
+
+Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin folding over
+his soft flannel shirt.
+
+"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of amusement.
+
+"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed almost to
+roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."
+
+"There is no settlement."
+
+"What?"
+
+Rowland repeated his statement impassively.
+
+"They've--gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick again.
+
+"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of scorn.
+
+For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite tan and
+dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller whitened. The same
+expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all but insane, that had been
+with him alone out on the prairie returned, augmented. Heedless of
+appearances, all but unconscious of the presence of spectators, he
+glanced about the single room like a beaten rabbit with the hounds close
+on its trail. No avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope of
+protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his forehead, at
+the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he mopped it away with
+the back of a fat, grimy hand.
+
+In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated another
+vacant beside the board.
+
+"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be hungry as
+a coyote."
+
+"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless mood
+returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He started
+shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you think I lie.
+We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught like a beaver in a
+trap." Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did they go!"
+
+Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.
+
+"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City; part west
+toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the inevitable
+contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak. "You'd better take a
+lunch along. It's something of a journey to either place."
+
+Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous hospitality
+of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint Indian basket of
+coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely touched, from the table. A
+loaf of bread followed: a bottle of water from the wooden pail in the
+corner. "You're welcome, friend," she proffered.
+
+Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his eyes.
+
+"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm sorry--" He
+lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the doorway. "Good-bye."
+
+Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected dinner.
+
+"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think we'll run at
+sight of them," he commented.
+
+Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through which
+Mueller had gone, did not answer.
+
+"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.
+
+Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few mouthfuls,
+pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak, and, rising, the man
+made his way across the room to put an arm with rough affection around
+his wife's waist.
+
+"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.
+
+The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable after her
+former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd gone too; but
+now,"--her arms crept around his neck, closed,--"but now--now it's too
+late!"
+
+For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but involuntarily
+his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the woman could not have
+turned. He had been looking absently out the door, south over the
+rolling country leading to the deserted settlement.
+
+In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was
+still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the
+trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a
+spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank
+and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland
+watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the
+movement of a coyote or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was
+the only visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life
+responds to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late,"
+with the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the first
+time, to his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of fear, but
+near akin, as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and the red man its
+child. In a hazy way came the question whether after all it were not
+foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that invisible, intangible
+something before which, almost in panic, the others had fled. To be
+sure, precedent was with him, logic; but--of a sudden--but a minute had
+passed--his arms tightened; involuntarily he held his breath. Hans
+Mueller had been moving on and on; another half minute and he would have
+been behind the base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf
+at one's feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
+tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm of
+other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score--in front, behind, all
+about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had come,
+autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked his eyes; then,
+as came swift understanding, instinctively he shielded the woman in his
+arms from the sight, from the knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears
+from over the prairie: not a single call for help. That black swarm
+simply arose, there was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic
+through the curling heat waves; then one and all, the original dark
+figure, the score of others, disappeared--as suddenly as though the
+earth from which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
+spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
+green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.
+
+Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as pale as had
+been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against the lintel of the
+door.
+
+"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he echoed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it
+was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown
+of earth that filled the spaces between--like the longitudinal stripes
+of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough
+grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares
+of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork
+of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified
+by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature
+waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it, stretching
+northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod corn: the ears already
+formed, the ground whitened from the lavishly scattered pollen of the
+frayed tassels. In the dooryard itself was a dug well with a mound of
+weed-covered clay by its side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over
+its mouth. It was deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the
+surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a
+rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
+meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it
+was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the
+spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away the
+long, sultry afternoons.
+
+Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The single horse
+Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured, was breaking sod far
+to the west on the bank of the Jim River. Not a live thing other than
+human moved about the place. With them into this land of silence had
+come a mongrel collie. For a solitary month he had stood guard; then one
+night, somewhere in the distance, in the east where flowed the Big
+Sioux, had sounded the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately
+nearer and more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
+collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild they
+never knew, nor ever filled his place.
+
+Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that afternoon of
+late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he had seen; elaborately
+careful likewise to carry out the family programme as usual.
+
+"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.
+
+Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent corroboration.
+
+"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to all fours
+and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.
+
+"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the doorway as
+only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun and the dust;
+climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly about his neck, down
+the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the pillow and the patchwork quilt
+with a deftness born of experience.
+
+"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.
+
+"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.
+
+"Sing! I can't sing, kid."
+
+"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"
+
+"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."
+
+"Please, papa; pretty please!"
+
+The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do, braced himself
+in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he knew of the song again
+and again--his voice rough and unmusical as that of a crow, echoing and
+re-echoing in the narrow space--bent over at last, touched his bearded
+lips softly to the winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an
+irresistible catch in his breath, silently to the surface, sent one
+swift glance sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
+cabin.
+
+Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer shotgun,
+and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy beside the door.
+
+"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he overhauled
+the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not deceived. This done,
+notwithstanding the fact that the sun still beat scorchingly hot
+thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit his pipe, drew his
+weather-stained sombrero low over his face, through half-closed eyes
+inspected the lower lands all about, impassively silent awaited the
+coming of the inevitable. Of a sudden there was a touch on his shoulder,
+and, involuntarily starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret
+Rowland.
+
+The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.
+
+"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
+something."
+
+In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more brightly as
+Rowland drew hard.
+
+"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"
+
+The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded reluctant
+corroboration.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"You--saw them?"
+
+Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as well, after
+all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of the rise before
+them. "They waylaid Mueller there."
+
+"And you--"
+
+"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all he--Margaret!"
+
+"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous suggestion!"
+
+"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the quiver of her
+body against his, the involuntary catch of her breath. "Forgive me,
+Margaret."
+
+"You're not to blame. Perhaps--Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"
+
+Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above the
+scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very breath of
+prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or
+a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant
+drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf
+contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In
+sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of
+the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had
+done Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
+"Water! Water! Give us drink!"
+
+Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the woman; like
+children awed by the sudden realisation of their helplessness, their
+hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute understanding. Usually at this time
+of day with nothing to do they slept; but neither thought of sleep now.
+As passed the slow time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour
+of supper; but likewise hunger passed them by. Something very like
+fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at
+motionless impassive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that
+nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod corn
+again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded in
+preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out, out--.
+
+"Sam!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You saw, too?"
+
+An answering pressure of the hand.
+
+"The eyes of him, only the eyes--out there at the edge of the corn!"
+
+"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his breath
+tightened. "They're all about: a score at least--I don't know how many.
+The tall grass there to the east is alive--"
+
+"Sam! They're there again--the eyes! Oh, I'm afraid--Sam--baby!"
+
+"Hush! Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our only chance.
+Let them make the first move." Again the hand pressure so tight that,
+although she made no sound, the blood left the woman's fingers. "Tell me
+you forgive me, Margaret; before anything happens. I'm a criminal to
+have stayed here,--I see it now, a criminal!"
+
+"Don't!"
+
+"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."
+
+"I love you, Sam."
+
+Again in the expanse of grass to the east there was motion; not in a
+single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was visible, not a
+sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here and there it stirred,
+and became motionless, and stirred again.
+
+"And--Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take either of us
+alive. The last one--I can't say it. You understand."
+
+"Yes, I understand. The last load--But maybe--"
+
+"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this way
+if--Margaret, in God's name--"
+
+"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely beneath the
+grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see her again; must,
+must--"
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+"I must, I say!"
+
+"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless we show
+the way. Think--as you love her."
+
+"But if anything should happen to us--She'll starve!"
+
+"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come--now; and Landor
+knows."
+
+"Oh, Sam, Sam!"
+
+There was silence. No human being could give answer to that mother wail.
+
+Again time passed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that were a hell
+of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun sank from sight. In
+the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed red as from a distant
+conflagration. For and eternity previous it seemed to the silent
+watchers there had been no move; now again at last the grass stirred; a
+corn plant rustled where there was no breeze; out into the small open
+plat surrounding the house sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across
+the clearing, headed for the protecting grass, halted at the edge
+irresolute--scurried back again at something it saw.
+
+"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained, unnatural.
+"They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."
+
+"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural tone!
+
+"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man dies."
+
+"Sam Rowland--my husband!"
+
+"Margaret--my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes, regardless of
+everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how can you forgive me, can
+God forgive me!" Tight in his arms he kissed her again and again;
+passionately, in abandon. "I've always loved you, Margaret; always,
+always!"
+
+"And I you, man; and I you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on the field
+mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water hole, so it came.
+Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse call of a catbird where no
+bird was, and again, and again. In front of the maize patch, always in
+front, a dark form, a mere shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out
+clear against the light of sky. To right and left appeared others, as
+motionless as boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler
+Rowland been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No
+Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand.
+Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited
+passive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight
+before him, God alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again
+in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures
+against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch
+of the cabin roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in
+front. Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge
+pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in front.
+Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the rear, reached the
+edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the maize patch, out of the
+grass, seemingly out of space itself, came a new cry--the trilling call
+of the prairie owl. It was the signal. Like twin drops of rain from a
+cloudless sky fell the two figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter
+a sound, could offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere,
+everywhere, swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them
+forth in legion. In the multitude of hands he was as a child. Within the
+space of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything had
+happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the clearing
+before the door not a human being was visible, not a live thing; only on
+the thatched roof, silent as before, patient as fate, awaited two other
+shadows, darker but by contrast with the weather-coloured grass.
+
+Minutes passed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the silence.
+Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a thing of which
+insanity is made.
+
+"Sam!" called a voice softly.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Sam!" repeated more loudly.
+
+Again no answer of voice or of action.
+
+In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly fearful.
+
+"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped outside.
+
+A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The earth was
+not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie owl. As dropped
+the figures from above there broke forth the Sioux war-cry: long drawn
+out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely
+than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a
+score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth.
+Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they
+swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in
+their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they
+seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage abandon, of drunken
+exhilaration in the cunning that had won the game without a shot from
+the white man's gun, without the injury of a single warrior. They were
+in haste, and yet they were not in haste. They looted the cabin like
+fire and then fought among themselves for the plunder. They applied the
+torch to the shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then
+capered fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until, tinder
+dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all, purposely reserved
+as a climax, they gave their attention to the pair of half-naked, bound
+and gagged figures in their midst. Then it was the scene became an orgy
+indeed. The havoc preceding had but whetted their appetite for the
+finale. Savagery personified, cruelty unqualified, deadly hate,
+primitive lust--every black passion lurking in the recesses of the human
+mind stalked brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister,
+unashamed. But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand
+similar scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
+the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a nation's
+expansion, as its progression.
+
+It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle of
+prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
+unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
+irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their
+journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the
+print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows,
+forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth,
+they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little
+river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement,
+the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to
+other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man
+who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they
+moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
+almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat
+of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer
+rain, the rustle of their passing bodies against the dense vegetation a
+soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.
+Night and distance swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined
+grainfield, the smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the
+glaring white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the
+background of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for
+this, and one other thing--a single sound, repeated again and again,
+dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.
+
+"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its depths
+that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm afraid!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as
+necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To
+the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight
+feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped
+between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the
+square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close
+together and pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by
+numerous portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers
+near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated, mingled and
+intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as diverse a gathering of
+humans as ever graced a single structure even in this land of myriad
+types. Virtually the entire population of frontier Yankton was there.
+Likewise the settlers from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the
+far-away country of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground
+of the Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the
+peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild west of
+the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the Blackfeet, the
+Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the alarm of rapine and of
+massacre had spread afar. Very late to arrive, doggedly holding their
+own until rumour became reality unmistakable, was the colony from the
+Jim River valley to the east; but even they had finally surrendered, the
+dogging grip of fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their
+throats, had fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the
+Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as you
+please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux Falls.
+Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for with the actual
+retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow mile, thanking the
+Providence which had permitted them to arrive unmolested, a
+sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old smoothbore cannon
+before the big south gate and craved admittance. Out to them went
+Colonel William Landor, colonel by courtesy, scion of many generations
+of Landors, rancher at present, cattle king of the future. The
+conversation that followed there with the east reddening in the morning
+sun was very brief, very swift to the point.
+
+"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing them
+collectively, compellingly.
+
+"My name is McPherson."
+
+"Mine is Horton."
+
+"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."
+
+"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered McPherson who
+took the lead.
+
+"From where?"
+
+"Sioux Falls."
+
+"Any news?"
+
+Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now a day
+old.
+
+"And the rest of your settlement--where are they?"
+
+McPherson told him.
+
+"They all went, you say?"
+
+For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he
+qualified.
+
+"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company
+collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That you--men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl
+alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously.
+"You come here with that story and ask me to let you inside?"
+
+McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently, his
+shoulders squared.
+
+"We're here," he announced laconically.
+
+"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids. "Moreover,
+strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned forward involuntarily;
+his breath came quick. "It gives me the opportunity, sir, to tell you to
+your face that you're a damned coward." In spite of an obvious effort at
+repression, the great veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A
+damned coward, sir!"
+
+"What! You call me--"
+
+"Men! Gentlemen!"
+
+"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was
+himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood
+shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done
+with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When
+I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a
+time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the
+Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had
+been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight,
+every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here.
+If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade--not if
+the Santees scalped you before my eyes."
+
+For a second there was silence, inaction.
+
+"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried--"
+
+"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there
+are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned
+to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,--I'm afraid it is;
+but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me?
+Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"
+
+"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of
+speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're
+all with you--that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't
+cats, so we can't croak but once--and that might as well be now as ten
+years from now."
+
+"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the
+motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first
+twenty to return, go."
+
+From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.
+
+"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.
+
+No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.
+
+For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an inverted V;
+then silent as they, equally swiftly, he followed.
+
+Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle back. Not in
+ignorance of possibilities in store did they come. They had no delusions
+concerning the red brother, these frontiersmen. Nor in the hot
+adventurous blood of youth did they respond. One and all were
+middle-aged men; many had families. All save Landor were strangers to
+the man they went to seek. Yet at a moment's call they responded; as
+they took it for granted others would respond were they in need. Had
+they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it
+they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal
+brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated
+abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious,
+smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all
+to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant
+quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled,
+parchment-faced veteran, who alone had followed the Missouri to its
+source and, stranger to relate, had alone returned with his scalp. Then
+came Landor himself, the wiry little mustang he rode all but blanketed
+under the big army saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as
+though an event of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson,
+drew up in place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat
+appreciatively, but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one
+but many riders; a half dozen, a score,--enough to make up the
+allotment, and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly
+accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho, the
+mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of apparel,
+from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or saddleless,
+across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel of a long rifle, at
+the hip of every rider hung a holster, from every belt peeped the hilt
+of a great knife. Long ere this word of the unusual had passed about,
+and now, on the rise of ground at the back of the stockade, a goodly
+group had gathered. Silent as the prairies, as the morning itself, they
+watched the scene below, awaited the _dénouement._ Not without influence
+was the taciturn example of the red man in this land from which he was
+slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to the east the red face of
+the morning sun was just peeping when Landor separated himself from the
+waiting group, led the way to the big gate and paused. "Twenty only,
+men," he repeated. "All ready."
+
+First through the opening went Crosby.
+
+"One."
+
+Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.
+
+"Two."
+
+From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came Scotchman
+McPherson; but though he passed fair before the leader's eyes and not a
+yard away, no number was spoken; no hint of recognition, of cognisance,
+crossed the latter's face. Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited
+the next in line, then voiced the one word: "Three."
+
+On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts silent--halting
+at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and twenty men who counted
+but as a score, started into motion, halted again; as by common consent
+every head save one of a sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the
+watching group back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All
+but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out
+where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
+tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the column one
+rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear. Implacable as
+Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that
+would bring with it renewed activity.
+
+And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its
+place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From his position by the
+gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind him, impassive again as
+figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line. At first a mere walk,
+the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot. By this time the
+confines of the tiny frontier town were passed. Before them on the one
+hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown
+from its coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
+glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad
+dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie. Straight
+into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the
+first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of
+civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier,
+which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off
+the passing miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.
+
+Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
+settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was the
+prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before; yet
+with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead, straight as a line drawn
+taut from point to point. Nothing stopped their advance, nothing made
+them turn aside. Seemingly destitute of animal life, the country fairly
+teemed at their approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the
+blue-faced anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks.
+Troops of antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away
+from the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the safety
+of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight. Every marshy
+spot, every prairie pond, had its setting of ducks. The teal, the
+mallard, the widgeon, the shoveller, the canvasback--all mingled in the
+loud-voiced throng that arose before the leader's approach, then, like
+smoke, vanished with almost unbelievable swiftness into the hazy
+distance. Prairie dog towns, populous as cities of man a minute before
+their approach, went lifeless, desolate, as they passed through. In the
+infrequent draws and creek beds between the low, rolling hills,
+great-eyed cotton tails scampered to cover or, like the antelope, just
+out of harm's way, watched the passage of this strange being, man.
+Wonder of wonders that display of life would have been to another
+generation; but of it these grim-faced riders were apparently
+unconscious, oblivious. Their eyes were not for things near at hand, but
+for the distance, for the possibility that lurked just beyond that
+far-away rise which formed their horizon, when they had reached that for
+the next beyond, and the next.
+
+Hour by hour the morning wore away. Hotter and hotter rose the sun above
+them. Instead of drops of dew, tiny particles of sun-dried grass flew
+away from beneath the leaders' feet, mingled with the dust of prairie,
+became a cloud shutting the leaders from the sight of those in the rear.
+From being a mere breath, the south wind augmented, became positive,
+insistent. Hot with the latent heat of many days, it sang in their ears
+as they went, bit all but scorching, at their unprotected hands and
+throats. Under its touch the horses' necks, dark before with sweat,
+became normal again: between their legs, under the, edges of the great
+saddles where it had churned into foam, dried into white powder, like
+frostwork amid the hair. Gradually with the change, their breathing
+became audible, louder and louder, until in unison it mingled with the
+dull impact of their feet on the heavy sod like the exhaust of many
+engines. No horseman who values the life of the beast between his legs,
+fails to heed that warning. Landor did not, but at the first dawdling
+prairie creek that offered water and, with its struggling fringe of
+willows, a suggestion of shade, he gave the word to halt, and for four
+mortal, blistering hours while, man and beast alike, the others slept,
+kept watch over them from the nearest rise. Relentless to others this
+man might be, but not even his dearest enemy could accuse him of sparing
+himself.
+
+It was three by the clock when again they took up the trail. It was 3.45
+when they swam what is now the Vermilion River, the last water-course of
+any size on their way. The dew was again beginning to gather when, well
+to the south, they approached the bordering hills that concealed the
+site of Sioux Falls settlement. Then for the first time since they
+began that last relay Landor gave an order.
+
+"It'll be a miracle if we don't find Sioux there in the bottom, men," he
+prophesied. "Perhaps there are a whole band, perhaps it'll only be
+stragglers; but no matter how many or how few there may be, charge them.
+If they run you know what to do--this is no holiday outing. If they
+stand, charge them all the harder." He faced his horse to the north and
+gave the word to go. "It's our only chance," he completed.
+
+What followed belongs to history. Over that last intervening rise they
+went like demons. The first to gain the crown, to look down into the
+valley beyond, was Landor. As he did so, grim Anglo-Saxon as he was, his
+whole attitude underwent a transformation. Back to the others he turned
+his face, and, plain as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage,
+and the lust of battle.
+
+"They're there; a hundred, if a single red!" he shouted. "Come on!" and
+the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse's flanks, dug until
+the blood spurted.
+
+But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction of the
+time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground. Outnumbering
+those who charged many times, it was not in savage nature to face that
+unformed oncoming motley of howling, bloodthirsty maniacs. Slowly at
+first began the retreat; then as, with great swiftness, the others
+shortened the distance intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a
+stampede. Every brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the
+dismantled ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling
+like their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for the
+thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in their
+ears, cutting at the vegetation about them. Into its friendly cover they
+plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the surface of a lake, and were
+swallowed from sight. That is, all but one. That one, unhorsed by
+accident, was left to face that oncoming flood. . . . But why linger.
+Like the charge itself, his fate is history. These men were but human,
+and thick about them were the ashes from the roof-trees of their
+friends.
+
+Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind, musical with the
+drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs from the low land
+adjoining the river, melancholy with the call of the catbird, with the
+infrequent note of the whip-poor-will, was upon the land of the Mandans
+when the score and one, their dripping ponies once more dry, took up the
+last relay of their journey. Night had caught them there in the deserted
+settlement, and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait. Now, far to
+the east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the face
+of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves through the heated
+air, slowly rising, lit up the level country softly as by early
+twilight. Lingeringly, almost reluctantly, Landor got into his saddle.
+Just to his left, impassive as the night, well to the front of the
+company as he had been that mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman
+McPherson. Not once since that early morning scene at Fort Yankton had
+he spoken a word, not once had he been addressed, had another man shown
+consciousness of his presence. A pariah, he had so far kept them
+company; a pariah, he now awaited the end. A moment, fair in his seat,
+Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for hours came
+to pass. Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein beside the other man.
+
+"McPherson," he said, "this morning I called you coward. That you are
+not such you have proven, you are proving now. For this reason I ask
+your pardon. For this reason as well, I give you warning. What we will
+find--where we are going, I do not doubt, now. I do not believe you
+doubt. For it I hold you responsible. You had best turn back before
+belief becomes certainty." Unnaturally precise, cold as November
+raindrops came the words, the sentences. Deadly in meaning was the pause
+that followed. "I repeat, you had best turn back."
+
+For a long half minute, face to face there in the moonlight, Landor
+waited; but no answer came. Just perceptibly he shifted in his place.
+
+"I may forget, give my promise of the morning the lie. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+Another half minute, ghastly in its significance, passed; then without a
+word Landor turned. "You have heard, men," he said, "and may God be my
+judge."
+
+The full moon was well in the sky, showing clear every detail in that
+scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter, patter sounded
+their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more loud they grew, muffled
+yet penetrating in the silence of night, always augmenting in volume.
+Out of the shadows figures came dimly into view, taking form against the
+background of constellations. The straining of leather, the music of
+steel in bit and buckle, the soft swish of the sun-dried grass
+proclaimed them very near; then across the trampled corn patch, into the
+open where had stood the shanty, where now was a thin grey layer of
+ashes, came the riders, and drew rein; their weary mounts crowding each
+other in fear at something they saw. Like a storm cloud they came; like
+the roll of thunder following was the oath which sprang to the lips of
+every rider save one. Good men they were, God-fearing men; yet they
+swore like pirates, like humans when ordinary speech is not adequate. In
+the pause but one man acted, and none intervened to prevent what he did.
+Out into the open, away from the others, rode Scotchman McPherson;
+halted, his hand on the holster at his hip. For a second, and a second
+only, he sat so, the white moonlight drawing clear every line of his
+grizzled face, his stocky figure. Then deliberately his hand lifted,
+before him there appeared a sudden blaze of fire, upon the silence there
+broke a single revolver report, from beneath his lifeless bulk the
+horse he rode broke free, gave one bound, by instinct halted, trembling
+in every muscle; then over all, the quick and the dead, returned
+silence: silence absolute as that of the grave.
+
+How long those twenty men sat there, gazing at that mute, motionless
+figure on the ground not one could have told. Death was no stranger to
+them. For years it had lurked behind every chance shrub they passed, in
+the depths of every ravine, in the darkness of night, from every tangle
+of rank prairie grass in broad daylight. To it from long familiarity
+they had become callous; but death such as this, deliberate,
+cold-blooded, self-inflicted--it awed them while it fascinated, held
+them silent, passive.
+
+"In God's name!" Again it was Landor who roused them, Landor with his
+hand on the holster at his hip, Landor who sat staring as one who doubts
+his own sight. "Am I sane, men? Look, there to your right!"
+
+They looked. They rubbed their eyes and looked again.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned," voiced Crosby; and no man had ever heard him
+express surprise before. To the north, from the edge of the tall
+surrounding grass, moving slowly, yet without a trace of hesitation or
+of fear, coming straight toward them across the trampled earth, were two
+tiny human figures, hand in hand. No wonder they who saw stared; no
+wonder they doubted their eyes. One, the figure to the right, was plump
+and uncertain of step and all in white; white which in the moonlight
+and against the black earth seemed ghostly. The other was slim and
+certain of movement and dark--dark as a copper brown Indian boy, naked
+as when he came on earth. On they came, the brown figure leading, the
+white following trustfully, until they were quite up to the watchers,
+halted, still hand in hand.
+
+"How," said a voice, a piping childish voice.
+
+Like rustics at a spectacle the men stared, turned mystified faces each
+to each, and stared anew. All save one. Off from his horse sprang
+Landor, caught the bundle of white in his arms.
+
+"Baby Rowland! Baby Bess! And you,"--he was staring the other from head
+to toe, the distance was short,--"who are you?"
+
+"Uncle Billy," interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of femininity
+nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa and mamma! I want them."
+
+Closer and closer the big bachelor arms clasped their burden; unashamed,
+there with the others watching him, he kissed her.
+
+"Never mind now, Kiddie. Tell me how you came here, and who this is with
+you."
+
+About the great neck crept two arms, clinging tightly.
+
+"He just came, Uncle Billy. I was calling for papa. Papa put me to sleep
+and forgot me. The boy heard me and took me out. I was afraid at first,
+but--but he's a nice boy, only he won't talk and--and--" The narrative
+halted, the tousled head buried itself joyously. "Oh, I'm so glad you
+came, Uncle Billy!"
+
+In silence Landor's eyes made the circle of interested watching faces,
+returned to the winsome brown face so near his own.
+
+"Aren't you hungry, Kid?" he ventured.
+
+On his shoulder the dark poll shook a negative.
+
+"No. We had corn to eat. The boy roasted it. He made a big fire. He's a
+nice boy, only--only he won't say anything."
+
+Again Landor's eyes made the circle, halted at the intrepid brown waif
+who, that first word of greeting spoken, had silently stared him back.
+
+"You're sure you don't know anything more, baby? You didn't hear
+anything until the boy came?"
+
+"No, Uncle Billy. I was asleep. When I woke up it was dark, and I was
+hungry and--and--" At last it had come: the spattering, turbulent tear
+storm. Her small body shook, her arms clasped tighter and tighter. "Oh,
+Uncle Billy, I want my papa and mamma. I tried to find them, and I
+couldn't. Please find them for me, Uncle Billy, Please! Please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well past midnight. The big full moon, high now in the sky, cast
+their shadows almost about their feet when, their labour complete, the
+party took up the homeward trail. But there were twenty no longer. At
+their head as before rode Landor, in his arms not a rifle but a blanket;
+a blanket from which as they journeyed on came now and anon a sound
+that was alien indeed: the sobs of a baby girl who wept as she slept.
+Back of him, likewise as when they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby;
+but he, too, was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in
+front of him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat,
+was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake
+indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him,
+every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there,
+what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know,
+could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew
+only the bizarre, with whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now,
+weary to death with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable
+reaction from the excitement of the past hours, they moved away, to the
+south, to the west. In front of them, glittering in the moonlight,
+seemingly infinite, stretched the waves of the rolling prairie, bare as
+the sea in a calm. Behind them, growing lesser and lesser minute by
+minute, merging into the infinite white, were three black dots like tiny
+boats on the horizon's edge. On they went, a half mile, a mile, looked
+behind; and, with an awe no familiarity could prevent, faced ahead anew.
+Back of them now as well as before, uniformly endless, uniformly
+magnificent, stretched that giant ocean: silent, serene, as mother
+nature, as nature's master, God himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+RECONSTRUCTION
+
+The day of the Indian terror had passed. No longer did the name of
+Little Crow carry stampede in its wake. The battles of Big Mound, of
+White Stone Hill, and of the Bad Lands had been fought, had become mere
+history; dim already to the newcomer as Lexington or Bull Run. Still in
+the memory, to be sure, was the half-invited massacre of Custer at the
+Little Big Horn; but the savage genius of Sitting Bull, of Crazy Horse,
+and of Gall, who had made the last great encounter bloodily unique in
+the conflict of the red man and the white, was never to be duplicated.
+Rightly or wrongly deprived of what they had once called their own,
+driven back, back on the crest of the ever-increasing wave of
+settlement, facing the alternative of annihilation or of submergence in
+that flood, the Sioux had halted like a wild thing at bay, with their
+backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot of earth on the face of
+the globe, the Black Hills country, and as a cornered animal ever
+fights, had battled ferociously for a lost supremacy. But, robbers
+themselves, holding the land on the insecure title of might alone,
+fighting to the end, they had at last succumbed to the inevitable: the
+all-conquering invasion of the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a
+name stood out: "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," "Little Crow,"
+"Sitting Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall,"
+"John Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic
+suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had long since
+passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to desperation, might
+incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an incorrigible by a
+harrowing reference to one or to another; yet to the incoming swarms of
+land-hungry settlers they were mere supplanted play actors, fit heroes
+for fiction, for romance perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small
+herds safe in the pasture of a reservation, preserved as a relic of a
+species doomed to extinction.
+
+A thing at which to marvel was the growth of the eastern border of
+Dakota Territory in this, the time of the great boom. History can
+scarcely find its parallel. In the space of a decade the census leaped
+from two-score thousand to nearly a half million. New towns sprang up
+like fungi in a night. Railroads reached out like the tentacles of an
+octopus, where a generation before the buffalo had tramped its tortuous
+trail. Prosperous farms came into being in the meadows where the
+antelope had pastured. Artesian wells, waterworks, electric lights,
+street railways, colleges, all the adjuncts of a higher civilisation,
+blossomed forth under the magic wand of Eastern capital. Doomed to
+reaction, as an advancing pendulum is doomed to retrace its cycle, was
+this premature evolution; but temporarily, as a springtime freshet
+bears onward the driftwood in its path, it carried its predecessor, the
+unconventional, fighting, wild-loving adventurer, before. On it went, on
+and on until at last, fairly blocking its path, was the big, muddy,
+dawdling Missouri. Then for the first time it halted; halted in a pause
+that was to last for a generation. But it had fulfilled its mission.
+High and dry on the western side of the barrier, imbued as when they had
+settled to the east, with the restless spirit of the frontier,
+unsubdued, unchanged, it cast its burden. There, as they had done
+before, the newcomers immediately took root, and, after the passage of a
+year, were all but unconscious of the migration. Over their heads was
+the same blue prairie sky. Around them, treeless, trackless, was the
+same rolling, illimitable prairie land. In but one essential were
+conditions changed; yet that one was epoch-making. Heretofore,
+surrounded by a common, an alien danger, compelled at a second's warning
+to band together for life itself, all men were brothers. Now, with the
+passing of the red peril, with eradication of necessity for any manner
+of restraint, an abandon of licence, of recklessness, born of the wild
+life, of overflowing animal vitality insufficiently employed, swept the
+land like a contagion. Unique in the history of man's development was
+this the era of the cowboy, as fantastic now as the era of the red
+peril, its predecessor; yet vital, bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously
+human, as no other period has ever been, as in all probability none
+will ever be again. Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed,
+chivalrous, fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate,
+wilful and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented,
+seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as
+certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied their own
+Hell and, impartial, chose from each to weave the web of their lives.
+
+Of this period, life of this life, was Colonel William Landor; colonel
+no longer, plain Bill, from the river to the Hills, husband these ten
+years now, but not father, Cattle King of an uncontested range. Of this
+life likewise, bred in it, saturated in it, was a dark young woman, his
+adopted daughter, two years past her majority, Elizabeth Rowland Landor
+by name. Of it most vitally of all, born of it, rooted in it through
+unknown centuries of ancestral domicile, was a copper-brown young man,
+destitute as a boy of twelve of a trace of beard, black as a prairie
+crow of hair and eyes, deep-lunged like a race-track thoroughbred, wiry
+as a mustang, garbed as a white man, but bearing the liquid name of a
+Teton Sioux, "Ma-wa-cha-sa, the lost pappoose," yet known wherever the
+Santee Massacre and the tale of his appearance was known, as "How"
+Landor. Of this period, last of all, was the great B.B.--Buffalo
+Butte--ranch, giant among the giants, whose brand was familiar as his
+own name to every cowboy west of the Missouri, whose hospitable ranch
+house, twenty-odd miles from the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote
+Centre, which in turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles
+from nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into
+this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the reverse
+side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one lunger," who, with
+gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie sun and prairie air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay Creek ranch
+had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the day previous they
+had suddenly blown in from the north; a great cloud of yellow dust,
+lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty panting of winded bronchos, a
+single demoniacal dare-man whoop heralding their coming, a groaning of
+straining leather, a jingle of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented
+stillness even in this silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was,
+Pete Sweeney, "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was
+who first entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who,
+ere ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only man
+who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute ownership. Pete
+it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared away, assisted in
+laying out that same misguided citizen, in decent fellowship, beneath
+the cottonwood bar, and thrust an adequate green roll in the stiffening
+hand for funeral expenses.
+
+"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I don't visit
+you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to make it square, and
+this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all. D'ye understand?" and from
+Manning, the greybearded storekeeper, to Rank Judge, the one-legged
+saddler, there was no one to say him nay, none to contest his right of
+authority.
+
+By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre. Under
+ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even aggressively, upheld by
+its representative, Marshal Jim Burton. Likewise there was no lack of
+pilgrims, who by devious and circuitous routes sought his residence on
+this occasion, with tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one
+and all departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
+not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an even more
+indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one regretted the
+mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who imparted the information,
+no one deplored the lost opportunity for distinction so much as she; but
+nevertheless the fact remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was
+thrown upon its own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as
+best it might.
+
+Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the beginning
+of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned, and that more than
+intermittently, all but continuously, the red liquor had flowed; to the
+alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins and his straw-haired Norwegian
+rival across the street--Gus Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were
+who fancied that ere this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity
+for absorption had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable
+intention of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
+themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town,
+all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where
+they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in
+peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master,
+had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of
+law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
+corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye
+and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of solid sustenance,
+was, to all visible indications, as fresh and aggressive as at the
+beginning.
+
+Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor down the
+single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its face. One and
+all had succumbed long before to the god of gunpowder. Not a stray dog,
+and Coyote Centre was plethoric of canines, raised its voice nor showed
+even a retreating tail near the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire
+for deepest obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden
+annihilation to the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a
+cyclone were imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They
+were a tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
+experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object lesson
+of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at last patience
+was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of the town hall a tiny
+group of men were gathered, a group who spoke scarcely above a whisper,
+who kept a sharp lookout all surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch
+of an eyelash to disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient.
+In the single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
+plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy bearded, had
+the floor.
+
+"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included indiscriminately. "You
+come here with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of
+you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand
+and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of
+the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including
+disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
+Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned
+cowards, I say."
+
+In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud Smith, the
+weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat hurt him.
+
+"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and agin p'raps
+you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new marshal, but as
+fer's I've been able to discover there's no one hereabouts hankerin' fer
+the job." He spat at a crack in the cottonwood floor meditatively,
+struck true, and seemed mildly pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin'
+comfortably rapidly as it is, without adding any marshals to the
+collection. I've known Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private
+advice is to let him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the
+river to supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
+feelin' as he's feelin' now."
+
+"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky Missourian,
+who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the first time he isn't
+looking."
+
+For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
+meditatively.
+
+"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he commented at
+last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of Pete not lookin'. I
+ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the feller who tackles that
+job to say his prayers before he starts. He won't have much time
+afterwards." With a swifter movement than he had yet made, the speaker
+slid from his place to the floor, involuntarily cast a glance into the
+street without. "I ain't perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and
+I ain't lookin' fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it
+ain't at all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound
+to peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better scatter
+and let it blow over."
+
+"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if you want
+to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying here as long as I
+see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."
+
+"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning with his
+deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well, maybe I've got
+something to say about that." He came out from behind the counter, faced
+the lanky figure before him, with deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty
+stiff-backed boy in the daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the
+dark--" He halted and his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if
+you're so anxious for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you
+take the job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth
+curled again.
+
+Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went white.
+Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered dog, and until
+it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.
+
+"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I might ask you
+the same question. I ain't no property interest here being destroyed
+like you have. Why don't you do the trick yourself, dad?"
+
+For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the old man
+stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to square his
+shoulders; but they remained round as before.
+
+"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand--minus the index and middle
+fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled with rheumatism.
+"Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny storeroom and back
+again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why don't I?" repeated for
+the third time. "Do you imagine for the fraction of a second, Walt
+Wagner, that if I was back twenty years and sound like you are, I'd be
+asking another man why he didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly,
+he stood there before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent,
+distorted senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
+and ask that question of me?"
+
+In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked nervously. His face
+went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud Smith it was, Bud Smith,
+five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie wind had made like a lobster
+display in a cafe window, who had halted at the door, but who now came
+back, he it was who spoke.
+
+"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested slowly, "you
+might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by intimatin' that I had cold
+feet. We'll listen to that, too, any time you see fit to explain,
+pardner."
+
+"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become normal
+again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his elbows back
+against the glass showcase, glancing the while down at the small man,
+almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your benefit, I was merely
+observing that you filled the bill of what dad here said a bit ago we
+all were." He smiled tantalisingly; again showing the vacancy in his
+dental arch. "You remember what that was, don't you?"
+
+"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit. To be dead
+sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."
+
+Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his place behind
+the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he moved. In it
+likewise there was an interruption from without; the subdued clatter of
+a horse's feet on the packed earth of the street, the straining of
+leather, as the man, its rider, alighted, a moment later the click of
+the door latch as the same man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered
+and halted abruptly at what he saw. But those within did not notice.
+Silent as the night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete
+Sweeney, they were staring at those two actors there before them.
+
+"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller of my own
+age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to hear you say it.
+I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt Wagner."
+
+Again within the room there was silence, and again from without there
+approached an interruption. From up the street, from out the door of Red
+Jenkins's joint it came; the patter, patter of many feet, leading it the
+heavy clump of mighty cowhide boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the
+jingle of spurs on those same boots at every step, the deep breathing of
+a cowman intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
+doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and nearer.
+Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had noticed. The
+arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In the depths of his
+pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly, nervously. His face had
+gone whiter than before. Once he had opened his lips to speak, revealing
+the blackness of the vacant tooth; but he had closed them again
+silently. Now at last he cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a
+long breath. Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew.
+What if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
+at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street swung
+open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it, blocking it,
+appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman, while upon their ears,
+like the menacing bellow of an enraged bull, burst a voice--the
+challenging, bullying voice of Pete Sweeney, inebriate.
+
+"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was no answer
+repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"
+
+For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction while
+every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker; at first
+almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the interruption
+came over them, with sensations as divergent as their various individual
+minds. There was no need to tell them who looked at that towering,
+intruding figure that tragedy lurked in the air, that death on the
+slightest provocation, at the twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in
+those big twin Colts lying menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic
+escaped was a pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with
+Pete Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god--bull
+mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
+hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad from the
+soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to the bulging
+holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt around his waist,
+to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red silk handkerchief about his
+throat, to the dark unshaven face, to the drink-reddened nose, to the
+mere slits of eyes, to the upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of
+wiry hair; bad in detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.
+
+"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence he came a
+step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart. "What've you got to say
+for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker meeting. Speak up. What're you all
+doin' here?"
+
+Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red Bud Smith.
+
+"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained evenly.
+
+"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes. "You lie by
+the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of skunks." From man to
+man he passed the look, halted at last at the figure of the lanky
+Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to pot me, and I'm lookin' to
+see the colour of his hair. Who was it, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as before Smith
+spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do. You can own the whole
+county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend to your knittin'. Dad here
+wants to close up, now."
+
+"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon as you
+name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted, dropped like
+claws on the figure of the little land man. "You know who it is I'm
+lookin' for. Tell me his name."
+
+"You don't know me very well, Pete."
+
+"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was inspecting
+the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its paws. "In other
+words, you mean you know, but won't tell me." Lingeringly, baitingly,
+almost exultingly, he was dragging the _dénouement_ on and on. "That's
+what you mean to imply, is it?"
+
+"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's body
+twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even tone.
+There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime, knowing as he
+knew that but one man present could interfere to prevent, that that man
+wouldn't, he spoke those four words: "You've guessed it, Pete." And but
+minutes before Manning had called this man coward!
+
+For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain
+failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal;
+then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension,
+came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible,
+unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took
+place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it
+was done. They only knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had
+reached the single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at
+the same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that the
+odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting slowly
+toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a curtain that once
+raised made them shudder, made their blood run cold, for it revealed
+there, stretched on the floor, huddled as it had dropped, lifeless,
+motionless, the figure of the man who had refused, the weazened face of
+Land Man Bud Smith! All this they realised in that first second; then
+something that was almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man
+who had done this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the
+only means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two great
+revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now. As swiftly
+as that horrible thing had been done he had gone sober. Yet no man who
+saw him that instant feared him one whit less. Not a man present,
+believer or scoffer, but breathed a silent prayer. And there was reason.
+If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete, had possessed a real friend on earth, he
+possessed that one no more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but
+friends--there had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant
+of oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend; murdered
+him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his tracks. Not another
+had done this thing but he himself, he, Cowman Pete. Small wonder that
+they who watched this man prayed, that surreptitious glances sought for
+an avenue of escape where there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner
+went whiter and whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon
+the floor, there would be a reckoning,--and what that reckoning would be
+God alone could tell!
+
+And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary movement, he
+had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the
+breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at
+that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably,
+with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have
+forgotten the others' presence, seemed at their mercy; and to the mind
+of Walt Wagner there came a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand
+came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his
+hip; advanced and halted and advanced again, reached almost--almost--.
+
+"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a snarl: the
+snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your breeches or by
+God--"
+
+No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as though
+drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.
+
+"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had known was
+but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's son of you. Step
+lively."
+
+They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them
+there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a
+trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge,
+stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat
+market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the
+tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall,
+smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed,
+at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up
+they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons
+to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another
+time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that
+mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other
+menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous. It
+was ghastly in its confession of impotence, in its mute acquiescence to
+another's will.
+
+The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete
+did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling
+from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids
+narrowing, moment by moment. A long half minute he waited, gloating on
+their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption. A
+step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless. A
+hand tried the knob of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on
+the panel.
+
+Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but the
+narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the unshaven jaws
+tightened.
+
+Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.
+
+This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's hand moved to
+the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands," snarled a voice.
+
+Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted in air.
+
+"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another followed, until
+there were not two but twelve.
+
+"Make a move, damn you,"--one of the revolvers had returned to its
+holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,--"and I'll drop you, every
+cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I swing the next
+second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand
+returned to the holster. "Come in, you idiot," he challenged into the
+darkness without, "come in and take your medicine with the rest."
+
+Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open doorway,
+peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw nothing; then of a
+sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily, noiselessly on moccasined
+feet, entered a brand new actor, advanced half across the room, while
+his eyes adjusted themselves to the light, halted curiously. Back of him
+that instant the door again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty
+bolt grating in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded
+the snarl the others knew so well.
+
+"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin' here?"
+
+Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer turned. From
+his height of six feet one, an inch below that of Pete himself, he
+returned the other's look fixedly, without answer. He wore a soft
+flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown corduroy trousers, supported by
+a belt. Unconsciously, as though he were alone, he hitched the corduroys
+up over his narrow hips, in the motion of one who has been riding. That
+was all.
+
+Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable disfigurement.
+Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.
+
+"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his voice was
+almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to you. What the
+devil are you here for?"
+
+No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or a muscle.
+
+Ten seconds passed, fifteen.
+
+"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with an
+effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of a rusty
+spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the habit of doin'
+that either, pard." He halted and his great chest heaved with the effort
+of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned a bit forward. "Tell me what
+you want here, and tell me quick, or by the eternal I'll fill you so
+full of holes your own mother wouldn't recognise you."
+
+One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed
+upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the
+flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."
+
+At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant in the
+career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded room. No need to
+tell seven of them at least that it was a moment of life or death. If
+something, something which seemed inevitable, happened, if one of those
+curling, itching fingers on the triggers tightened, if but once that
+took place, their lives were not worth the wording of a curse. If once
+again that black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there
+would be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
+cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and man by
+man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The jaws of Bob
+Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from beneath their
+sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling
+pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips
+as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved,
+but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted
+from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like
+an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
+uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
+before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a
+somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the
+line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world.
+Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he--but for his clothes, his
+most intimate friend would not have recognised him at that moment. In
+him, blind, racking terror was personified. To have saved his soul he
+could not keep still, and his heavy walking shoes grated as they
+shuffled on the rough floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood
+in his mouth and trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes,
+like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
+constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.
+If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
+hundred times over and over that second.
+
+Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
+no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
+that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
+kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
+thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
+doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
+blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
+was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
+soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
+unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
+Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
+fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
+took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
+from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
+Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
+mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
+Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
+he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
+that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
+but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
+better--
+
+But we anticipate.
+
+"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.
+
+But he heard nothing:--yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe, catlike figure
+straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw this same figure look
+at him fully, squarely; as though for the first time really conscious of
+his presence. He saw two unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek
+bones, out of a copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them;
+hold them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
+owner of those eyes move--he did not hear, there was no sound, not even
+a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw--and move toward him. He
+saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to pass a prostrate body on
+the floor; always silent, but always coming, always drawing nearer. He
+saw this thing, he, Pete Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was
+terror. He knew what it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had
+sworn to do; the muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but
+he made no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
+unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this man. As
+his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
+preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the message
+that would make the muscles tense; but he could not. Those two eyes were
+holding him and he could not. All this he knew; and all the while that
+other was coming nearer and nearer. He began to have a horror of that
+coming that he could not halt. The great unshaven jaw of him worked;
+worked spasmodically, involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a
+sudden felt cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands.
+Something he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
+others like those six in the background, began to grip him; something
+that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden weak--weak as he
+had never felt before. And still those eyes were upon him, still that
+dark face came closer and closer. Once more his brain sent the message
+to kill, once more he battled against the inevitable; and that message
+was the last. There was no more response than if he were clay, than if
+his muscles were the muscles of another man. In that instant, without
+the voicing of a word, the deed was done. That instant came the black
+chaotic abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence,
+his arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now, so
+near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace himself,
+tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming, which he read on the
+page of that other face. But he was too late. Watching, almost doubting
+their own eyes, the six saw the end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden
+clench, shoot out like a brown light. They heard an impact, and a second
+later the thud of a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter
+lift, stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
+for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck true.
+That was all.
+
+For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence, inaction. Then
+for the first time the victor turned, facing the spectators.
+Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an instant almost
+curiously,--but he did not smile. Twelve arms, that had forgotten to
+lower, were still in the air--but he did not smile. Instead he sought
+out the stranger in knickerbockers and blouse.
+
+"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to the B.B.
+ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this he?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+Well out upon the prairie, clear of the limits of the tiny town, two men
+were headed due west, into the night, apparently into the infinite.
+There was no moon, but here, with nothing to cast a shadow, it was not
+dark. The month was late October, and a suggestion of frost was in the
+air: on the grass blades of the low places, was actually present. As was
+all but usual at that day, the direction they were going bore no trace
+of a road; but the man astride the vicious-looking roan cayuse who led
+the way, the same copper-brown man with the corduroys of Bob Manning's
+store, showed no hesitation. Like a hound, he seemed to discern
+landmarks where none were visible to the eye. He rode without saddle or
+blanket, or spur, or quirt; yet, though he had not spoken a word from
+the moment they had started, the roan with the tiny ears had not broken
+its steady, swinging, seemingly interminable lope, had scarcely appeared
+conscious of his presence. Almost as unit seemed this beast and human.
+It was as though the man were born in his place, as though, like a
+sailor on a tiny boat, accustomed through a lifetime to a rolling,
+uncertain equilibrium, the adjustment thereto had become involuntary as
+a heart beat, instinctive as breathing. A splendid picture he made there
+in the starlight and the solitude; but of it the man who followed was
+oblivious. Of one thing alone he was conscious, and that was that he was
+very tired; weary from the effect of an unusual exercise, doubly
+exhausted in the reaction from excitement passed. With an effort he
+urged his own horse alongside the leader, drew rein meaningly.
+
+"Let's hold up a bit," he protested. "I've come twenty-five miles to-day
+already, and I'm about beat." He slapped the breast pocket of his coat a
+bit obviously, and as his companion slowed to a walk, produced a
+silver-mounted, seal-covered flask and proffered it at arm's length.
+"The cork unscrews to the left," he explained suggestively.
+
+The dark figure of the guide made no motion of acceptance, did not even
+glance around.
+
+"Thanks, but I never drink," he declined.
+
+"Not even to be sociable,"--the hand was still extended,--"not when I
+ask you as--a friend?"
+
+"I am a Sioux," simply. "I have found that liquor is not good for an
+Indian."
+
+For a second the white man hesitated; then with something akin to a
+flush on his face, he returned the flask to his pocket untasted.
+
+Again, without turning, the other observed the motion.
+
+"Pardon me, but I did not mean to prevent you."
+
+He spoke stiffly, almost diffidently, as on unused to speech with
+strangers, unused to speech at all; but without a trace of embarrassment
+or of affectation.
+
+"I do not judge others. I merely know my people--and myself."
+
+Again the stranger hesitated, and again his face betrayed him. He had
+scratched an aborigine, and to his surprise was finding indications of a
+man.
+
+"I guess I can get along without it," shortly. "I--" he caught himself
+just in time from framing a self-extenuation. "I didn't have time--back
+there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for what you did. I wish to
+do so now." He was looking at the other squarely, as the smart civilian
+observes the derelict who has saved his life in a runaway. Already,
+there under the stars, it was difficult to credit to the full that
+fantastic scene of an hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real
+man, of condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a
+nasty mess, and I appreciate it."
+
+No answer. No polite lie, no derogation of self or of what had been
+done. Just silence, attentive, but yet silence.
+
+For the third time the white man hesitated, and for the third time his
+face shaded red; consciously and against his will. Even the starlight
+could not alter the obtrusive fact that he had cut a sorry figure in the
+late drama, and his pride was sore. Extenuation, dissimulation even,
+would have been a distinct solace. Looking at the matter now, the
+excitement past, palliation for what he had done was easy, almost
+logical. He had not alone conformed. He had but done, without
+consideration, as the others with him had done. But even if it were not
+so, back in the land from which he had come, a spade was not always so
+called. His colour went normal at the recollection. The habitual, the
+condescending pressed anew to the fore.
+
+He inspected the silent figure at his side ingenuously, almost
+quizzically; as in his schoolboy days he had inspected his plodding
+master of physics before propounding a query no mortal could answer.
+
+"I know I waved the white flag back there as hard as any of them," he
+proffered easily. "I'm not trying to clear myself; but between you and
+me, don't you think that Pete was merely bluffing, there at the end when
+you came?" The speaker shifted sideways on the saddle, until his weight
+rested on one leg, until he faced the other fair. "The fellow was drunk,
+irresponsibly drunk, at first, when the little chap stirred him up; but
+afterwards, when he was sober.... On the square, what do you think he
+would have done if--if you hadn't happened in?"
+
+For so long that Craig fancied he had not given attention to the
+question, the guide did not respond, did not stir in his seat; then
+slowly, deliberately, he turned half about, turned and for the first
+time in the journey met the other's eyes. Even then he did not speak;
+but so long as he lived, times uncounted in his after life, Clayton
+Craig remembered that look; remembered it and was silent, remembered it
+with a tingling of hot blood and a mental imprecation--for as indelibly
+as a red-hot iron seals a brand on a maverick, that look left its
+impress. No voice could have spoken as that simple action spoke, no
+tongue thrust could have been so pointed. With no intent of discourtesy,
+no premeditated malice was it given; and therein lay the fine sting, the
+venom. It was unconscious as a breath, unconscious as nature's joy in
+springtime; yet in the light of after events, it stood out like a signal
+fire against the blackness of night, as the beginning of an enmity more
+deadly than death itself, that lasted into the grave and beyond. For
+that silent, unwavering look set them each, the red man and the white,
+in their niche; placed them with an assurance that was final. It was a
+questioning, analytic look, yet, unconcealed, it bore the tolerance of a
+strong man for a weak. Had that look been a voice, it would have spoken
+one word, and that word was "cad."
+
+For a moment the two men sat so, unconscious of time, unconscious of
+place; then of a sudden, to both alike, the present returned--and again
+that return was typical. As deliberately as he had moved previously, the
+Indian faced back. His left arm, free at his side, hung loose as before.
+His right, that held the reins, lay motionless on the pony's mane. In no
+detail did he alter, nor in a muscle. By his side, the white man
+stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit, until his
+horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation, sent the rowels of
+his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank, with a curse held the
+frightened beast down to a walk. That was all, a secondary lapse, a
+burst of flowing, irresponsible passion like a puff of burning
+gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was enough. In that second was told
+the tale of a human life. In that and in the surreptitious sidelong
+glance following, that searched for an expression in the boyishly soft
+face of his companion. But the Indian was looking straight before him,
+looking as one who has seen nothing, heard nothing; and, silent as
+before the interruption, they journeyed on.
+
+A half hour slipped by, a period wherein the horses walked and galloped,
+and walked again, ere the white man forgot, ere the instinct of
+companionship, the necessity of conversation, urban-fostered, gained
+mastery. Then as before, he looked at the other surreptitiously, through
+unconsciously narrowed lids.
+
+"I haven't yet asked your name?" he formalised baldly, curtly.
+
+The guide showed no surprise, no consciousness of the long silence
+preceding.
+
+"The Sioux call me Ma-wa-cha-sa: the ranchers, How Landor."
+
+Craig dropped the reins over his saddle and fumbled in his pockets.
+
+"The Indian word has a meaning, I presume?"
+
+"Translated into English, it would be 'the lost pappoose.'"
+
+The eyebrows of the Easterner lifted; but he made no comment.
+
+"You have been with my uncle, with Mr. Landor, I mean, long?"
+
+"Since I can remember--almost."
+
+The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor produced a
+pipe and lit it. It took three matches.
+
+"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting a girl.
+Bess he called her, was it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in getting it
+alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking out of doors.
+
+"Do you like this country, this--desert?" he digressed suddenly.
+
+"It is the only one I know."
+
+"You mean know well, doubtless?"
+
+"I have never been outside the State."
+
+Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was habitual.
+
+"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere that it
+were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern cemetery than
+to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning to believe it."
+
+No comment.
+
+"I suppose you will leave though, some time," pressed the visitor. "You
+certainly don't intend to vegetate here always?"
+
+"I never expect to leave. I was born here. I shall die here."
+
+Once more the shoulders of the Easterner lifted in mute thanksgiving of
+fundamental difference. Of a sudden, for some indefinite reason, he felt
+more at ease in his companion's presence. For the time being the sense
+of antagonism became passive. What use, after all, was mere physical
+courage, if one were to bury it in a houseless, treeless waste such as
+this? The sense of aloofness, of tranquil superiority, returned. He even
+felt a certain pleasure in questioning the other; as one is interested
+in questioning a child. Bob Manning's store and Pete Sweeney were
+temporarily in abeyance.
+
+"Pardon me, if I seem inquisitive," he prefaced, "but I'll probably be
+here a month or so, and we'll likely see a good deal of each other. Are
+you married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will be, though." It was the ultimatum of one unaccustomed to
+contradiction. "No man could live here alone. He'd go insane."
+
+"I eat at the ranch house sometimes, but I live alone."
+
+"You won't do so, though, always." Again it was the voice of finality.
+
+The Indian looked straight ahead into the indefinite distance where the
+earth and sky met.
+
+"No, I shall not do so always," he corroborated.
+
+"I thought so." It was the tolerant approval of the prophet verified.
+"I'd be doing the same thing myself if I lived here long. Conformity's
+in the air. I felt it the moment I left the railroad and struck
+this--wilderness." Once again the unconscious shoulder shrug. "It's an
+atavism, this life. I've reverted a generation already. It's only a
+question of time till one would be back among the cave-dwellers. The
+thing's in the air, I say."
+
+Again no comment. Again for any indication he gave, the Indian might not
+have heard.
+
+Craig straightened, as one conscious that he was talking over his
+companion's head.
+
+"When, if I may ask, is it to be, your marriage, I mean?" he returned.
+"While I am here?"
+
+For an instant the other's eyes dropped until they were hid beneath the
+long lashes, then they returned to the distance as before.
+
+"It will be soon. Three weeks from to-day."
+
+"And at the ranch, I presume? My uncle will see to that, of course."
+
+"Yes, it will be at the ranch."
+
+"Good! I was wondering if anything would be doing here while I was
+here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and adjusted
+the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do you--your
+people--celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a bit ignorant on
+the point."
+
+"Celebrate? I don't think I understand." The Easterner glanced at his
+companion suspiciously but the other man was still looking straight
+ahead into the distance.
+
+"You have a dance, or a barbecue or--or something of that sort, don't
+you? It's to be an Indian wedding, is it not?"
+
+Pat, pat went the horses' feet on the prairie sod. While one could count
+ten slowly there was no other sound.
+
+"No, there will be no dance or barbecue or anything out of the ordinary,
+so far as I know," said a low voice then. "It will not be an Indian
+wedding."
+
+Craig hesitated. An instinct told him he had gone far enough. Lurking
+indefinite in the depths of that last low-voiced answer was a warning, a
+challenge to a trespasser; but something else, a thing which a lifetime
+of indulgence had made almost an instinct, prevented his heeding. He was
+not accustomed to being denied, this man; and there was no contesting
+the obvious fact that now a confidence was being withheld. The latent
+antagonism aroused with a bound at the thought. Something more than mere
+curiosity was at stake, something which he magnified until it obscured
+his horizon, warped hopelessly his vision of right or wrong. He was of
+the conquering Anglo-Saxon race, and this other who refused him was an
+Indian. Racial supremacy itself hung in the balance: the old, old issue
+of the white man and the red. Back into the stirrup went the leg that
+hung over the saddle. Involuntarily as before he stiffened.
+
+"Why, is it not to be an Indian wedding?" he queried directly. "You
+seemed a bit ago rather proud of your pedigree." A trace of sarcasm
+crept into his voice at the thinly veiled allusion. "Have you forsaken
+entirely the customs of your people?"
+
+Pat, pat again sounded the horses' feet. The high places as well as the
+low bore their frost blanket now, and the dead turf cracked softly with
+every step.
+
+"No, I have not forsaken the customs of my people."
+
+"Why then in this instance?" insistently. "At least be consistent, man.
+Why in this single particular and no other?"
+
+The hand on the neck of the cayuse tightened, tightened until the tiny
+ears of the wicked little beast went flat to its head; then of a sudden
+the grip loosened.
+
+"Why? The answer is simple. The lady who is to be my wife is not an
+Indian."
+
+For an instant Craig was silent, for an instant the full meaning of that
+confession failed in its appeal; then of a sudden it came over him in a
+flood of comprehension. Very, very far away now, banished into remotest
+oblivion, was Pete Sweeney. Into the same grave went any remnants of
+gratitude to the other man that chanced to remain. Paramount, beckoning
+him on, one thought, one memory alone possessed his brain: the
+recollection of that look the other had given him, that look he could
+never forget nor forgive. "Since you have told me so much," he
+challenged "you will probably have no objection to telling me the lady's
+name. Who is it to be?"
+
+Silence fell upon them. Far in the distance, so far that had the white
+man seen he would have thought it a star, a light had come into being.
+Many a time before the little roan had made this journey. Many a time he
+had seen that light emerge from the surface of earth. To him it meant
+all that was good in life: warmth, food, rest. The tiny head shook
+impatiently, shifted sideways with an almost human question to his rider
+at the slowness of the pace, the delay.
+
+"That light you see there straight ahead is in the ranch house,"
+digressed the Indian. "It is four miles away."
+
+Again it was the warning, not a suggestion, but positive this time; and
+again it passed unheeded.
+
+"You have forgotten to answer my question," recalled Craig.
+
+Swift as thought the Indian shifted in his seat, shifted half about;
+then as suddenly he remembered.
+
+"No, I have not forgotten," he refuted. "You tell me you have already
+heard of Bess Landor. It is she I am to marry."
+
+At last he had spoken, had given his confidence to this hostile stranger
+man; not vauntingly or challengingly, but simply as he had spoken his
+name. Against his will he had done this thing, despite a reticence no
+one who did not understand Indian nature could appreciate. Then at
+least it would not have taken a wise man to hold aloof. Then at least
+common courtesy would have called a halt. But Clayton Craig was neither
+wise nor courteous this night. He was a great, weary, passionate child,
+whose pride had been stung, who but awaited an opportunity to retaliate.
+And that opportunity had been vouchsafed. Moreover, irony of fate, it
+came sugar coated. Until this night he had been unconscious as a babe of
+racial prejudice. Now of a sudden, it seemed a burning issue, and he its
+chosen champion. His blood tingled at the thought; tingled to the tips
+of his well-manicured fingers. His clean-shaven chin lifted in air until
+his lashes all but met.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me,"--his voice was a bit higher than normal and
+unnaturally tense,--"do you mean to tell me that you, an Indian, are to
+marry a white girl--and she my cousin by adoption? Is this what you
+mean?"
+
+Seconds passed.
+
+"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss the matter
+further."
+
+"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the family it is
+my right, and I demand an answer."
+
+Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would not be long
+until they were home now.
+
+"Yes," answered the Indian.
+
+"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again the
+silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."
+
+Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a red flood,
+that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about him.
+
+"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I live, and
+if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is white, you'll not
+marry her. If it's the last act of my life, I'll prevent you!"
+
+The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not. Beat, beat,
+beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until the hot blood fairly
+roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not until the challenge was spoken
+did he realise to the full what he had done, that inevitable as time
+there would be a reckoning. Now in a perfect inundation, the knowledge
+came over him, and unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move.
+Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
+reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's store,
+the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding thereto,
+recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now
+irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might against the feeling, a
+terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind,
+unreasoning, primitive terror. But one impulse possessed him: to be
+away, to escape the outburst he instinctively knew was but delayed. In
+an abandon he leaned far forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur
+dug viciously into his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan
+from the surprised beast, a forward leap--then a sudden jarring halt.
+As by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another hand.
+
+"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do that. It will
+only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the same hand, stopped
+there on the prairie. The riders were face to face. "I have tried to
+prevent this, for the sake of the future, I have tried; but you have
+made an understanding between us inevitable, and therefore it may as
+well be now." The voice halted and the speaker looked at his companion
+fixedly, minutely, almost unbelievingly. "I know I am not as you white
+men," went on the voice. "I have been raised with you, lived my life so
+far with you; yet I am different. No Indian would have done as you have
+done. I cannot understand it. Not three hours ago I saved your life. It
+was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and yet already you have
+forgotten, have done--what you have done." So far he had spoken slowly,
+haltingly; with the effort of one to whom words were difficult. Now the
+effort passed. "I say I cannot understand it," he repeated swiftly. "Mr.
+Landor has been very good to me. For his sake I would like to forgive
+what you have done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it;
+but I cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your people
+have conquered my people, have penned them up in reservations to die;
+but that is neither your doing nor mine. We are here as man to man. As
+man to man you have offered me insult--and without reason." For the
+first time a trace of passion came into the voice, into the soft brown
+face. "I ask you to take back what you have just said. I do not warn
+you. If you do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to
+take it back."
+
+He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips were
+twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.
+
+Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
+perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's mane.
+
+"Will you not take it back?" he asked.
+
+Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+That was all--and it was not all. For an instant after the Easterner had
+spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they were, face to face;
+then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a very different scene: one
+as old and as new as the history of man. Just what happened in that
+moment that intervened neither the white man nor the red could have
+told. It was a lapse, an oblivion; a period of primitive physical
+dominance, of primitive human hate. When they awoke--when the red man
+awoke--they were flat on earth, the dust of the prairie in their
+nostrils, the short catch of their breath in each other's ears, out one,
+the dark-skinned, was above. One, again the dark-skinned, had his
+fingers locked tight on the other's throat. This they knew when they
+awoke.
+
+A second thereafter they lay so, flaming eyes staring into their
+doubles; then suddenly the uppermost man broke free, arose. In his ears
+was the diminishing patter of their horses' hoofs. They were alone there
+on the prairie, under the smiling satiric stars. One more moment he
+stood so; he did not turn; he did not assist the other to rise; then he
+spoke.
+
+"I do not ask your pardon for this," he said. "You have brought it upon
+yourself. Neither do I ask a promise. Do as you please. Try what you
+have suggested if you wish. I am not afraid. Follow me," and,
+long-strided, impassive as though nothing had happened, he moved ahead
+into the distance where in the window of the Buffalo Butte ranch house
+glowed a light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+It was very late, so late that the sun entering at the south windows of
+the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of his bed when
+Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long been over, but
+throughout the unplastered ranch house the suggestion of coffee and the
+tang of bacon still lingered. At home those odours would have aroused
+slight sensations of pleasure in the man, even at this time of day; but
+now and here they were distinctly welcome, distinctly inviting. With the
+aid of a tin pail of water and a cracked queensware bowl, he made a
+hasty toilet, soliloquised an opinion of a dressing-room without a
+mirror, and descended the creaking stairs to the level below.
+
+The main floor of the ranch house contained but three rooms. Of these,
+it was the living-room which he entered. No one was about. The pipe
+which he had smoked with his uncle before retiring the night before
+remained exactly as he had put it down. His cap and gloves were still
+beside it. Obviously there was no possibility of breakfast here, and he
+moved toward the adjoining room. On his way he passed a hook where upon
+arrival he had hung his riding blouse. Telltale with its litter of dust
+and grass stems, it hung there now; and unconsciously he scowled at the
+recollection it suggested.
+
+Opening the door, he was face to face with a little fast-ticking cheaply
+ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven, and the man grimaced
+tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human was present, but here the
+indications for material sustenance were more hopeful. It was the
+dining-room, and, although in the main the table had been cleared, at
+one end a clean plate, flanked by a bone-handled knife and fork and an
+old-fashioned castor, still remained. Moreover, from the third room, the
+kitchen, he could now hear sounds of life. The fire in a cook-stove was
+crackling cheerily. Above it, distinct through the thin partition, came
+the sound of a girlish voice singing. There was no apparent effort at
+time or at tune; it was uncultivated as the grass land all about; yet in
+its freshness and unconsciousness it was withal distinctly pleasing. It
+was a happy voice, a contented voice. Instinctively it bore a suggestion
+of home and of quiet and of peace; like a kitten with drowsy eyes
+purring to itself in the sunshine. A moment the visitor stood silent,
+listening; then, his heavy shoes clumping on the uncarpeted floor, he
+moved toward it. Instantly the song ceased, but he kept on, pushed open
+the door gently, stepped inside.
+
+"Good-morning!" he began, and then halted in an uncertainty he seldom
+felt among women folk. He had met no one but his uncle the previous
+night. Inevitably the preceding incident with his guide had produced a
+mental picture. It was with the expectation of having this conception
+personified that he had entered, to it he had spoken; then had come the
+revelation, the halt.
+
+"Good-morning!" answered a voice, one neither abnormally high nor
+repressedly low, the kind of voice the man seldom heard in the society
+to which he was accustomed--one natural, unaffected, frankly interested.
+The owner thereof came forward, held out her hand. Two friendly brown
+eyes smiled up at him from the level of his shoulder. "I know without
+your introducing yourself that you're Mr. Craig," she welcomed. "Uncle
+Landor told me before he left what to expect. He and Aunt Mary had to go
+to town this morning. Meanwhile I'm the cook, and at your service," and
+she smiled again.
+
+For far longer than civility actually required, to the extreme limit of
+courtesy and a shade beyond, in, fact, until it unmistakably sought to
+be free, Clayton Craig retained that proffered hand. Against all the
+canons of good breeding he stared. Answering, a trace of colour,
+appearing at the brown throat, mounted higher and higher, reached the
+soft oval cheeks, journeyed on.
+
+"I beg your pardon," apologised the man. He met the accusing eyes
+fairly, with a return of his old confidence. "You had the advantage of
+me, you know. I was not forewarned what to expect."
+
+It was the breaking of the ice, and they laughed together. The girl had
+been working with arms bare to the elbow, and as now of a sudden she
+rolled the sleeves down Craig laughed again; and in unconscious echo a
+second later she joined. Almost before they knew it, there alone in the
+little whitewashed kitchen with the crackling cook-stove and the
+sunshine streaming in through the tiny-paned windows, they were friends.
+All the while the girl went about the task of preparing a belated
+breakfast they laughed and chatted--and drew nearer and nearer. Again
+while Craig ate and at his command the girl sat opposite to entertain
+him, they laughed and chatted. Still later, the slowly eaten meal
+finished, while Elizabeth Landor washed the dishes and put everything
+tidy and Craig from his seat on the bottom of an inverted basket
+reversed the position of entertainer, they laughed and chatted. And
+through it all, openly when possible, surreptitiously when it were wise,
+the man gave his companion inspection. And therein he at first but
+followed an instinct. Very, very human was Clayton Craig of Boston,
+Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and very, very good to look upon was
+brown-eyed, brown-skinned, brown-haired Elizabeth Landor. Neither had
+thought of evil, had other thought than the innocent pleasure of the
+moment that first morning while the tiny clock on the wall measured off
+the swift-moving minutes. Good it is to be alive in sun-blessed South
+Dakota on a frosty warm October day, doubly good when one is young; and
+these two, the man and the girl, were both young. Months it takes, years
+sometimes, in civilisation, with barriers of out on the prairie, alone,
+with the pulse of nature throbbing, throbbing, insistently all about,
+the process is very swift, so swift that an hour can suffice. No, not
+that first hour wherein unconsciously they became friends, did the angel
+with the big book record evil opposite the name of Clayton Craig; not
+until later, not until he had had time to think, not until--.
+
+But again we anticipate.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," the girl had ejaculated, "now when you have."
+At last the work was over, and in unconscious comradery they sat side by
+side on the broad south doorstep; the sun shining down full upon their
+uncovered heads--smiling an unconscious blessing more potent than
+formula of clergy. She was looking out as she spoke, out over the level
+earth dazzling with its dancing heat waves, mysterious in its suggestion
+of unfathomable silence, of limitless distance. "It's such a little time
+now before I am going away, and Uncle Landor has talked of you so much,
+particularly of late." A pause, a hesitating pause. "I suppose you'll
+laugh at me, but I hope you'll stay here, for a time, anyway, after I'm
+gone."
+
+Clayton Craig, the listener, was not gazing out over the prairie. The
+object at which he was looking was very near; so near that he had leaned
+a trifle back the better to see, to watch. He shifted now until his
+weight rested on his elbow, his face on his hand.
+
+"You are going away, you say?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes. I supposed you knew--that Uncle had told you." Despite an effort,
+the tiny ears were reddening. She was very human also, was Elizabeth
+Landor. "I am to be married soon."
+
+"Married?" A long pause. "And to whom, please?" The voice was very low.
+
+Redder than before burned the tiny ears. No more than she could keep
+from breathing could she prevent telling her secret, her happiness, this
+prairie girl; no more than she could prevent that accompanying telltale
+scarlet flood.
+
+"You didn't know it, but you've met him already," she confided. "You met
+him last night." To her at this time there was no need of antecedent.
+There was but one to whom the pronoun might refer. "It was he who showed
+you here--How Landor."
+
+For a long time--for he was thinking now, was Clayton Craig, and did not
+answer--there was silence. Likewise the girl, her confession voiced,
+said no more; but her colour came and went expectantly, tantalisingly,
+and the eyes that still looked into the distance were unconscious of
+what they saw. From his place the man watched the transparent pantomime,
+read its meaning, stored the picture in his memory; but he did not
+speak. A minute had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was
+thinking of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had
+received--and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl, but it
+was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big shaggy-haired
+collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his aimless wandering about
+the place to thrust a friendly muzzle into the stranger's hand; but even
+then he did not respond. For almost the first time in his irresolute
+life a definite purpose was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig,
+and little things passed him by. A third minute passed. The colour had
+ceased playing on the face he watched now. The silence had performed its
+mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was
+prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the volume and
+made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke.
+
+"I met him last, night, you say?" It was the hesitating voice of one
+whose memory is treacherous, "I have been trying to recall--Certainly
+you must be mistaken. I saw no one last night except Uncle Landor and an
+Indian cow-puncher with a comic opera name." He met the brown eyes that
+were of a sudden turned upon him, frankly, innocently. "You must be
+mistaken," he repeated.
+
+Searchingly, at first suspiciously, then hesitatingly, with a return of
+the colour that came as easily as a prairie wind stirs the down of a
+milk-weed plant, Elizabeth Landor returned his look. It was an instinct
+that at last caused her eyes to drop.
+
+"No, I was not mistaken," she voiced. "How Landor is an Indian. It is he
+I meant."
+
+For a carefully timed pause, the space in which one recovers from
+hearing the unbelievable, Craig was silent; then swiftly, contritely he
+roused. "I beg a thousand pardons," he apologised. "I meant no
+disrespect. I never dreamed--Forgive me." He had drawn very near. "I
+wouldn't hurt you for the world. I--Please forgive me." He was silent.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive." The girl's colour was normal again and she
+met his eyes frankly, gravely.
+
+"But there is," protested the man humbly. "Because he happened to be
+minus a collar and had a red skin--I was an ass; an egregious,
+blundering ass."
+
+"Don't talk that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know him, was all.
+If you had been acquainted all your life as I have--" Against her will
+she was lapsing into a defence, and she halted abruptly. "You were not
+at fault."
+
+Again for a carefully timed pause the man was silent. Then abruptly,
+obviously, he changed the subject.
+
+"You said you were going away," he recalled. "Is it to be a wedding
+journey?"
+
+"Yes," tensely.
+
+"Tell me of it, please; I wish to hear."
+
+"You would not be interested."
+
+"Elizabeth--" syllabalised, reproachfully. "Am I not your cousin?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Haven't you forgiven me yet?" The voice was very low. Its owner was
+again very near.
+
+"You'd laugh at me if I told you," repressedly. "You wouldn't
+understand."
+
+Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away--resumed the former position;
+the place from which, unobserved, he could himself watch.
+
+"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly, reluctantly.
+Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right. "Just the two of us
+are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse and a tent and How's camp
+kit and stay out there alone until winter comes." Against her will she
+was warming to the subject, was unconsciously painting a picture to
+please the solitary listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and
+plenty to read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never
+carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game whenever we
+want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when we please." Again
+unconsciously she glanced at the listener to see the effect of her art.
+"We'll be together, How and I, and free--free as sunshine. There'll be
+nothing but winter, and that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's
+what I've always wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes
+away every year, and he's promised this once to take me along."
+Suddenly, almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her
+companion. "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.
+
+"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of listlessness
+in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want anything at any time you
+can go to the nearest ranch house. One always does forget something you
+know."
+
+"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly. "That's the
+best of it all. The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch that way, to the
+west, until you get to the Hills. We probably won't see another human
+being while we're gone. We'll be as much alone as though we were the
+only two people in the world."
+
+Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.
+
+"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I was
+thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for breakfast.
+And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly if I were changing
+my residence so frequently." He lifted from his elbow. "Pardon me again,
+though," he added contritely. "I always do see the prosaic side of
+things." The smile vanished, and for the first time he looked away,
+absently, dreamily. As he looked his face altered, softened almost
+unbelievably. "It would be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be
+alone, absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for
+most, the single person who always had the same likes and dislikes, the
+same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of such a thing before; it
+would be wonderful, wonderful!"
+
+No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face and her
+eyes were bright.
+
+"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig. Warmer and
+warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always envy other
+people the things we haven't ourselves; and I--" He checked himself
+abruptly.
+
+"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate, sympathetic,
+unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land. Just this she was; and
+another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad. Inevitably
+she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird
+responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.
+
+"Maybe it's true now--you think it is," she halted; "but there'll be a
+time--"
+
+"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed shortly,
+unmusically. "It's merely my lot."
+
+The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly for her
+as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it
+altered now under the cloud of another's unhappiness. But one suggestion
+presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her
+child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.
+
+The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.
+
+"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought differently,
+when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl I
+understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter how well
+I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch, never become
+necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm the only one of my
+kind, that I must go through life so--alone."
+
+Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as one child
+presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her companion's hands
+lay listless on his knee, and instinctively, compellingly, she placed
+her own upon it, pressed it softly.
+
+"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my own love,
+my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply couldn't help it,
+it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so sorry."
+
+Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at her. When
+he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his voice; but that
+was all.
+
+"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't know how
+lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a bit ago, shows
+me the other side of life, the happy side; and I wish I were dead." A
+mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The future looks so blank, so
+hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to me. Anything else would be
+preferable, anything. It's so to-day, now." He halted and of a sudden
+turned away so that his face was concealed. "God forgive me, but I wish
+it were over with, that I were dead!"
+
+"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful entirely, the
+girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could not prevent were in
+the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so good to be alive. You
+can't mean it. You can't."
+
+"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up. "What's
+the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else cares, ever will
+care. What's the use--"
+
+"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all of us here
+care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear to hear you." She
+halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose hinderingly in her throat.
+"I feel somehow as though I was to blame, as though if you should mean
+what you said, should--should--" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes
+glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her fingers
+locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless; then of a
+sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had suggested came
+over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve. Not the faintest
+suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his honesty, occurred to her, not
+the remotest doubt. In all her life no one had ever lied to her; she had
+never consciously lied to another. The world of subterfuge was an unread
+book. This man had intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant
+it. He would do it, unless--unless--
+
+"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still lying idle
+on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it, held it prisoner
+between her own. It was not a suggestion she was combating now. It was a
+certainty. "Promise me you won't do this thing." She shook the hand
+insistently; at first gently, then, as there was no response, almost
+roughly. "Tell me you won't do it. Promise me; please, please!"
+
+"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless absolutely; I
+never realised before how useless. You didn't intend to do it, but
+you've made me see it all to-day. I don't blame you, but I can't
+promise. I can't."
+
+Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a mountain,
+as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the prairie. For
+seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out, distorted seconds;
+then, interrupting, something happened. There was not a cloud in the
+sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun still shone bright as before;
+yet distinctly, undeniably, the man felt a great wet spattering drop
+fall from above upon his hand--and a moment later another. He glanced
+up, hesitated; sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of
+the little woman already standing.
+
+"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe it." He took
+her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's length; and the
+angel who watched halted with pen in air, indecisive. "We've known each
+other such a ludicrously short time--but a few hours. Can it be possible
+that you really meant that, that at least to someone it does really
+matter?" It was his turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no
+answer came. "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess,
+tell me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained
+its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively sought
+that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his ancestors, had
+done to similar chins in their day, lifted it until their eyes met. Had
+he been facing his Maker that moment and the confession his last,
+Clayton Craig could not have told whether it were passion or art, that
+action. "Tell me, Bess girl, is it mere pity, or do you really care?"
+
+Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers, meeting by
+chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's mind in the glitter
+of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so fantastic, so unexpected
+that for a moment the girl did not realise, did not understand. For an
+instant she stood so, perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and
+wider, opening wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what
+she feared--and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking,
+ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength of a
+captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second longer she stood
+there, not her chin alone, but her whole body trembling; then without a
+word she turned, mounted the single step, fumbled at the knob of the
+door. "Bess," said the man softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not
+glance back nor speak, and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard
+her slowly climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close
+behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain
+the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois
+and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception
+to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made
+his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob
+Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the
+free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held
+true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
+soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked
+above the knob of the door before him.
+
+"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like a strip
+of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the entrance, found it
+locked, and in lieu of entering tested the badge of sorrow between thumb
+and finger. "Pant stuff, sure enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob
+himself, or they'd have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now
+what in thunder, I wonder--"
+
+He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house. Like the
+general store, the door was closed, and just above the catch, flapping
+languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the mate to the black rag
+dangling at his back. The spectator's shaggy eyebrows tightened in
+genuine surprise, and with near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts
+of the short row of other buildings along the street.
+
+"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
+evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse with
+carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted, indecisive, and
+for the first time became conscious that not a human being was in sight.
+In the street before him a pair of half-grown cockerels with ludicrously
+long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from
+amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's
+meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
+physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of
+the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the
+present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet.
+Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin
+prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had
+hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal
+recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the
+sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead--.
+
+"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though another were
+listening. "There must have been a general cleanup this time. I fear
+that the report of my respected nephew--" He checked himself suddenly, a
+bit guiltily. Even though no one was listening, he was loath to voice an
+inevitable conclusion. Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at
+last, and, leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud
+citizens denominated the residence quarter--a handful of unpainted
+weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
+surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now, and as
+he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious satisfaction at
+the relief. At the second domicile, a residence as nearly like the first
+as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he turned in at the lane leading
+to the house unhesitatingly, and without form of knocking opened the
+door and stepped inside.
+
+The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its uncarpeted
+cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished, smoke-tinted walls. In it,
+to the casual observer, there were visible but four objects: an
+old-fashioned walnut desk that had once borne a top, but which did so no
+longer; two cane-bottomed chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one
+thereof, a man. The latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing
+an unshaven chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of
+which the lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie,
+and scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair
+was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though he
+looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the scrutiny,
+there was no salutation, not even when, without form of invitation, the
+rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and tossed his broad felt
+hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk. A moment they sat so, while
+with an effort the newcomer recovered his breath.
+
+"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated eventually. "I've
+noticed that the last place to look for a doctor is in the proximity of
+a funeral." He fumbled in his pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that
+in the other's mouth. "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather
+from the appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than
+ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face was
+concealed.
+
+"Rather," laconically.
+
+"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze had
+cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion appreciatively.
+"I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I think she can be trusted
+to attend to such little matters."
+
+Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes were
+observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two men known
+each other these five years.
+
+"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family," commented
+Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper, any time." Again
+the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't decided yet to prove the
+fact for yourself, have you?"
+
+Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that had
+brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent. Only too
+well he knew the signs--the good-natured satire that ill concealed a
+tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of trivialities that cleared the
+way later of non-essentials. In silence he waited; and, as he had known
+the moment that big figure appeared in the doorway, it came.
+
+Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as deliberately
+flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his side, inspected the
+burning tuck critically.
+
+"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow--an old fellow like
+myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his business as
+an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with canvas curtains such
+as you've seen me drive sometimes." The speaker paused a second to clear
+his throat. "Supposing this old fellow was just riding through the
+country easy, taking his time and with nothing particular on his mind,
+and all of a sudden he should feel as though someone had sneaked up and
+stuck him from behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should
+happen, and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go
+black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much later,
+and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig and the team
+stock still out in the middle of the prairie." Deliberately as it had
+left, the cigar returned to the speaker's lips, was puffed hard until
+it glowed furiously; and was again critically examined. "Supposing such
+a fat old fellow as myself should tell you this. As a doc and a
+specialist, would you think there was something worth while the matter
+with him?"
+
+Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his fingers
+sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a goodly collection
+of its mates, and the drooping eyelid tightened.
+
+"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the second time,
+and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking, should be spilled out
+and have to foot it home three miles. What would you think then?"
+
+One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash off his
+vest absently.
+
+"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.
+
+"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my nephew when
+the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I sent How over
+instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy to come a couple of
+weeks ago--that's when it caught me first."
+
+"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"
+
+Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the ranch. Mary'd
+have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out to shoot at a coyote,
+and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at the other explanatorily,
+deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's son and the only real relative I
+have, you know. I just asked him to come on general principles."
+
+Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he fumbled amid a
+litter of articles useful and useless, and, extracting a battered
+stethoscope, shifted his chair forward until it was close to the other
+and stuck the tiny tubes to his ears. Still without comment he opened
+the rancher's shirt, applied the instrument, listened, shifted it,
+listened, shifted and listened the third time--slid his chair back to
+the former position.
+
+"What else do you know?" he asked.
+
+Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.
+
+"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father went that
+way when he was younger than I am, and his father the same." The stogie
+had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a fresh one steadily. "I've
+been expecting it to catch up with me for years."
+
+"Your father died of it, you say?"
+
+"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in
+sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I
+remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed
+sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and
+Frances--that's my sister--were waiting, and they sent me running to
+call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself up and
+work. I was starved hungry, and I remember I hot-footed it proper
+upstairs to his den and threw open the door." Puff! puff! went the big
+stogie. "An Irish plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I
+recollect," he completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that
+day to this."
+
+"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.
+
+"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing the opening
+anthem at the time."
+
+The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared impassively out
+the single window. It faced the main street of the town.
+
+"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed evenly. "I
+see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's place."
+
+Landor did not look around.
+
+"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he recalled in mock
+sarcasm. "What I want to know is your opinion."
+
+"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.
+
+Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal agony.
+
+"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be before--" he
+halted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"before Bob and the rest
+will be doing that to me?"
+
+Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes beneath the
+other's drooping lids.
+
+"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.
+
+Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws closed
+tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned the other's
+gaze.
+
+"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed. "Tell me,
+and let's have it over with."
+
+For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black eyes
+bored the other through and through, at first impersonally, as, scalpel
+in hand, he would have studied a patient before the first incision in a
+major operation; then, as against the other's will, a great drop of
+sweat gathered on the broad forehead, personally, intimately.
+
+"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated evenly. He
+did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was about to say, did
+not qualify in advance by intimating that his prognosis might be wrong.
+"I think the next attack will be the last. Moreover, I believe it will
+come soon, very soon." Impassively as he had spoken, he produced a book
+of rice paper from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long
+fingers were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a
+machine. Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame
+was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly smoke
+separated him from the other.
+
+With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, passed his sleeve
+across his forehead clumsily.
+
+"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I said, I
+expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For the second time
+his cigar was dead, but he did not light it again. There was no need of
+subterfuge now. "I want you to do me a favour." He looked at the other
+steadily through the diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"
+
+"No," said Chantry.
+
+Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.
+
+"No!" he interrogated.
+
+"I said so."
+
+A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as, with an
+effort, he got to his feet.
+
+"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly. "I was
+labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."
+
+The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long fingers had
+locked over his knee. He did not move.
+
+"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am your friend
+that I will not promise."
+
+Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.
+
+"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm dense."
+
+"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one thing I
+can't promise you."
+
+Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.
+
+"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of your
+affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"
+
+"Yes. But how in the world--" "Don't ask it then, please," swiftly. He
+ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else, someone you've known
+for a long time."
+
+"I've known you for a long time--five years."
+
+"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry scouted the
+obvious. "If there should be need she could get a lawyer from the
+city--"
+
+"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to avoid.
+Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of taking care of
+themselves as they have of speaking Chinese. They'd be on the county
+inside a year, with no one interested to look out for them."
+
+"But How--"
+
+"He's as bad. He can ride a broncho, or stalk a sandhill crane where
+there isn't cover to hide your hat, or manage cattle, or stretch out in
+the sun and: dream; but business--He wouldn't know a bank cheque if he
+saw one; and, what's worse, he doesn't want to know."
+
+"Craig, then, your nephew--" It was not natural for Chantry to be
+perfunctory, and he halted.
+
+For a moment the big rancher was silent. In his lap his fingers met
+unconsciously, tip to tip, in the instinctive habit of age.
+
+"I anticipated that," he said wearily. "I realise it's the obvious thing
+to do. I never adopted How as I did the girl--I was willing to, but he
+didn't see the use--and so Craig's the only man kin I have." The life
+and magnetism, usually so noticeable in Landor's great figure, had
+vanished. It was merely an old man facing the end who settled listlessly
+into his seat. "I had big hopes of the boy. I hadn't seen him since he
+was a youngster, and Frances, while she lived, was always bragging about
+his doings. That's why I sent for him." Pat, pat went the big fingers in
+his lap against each other. "I've always felt that if worst came to
+worst the women folks would have someone practical to rely on; but
+somehow, when I saw him last night, from what he said and what he didn't
+say, from the way he acted and the way he explained--what happened here
+last evening--" The speaker caught himself. A trace of the old
+shrewdness crept into the grey eyes as he inspected his companion
+steadily. "I know How pretty well, and when someone intimates to me that
+he is a grand-stand player, or goes out of his way to pick a quarrel, or
+meddles with someone else's affairs--" Again the big man caught himself.
+The scrutiny became almost a petition. "I cut you off short about what
+went on here yesterday," he digressed. "I didn't want to hear. I guess I
+was afraid to hear. It's been foolish, I know, but I've depended a good
+deal upon the boy, and I'm afraid he's going to be a--disappointment."
+
+With the old machine-like precision Chantry rolled another cigarette,
+lit it, sent a great cloud of smoke tumbling up toward the ceiling. That
+was all.
+
+"You see for yourself how it is," said the rancher. "I wouldn't ask you
+again if there was anyone else I could go to; but there isn't. Maybe I'm
+only borrowing trouble, maybe there won't be anything for you or anyone
+to do; but it would be a big load off my mind to know that if anything
+should happen.--" He halted abruptly. It was not easy for this man to
+discuss his trouble, even to a friend. "It isn't such a big thing I'm
+asking," he hurried. "I'm sure if positions were reversed and you were
+to request me--"
+
+"I know you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I--" Of a sudden,
+interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin, ungainly figure in
+shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the point of caricature.
+Unconsciously he started pacing back and forth across the room,
+restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the years he had previously known
+the man had Landor seen him so, seen him other than the impassive,
+almost forbidding practitioner of a minute ago. For the time being his
+own trouble was forgotten in surprise, and he stared at the
+transformation almost unbelievingly. Back and forth, back and forth went
+the thin, ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved,
+paused at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a
+silhouette looking out over the desolate town. Watching, Landor shifted
+uncomfortably in his seat. Once he cleared his throat as if to speak. An
+instinct told him he should say something; but he was in the dark
+absolutely, and words would not come. Reaching over to the desk he took
+up his broad felt hat and sat twirling it in his fingers, waiting.
+
+As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his seat. His
+face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid drooped even more
+than normally.
+
+"I feel I owe you an apology," he said swiftly. "In a way we've been
+friends, and as you say, it's not a big thing you ask of me; but
+nevertheless I can't grant it. Please don't ask me."
+
+The hat in Landor's hands became still, significantly still.
+
+"I admit I don't understand," he accepted, "but of course if you feel
+that way, I shall not ask you again." Unconsciously a trace of the
+former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose heavily. "I think
+I'd better be going." His mouth twitched in an effort at pleasantry.
+"Mary'll be dying to give me the details."
+
+Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume his seat.
+Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest squarely.
+
+"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said repressedly.
+"Would you like to hear?"
+
+"Yes--if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to, however--"
+
+"No, I'd rather you--understood than to go that way." The doctor cleared
+his throat in the manner of one who smokes overmuch. "We all have our
+skeleton hid away somewhere, I suppose. At least I have mine, and it
+keeps bobbing out at times like this when I most wish--" He caught
+himself, met his companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you
+wondered why I ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried
+suddenly. "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
+don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there was
+something peculiar about it all?"
+
+"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving again. He
+had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it tolerantly, with a
+vague sense of commiseration--an attitude very similar to that with
+which the uninitiated observe a player at golf; but that there might be
+another, a sinister meaning--.
+
+"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem peculiar, now that
+you consider it?" The question came swiftly, tensely, with a
+significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell me, please."
+
+"Yes, perhaps; but--"
+
+"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but see." The
+speaker started anew the restless, aimless pace. "The country is full of
+us; all new countries are." He was still speaking hurriedly, tensely, as
+we tell of a murder or a ghastly tragedy; something which in duty we
+must confide, but which we hasten to have over. "It's easier to get here
+than to Mexico or to Canada, and until the country is settled, until
+people begin to suspect--" He halted suddenly opposite the other, his
+face deathly pale, deathly tortured. "In God's name, don't you
+understand now?" he questioned passionately. "Must I tell you in so many
+words why I refused, why I don't dare do anything else but refuse?"
+
+"No, you don't need to tell me." Absently, unconsciously, the rancher
+produced a red bandana handkerchief and wiped his face; then thrust it
+back into his pocket. "I think I understand at last." His eyes had
+dropped and he did not raise them again to his companion. "I'm sorry,
+very sorry, that I asked you; sorry most of all that--" He halted
+diffidently, his great hands hanging loose at his side, his broad
+shoulders drooping wearily. He was not glib of speech, at best, and this
+second blow was hard to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant,
+searching for words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the
+door. "I really must be going," he concluded.
+
+Chantry did not ask him to stay, made no motion to prevent his going.
+Tense, motionless, he stood where he had last paused, waited in silence
+until the visitor's hand was upon the knob.
+
+"Good-bye Landor," he said then simply.
+
+Not the words themselves, but something in the tone caused the rancher
+to halt, to look back.
+
+"Good-day, you mean, rather," he corrected.
+
+"No, good-bye. You will not see me again."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"No. I'm too much of a coward for that, or I should have done so long
+ago. I merely mean I'll move on to-morrow."
+
+Face to face the two men stood staring at each other. Seconds drifted
+by. It was the doctor who spoke at last.
+
+"God knows that if I could, I'd change with you even now, Landor," he
+said repressedly. "I'd change with you gladly." A moment he stood so,
+tense as a wire drawn to the point of breaking, ghastly tense; then of a
+sudden he went lax. Instinctively his fingers sought his pockets, and
+there where he stood he started swiftly to roll a cigarette.
+
+"Go, please," he requested. "Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+Eight miles out on the prairie, out of sight of the Buffalo Butte ranch
+house--save for a scattering herd of grazing cattle in the distance, and
+a hobbled mouse-coloured broncho feeding near at hand, out of sight of
+every living thing--a man lay stretched full length upon the ground. It
+was the time of day that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's
+store, and the broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to
+keep the glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket;
+an Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a blot
+of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his moccasined
+feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would have thought him
+asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes that looked forth
+motionless from beneath the hat brim, that apparently never for an
+instant left that scattering blot where, distorted, fantastic from
+distance and through the curling heat waves the herd grazed, were very
+wide awake indeed. They were not even drowsy or off guard. They were
+merely passive, absolutely passive. The whole body was passive,
+motionless, relaxed in every muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the
+marvel--to all save the thousandth human in this restless age, the
+impossibility. To be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely
+nothing, not even sleep--seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one
+of the most difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need
+is sufficient; but man, modern man--Here and there one retains the
+faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth; but
+here and there only. Yet it was such an one that lay alone out there on
+the Dakota prairie that October day; one who, as Craig had said, hinted
+unfortunately of comic opera, but who never, even in remotest
+conception, fancied that comic opera existed, a dreamer and yet,
+notwithstanding, a doer, an Indian, and still not an Indian;
+Ma-wa-cha-sa by name.
+
+With the approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now, wandering
+northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane and tail, set each
+individual hair of the little beast vibrating in unjustified ferocity;
+and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the brittle grass stalks at the
+man's feet with the muffled crackling of a far-distant prairie fire. The
+herd, a great machine cutting clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in
+its path, moved on and on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling
+country, and passed slowly from view; then, still moving forward, took
+shape on the summit of the next rise, more distinct than before.
+
+Time passed as the man lay there, time that to another would have been
+interminable, that to him was apparently unnoted. Gradually, as the full
+heat of the day approached, the breeze became stronger, set the heat
+waves dancing to swifter measure, sang audibly in the listener's ears
+its siren song of prairie and of peace. The broncho, its appetite
+temporarily satisfied, lay down fair in its tracks, groaned lazily in
+the action, and shut its eyes. It was the rest time of the wild, and the
+same instinct appealed to the leader of the distant herd. Down it went
+where it stood as the pony had done, disappeared absolutely from view. A
+moment later another followed, and another, and another. It was almost
+uncanny, there in the fantastic glimmer, that disappearance. In the
+space of minutes, look where one would, the horizon was blank. Where the
+herd had been there was nothing, not even a blot. It was as the desert,
+and the vanished herd a mirage. It was like the far northland tight in
+the grip of winter, like the ocean at night. It was the Dakota frontier
+at midday.
+
+Again time passed and, motionless as at first, wide eyed, the man lay
+looking out. The pony was sound asleep now. Its nostrils widened and
+narrowed rhythmically and it snored at intervals. Save for this and the
+soft crackle of the grass and the aeolian song of the wind the earth was
+still; still as death; so still that, indescribably soft as it was
+immeasurably distant, the man detected of a sudden against it a new
+sound. But he did not stir. The black eyes looked out motionless as at
+first. He merely waited a minute, two--and it came again; a bit louder
+this time, more distinct, unmistakable.
+
+This time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy
+blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his
+body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning
+back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the
+sky, motionless as a prairie boulder.
+
+Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley, a chorus.
+It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance; but nearer than
+before and approaching closer second by second. Not from the earth did
+it come, but from the air. Not by any stretch of the imagination was it
+an earthly sound, but aërial. It was an alien note and still it was not
+alien. There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
+distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote was the
+keynote of the time and place, its message was their message, the thrill
+it bore to the listener the thrill of the whole. It was not a musical
+call, that steadily approaching sound. No human being has ever been able
+to locate it in pitch or metre; yet to such as the listening man upon
+the ground, to those who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless
+the sweetest, most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note
+which will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
+the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
+impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the man heard
+drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was the swelling,
+diminishing note of the migrant on its way south, of the grey Canada
+honker en route from the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within a half
+mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its
+makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys,
+louder and louder, confused as children's voices at play; then in turn
+diminishing, retreating. Very mystifying to one who did not understand
+would have been that augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting
+human boulder it was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he
+knew every movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
+broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
+sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To all wild
+things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile high in the air as
+inevitably as to the beast on earth instinct had said "halt." They were
+still going southward, still drawing nearer and nearer; but it would not
+be for long. Already they were circling, descending, searching here and
+there for a place to alight, to rest. Suspicious even here, they were
+taking their time; but distinct now amid the confusion was the sound of
+their great wings against the denser air, and the "Honk! honk! honk!"
+was a continuous chatter.
+
+Circle after circle made the flock. Once their noise all but ceased, and
+the listener fancied for an instant they were down, but in a moment it
+was resumed louder than before, and he knew they were still a-wing.
+"Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" They were very near indeed, so
+near that the sleeping pony was aroused at the clamour and, lifting its
+head, looked about curiously.
+
+"Honk! honk! honk! Flap! flap! Swish!" Between the sun and the watcher
+there fell a moving shadow and another--then a multitude. The clamour
+was all-surrounding, the flap of great wings a continuous beating, the
+whistle of air like that in a room with a myriad buzzing electric fans.
+Temporarily the prairie breeze was lost; swallowed up in the greater
+movement. Surprised, for the moment frightened, the broncho sprang to
+his feet--paused irresolute. For an instant the sky was hid. Overhead,
+to right, to left, all-obscuring, was nothing but a blot of great grey
+bodies, of wide wings lighter on the under surface, of long, curious
+necks, of dangling feet; then, swiftly as it had come it passed; the sun
+shone anew; the cloud and the shadow thereof, going straight in the face
+of the wind, wandered on. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" they
+repeated; but it was the voice of departure. The thing was done. There
+on the level earth, fair in view, they had passed overhead within twenty
+feet of their arch-enemy, man; and had not known. Now less than a
+quarter of a mile away they were circling for the last time. One big
+gander was already down and stretching his long neck from side to side.
+Another, with a great flapping of wings, was beside him; and another,
+and another. The prairie wind carried along the sound of their chatter;
+but it was subdued now, entirely different from the clamour of a bit
+ago. Against the blue of the sky where they had been a blot only, the
+curling, dancing heat waves arose. One and all had answered the siesta
+call.
+
+Up to this time the man who watched had not stirred. As they had gone
+over, the wide-open eyes had stared up at them; but not in the twitching
+of a muscle had the long body betrayed him. Not even now that it was
+over did he move. Instead, low at first, then louder, a whistle sounded.
+The pony, wide awake now, was grazing contentedly; but he paused. The
+whistle sounded for the third time, and reluctantly he drew near, halted
+obediently. Then at last there was action. With one motion the Indian
+was on his feet. Swiftly as it was spread the blanket was rolled and
+replaced in the waterproof pouch with the remnants of the lunch and a
+book of odds and ends which he carried always with him. The whole was
+strapped to the pony's bare back. As swiftly the hobble was removed and,
+not a minute from the time the last bird was down, the man and the
+beast, the latter only visible from the direction in which they were
+going, were moving on a zigzag, circuitous trail toward the resting yet
+ever-watchful flock before them.
+
+On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his body even
+with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through the wind-tossed
+mane. First to the right, then to the left they tacked, halting at
+intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will halt now and then to feed;
+but never losing the general direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer
+and nearer. A half hour passed by and in it they covered forty
+rods--half the distance. Thirty minutes more elapsed and they had
+crossed an equal portion of the remaining space. Then it was they halted
+and a peculiar thing happened.
+
+The wind had gradually risen during the day, and now, the middle of the
+afternoon, was blowing steadily. Light objects unattached move easily
+across the level prairie at this time of year, and here and there under
+its touch one after another of a particular kind were already in motion.
+Fluffy, unsubstantial objects they were, as large as a bushel measure
+and rudely circular. Looking out over the level earth often a half dozen
+at a time were visible, rolling and halting and rolling again on an
+endless journey from nowhere to nowhere. They were the well-named tumble
+weeds of the prairie; as distinctive as the resting flock of late
+autumn, of approaching winter. One of these it was now that came
+tumbling in lazily from the south and, barely missing the indifferent
+birds themselves, dawdled languidly on toward the pony beyond. On it
+came, would have passed to the right; but, under an impulse he in no way
+understood, the broncho moved to intercept it. Fair in its path, the
+little beast would still have shifted to give it right of way, for the
+weed is very prickly; but again the authority he did not question held
+him in his place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came
+together. Then it was the _finale_ began, the real test, the matching of
+human cunning and animal watchfulness.
+
+Left alone there upon the prairie, the indifferent broncho resumed its
+feeding. Away from it, foot by foot, so slowly that a careful observer
+could barely have seen it stir, moved the great weed. No animal on the
+face of earth save man himself would have been suspicious of that
+natural blind; even he would have overlooked it had he not by chance
+noted that while every other of its kind was moving with the wind, it
+slowly but surely was advancing against it. The scene where the drama
+was taking place was level as a floor, the grazed grass that covered it
+scarcely higher than a man's hand; yet from in front not an inch of the
+Indian's long body was visible, not a sound marked its advance. In
+comparison with its movement time passed swiftly; a third half hour
+while it was advancing ten rods. Already the short autumn afternoon was
+drawing to a close. The sun was no longer uncomfortably hot. The heat
+waves had ceased dancing. In sympathy the prairie breeze, torn of the
+sun, was becoming appreciably milder. As certainly as it had come, the
+brief rest period was drawing to a close.
+
+But the long figure that gave the blind motion showed no haste. Inch by
+inch it advanced, never still, yet never hurrying. The great
+unsuspicious birds were very near now, so near that a white hunter
+would have lost his equanimity in anticipation. Through the meshwork of
+the blind the stalker counted them. Twenty-seven there were together,
+and near to him another, a sentinel. He was within half the distance of
+a city block of the latter, so close that he could see the beady,
+watchful eyes, the pencillings of the plumage, the billowing of feathers
+as the long neck shifted from side to side. Verily it was a moment to
+make a sportsman's blood leap--to make him forget; but not even then did
+the Indian show a sign of excitement, not for a minute did the lithe
+body cease in its soundless serpentine motion. It was splendid, that
+patient, stealthy approach, splendid in its mastery of the still hunt;
+but beyond this it was more, it was fearful. Had an observer been where
+no observer was, it would inevitably have carried with it another
+suggestion--the possibilities of such a man were a real object, one
+vital to his life, and not a mere pastime, at stake. What would this
+patient, tireless, splendid animal do then? What if another man, his
+enemy, were the object, the quarry?
+
+The rest time at last was over. Insidiously into the air had crept a
+suggestion of coolness, of approaching night. In the background the pony
+ceased feeding, stood patiently awaiting the return of its rider. Far in
+the distance, the herd, a darker blot against the brown earth, were once
+more upon their feet. The flock, that heretofore like a group of
+barnyard fowls in the dust and the sun had remained indolently resting
+and preening their plumage, grew alert. One after the other they began
+wandering here and there aimlessly, restlessly. The subdued chatter
+became positive. Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a
+challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings tentatively,
+and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The cycle was all but
+complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them south, that
+had for this brief time sent them to earth, was calling again. In
+sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went still. Another minute,
+another second even, perhaps, and they would be gone. Through the filmy
+screen the stalker saw it all, read the meaning. He had ere this drawn
+unbelievably near. Barely the width of a narrow street separated him
+from the main flock--less than the breadth of a goodly sized room the
+motionless sentinel. It was the moment for action.
+
+And action followed. Like a mighty spring the slim muscular body
+contracted in its length. Toes and fingers dug into the earth like a
+sprinter awaiting the starting pistol. He drew a long breath. Then of a
+sudden, straight over the now useless blind, unexpected, startling as a
+thunderclap out of a cloudless sky, directly toward the nearest bird
+bounded a tall brown figure, silent as a phantom. For a second the
+entire flock stared in dumb paralytic surprise; then following there
+came a note of terror from eight and twenty throats that rose as one
+voice, that over the now silent prairie could have been heard for
+miles. It was the signal for action, for escape, and, terror-mad, they
+broke into motion. But a flock of great Canada geese cannot, like quail,
+spring directly a-wing. They must first gather momentum. This they
+attempted to gain--in its accomplishment all but one succeeded. That
+one, the leader, the sentinel, was too near. Almost before that first
+note of terror had left his throat the man was upon him. Ere he could
+rise two relentless hands had fastened upon his beating wings and held
+him prisoner. Hissing, struggling, he put up the best fight he could;
+but it was useless. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" shrilled the
+flock now safe in the air. "Honk! honk! honk!" as with wings and feet
+they climbed into the sky. "Honk! honk! honk!" softer and softer. "Honk!
+honk! honk!" for the last time, faint as an echo; and they were gone.
+Behind them the human and the wild thing his prisoner stood staring at
+each other alone.
+
+For a long, long time neither moved. Its first desperate effort to
+escape past, the bird ceased to struggle, stood passive in its place;
+passive as the man himself had remained there on the ground a few hours
+before. Its long neck swayed here and there continuously, restlessly,
+and its throat was a-throb; but no muscle of the body stirred. It had
+made its fight--and lost. For the time being resistance was fatuous, and
+it accepted the inevitable. Silent as its captor, it awaited the move of
+the conqueror. It would resist again when the move came, resist to the
+last ounce of its strength; but until then in instinctive wisdom it
+would husband its energy.
+
+Yet that move was very slow in coming. It was the time of day when
+ordinarily the herder collected his drove and returned toward the home
+corral; still he showed no intention of haste. The broncho was shaking
+his head at intervals restlessly; too well trained to leave, yet
+impatient as a hungry child for the return--and was ignored. For the
+time being the man seemed to have forgotten all external considerations.
+Not savagely nor cruelly, but with a sort of fascination he stood gazing
+at this wild thing in his power. For a long, long time he did nothing
+more, merely looked at it; looked admiringly, intimately. No trace of
+blood hunger was in his face, no lust to kill; but pure
+appreciation--and something more; something that made the two almost
+kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike. Each was
+graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of its kind physical
+perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of the wild; of solitude,
+of magnificent distances. Each was a part of its setting; as much so as
+the all-surrounding silence. Last of all, each stood for one quality
+dominant, one desire overtowering all others; and that was freedom,
+unqualified, absolute.
+
+Long as it was they stood there so, the bird was true to its instinct of
+passive inaction. It was the human that made the first move. Gently,
+slowly, one hand freed itself, stroked the silky soft plumage; stroked
+it intimately, almost lovingly--as an animal mother caresses its young.
+The man did not speak, made no sound, merely repeated the motion again
+and again. Under the touch the restless head became still, the watchful
+black eyes more watchful. That was all. Slowly as it had moved before,
+the man's hand shifted anew, passed down, down, the glossy throat to the
+breast--paused over the heart of the wild thing. There it remained, and
+for the first time a definite expression came into the mask-like face; a
+look of pity, of genuine contrition. A moment the hand lay there; then,
+childish as it may seem, absurd, if you please, the man spoke aloud.
+
+"You're afraid of me, deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he queried
+softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a cannibal, I'm going
+to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into the black eyes--deep,
+mysterious as the wild itself. "You think this, and still you don't
+grovel, don't make a sound. You're brave, birdie, braver than most men."
+He paused, and one by one his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of
+you; so proud that I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his
+full height. Unconsciously his arms folded across his chest. "Go,
+birdie; you're free."
+
+A moment longer there was inaction. Unbelieving, still a captive, the
+great bird stood there motionless as before; then of a sudden it
+understood; it was free. By some chance, some Providence, this great
+animal, its captor, had lost the mastery, and it was free.
+Simultaneously with the knowledge the pent-up energy of the last minutes
+went active, fairly explosive. With a mighty rush it was away; feet and
+wings beating the earth, the air. Swifter and swifter it went, gaining
+momentum with each second. It barely touched the frost-brown prairie; it
+cleared it entirely, it rose, rose, with mighty sweeps of mighty wings.
+Oh, it was free! free! free! "Honk! honk!" Free! free! "Honk! honk!
+honk!"
+
+Like a statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot
+on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at last into the
+all-surrounding brown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor returned that
+evening. The herd safely corralled for the night, he rode slowly toward
+the ranch house, and, without leaving the pony's back, opened and closed
+the gate of the barb wire fence surrounding the yard and approached the
+house. There was a bright light in the living-room, and, still without
+dismounting, he paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs.
+Landor, looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her
+hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his feet
+on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking a cigarette,
+and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the room looked blue.
+Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not finding conversation easy,
+and the former appeared distinctly bored. Neither Landor himself nor the
+girl was anywhere visible, and, after a moment, the spectator moved on
+around the corner. The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the
+kitchen, and the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing
+at last under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It
+was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim light was
+burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the barebacked broncho
+hesitated, looking up; then rolling his wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder
+he moved very close to the weather-boarded wall. The building was low,
+and, by stretching a bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the
+second story. He tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.
+
+No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.
+
+Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.
+
+Still no answer.
+
+Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit frosty, the pony
+stamped impatiently.
+
+"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me good-night?"
+
+This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash was
+opened; a face appeared, very white against the black background.
+
+"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.
+
+The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was unrolled.
+
+"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not sick?"
+
+"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired, is all."
+
+For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his black head
+bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed human that he was,
+there seemed to him nothing now to say, nothing adequate. Meanwhile the
+pony was growing more and more impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the
+half-frozen ground rhythmically.
+
+"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit there in the
+window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."
+
+The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.
+
+"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade closed as
+before.
+
+For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of head,
+motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a sound, and
+at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own quarters.
+
+The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the Buffalo Butte
+ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room shack, grudgingly
+built according to government requirements to prove up on a homestead,
+it had recently been enlarged by the addition of a second larger room,
+and as a whole the place further improved by the building of a sod and
+weather-board barn. The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted
+with the tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had
+remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor himself
+could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for years, and in
+all that time, even in the coldest weather, the voluntary exile had
+never lived under a roof. Primitive or evolved as it might be, as youth
+and as man, the Indian was a tent-dweller. Just now the little house was
+being fitted up for occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of
+the day and at evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under
+eight by ten feet of canvas near at hand.
+
+A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against a dark
+horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house yard the man on
+the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that he had company; yet,
+characteristic in his every action, he did not hurry. Methodically he
+put up the pony in the new barn, fed and bedded him for the night. From
+the adjoining stall, out of the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish
+whine and the protest of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an
+observer would have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a
+pair of sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two
+gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible. It was
+to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps from his lunch
+remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the pony, he made a bed;
+then--though the little beast was only a grey prairie wolf, it was a
+baby and lonely--he knelt down and for a moment laid his own face
+against the other's softly shaggy face.
+
+When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there was a moist
+spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had inscribed its
+affection.
+
+On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man with his
+back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap and stepped
+inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the manner of one
+whose thoughts had been far away.
+
+"You're late to-night," he commented.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or expected,
+and the subject dropped.
+
+There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in silence the
+Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging opposite was burning
+low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the tin reflector so that the
+light would play on the scene of operations. Leaving the tent for a
+moment, he returned with a young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put
+it in a skillet to fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he
+produced a couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the
+opposite side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be
+dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that supper
+was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey red cloth was
+set, the odour of coffee--cheap coffee, yet surprisingly fragrant--was
+in the air, and the bird and potatoes were temptingly brown. It was
+almost uncanny the way this man accomplished things. Landor himself
+never ceased to marvel. How always seemed unconscious of what he was
+doing, seemed always thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a
+motion, and when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was
+so in small things. It was identical in large.
+
+Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a word had
+been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted hospitably.
+
+"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an early supper.
+I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."
+
+"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his seat
+wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."
+
+In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not press his
+invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's admission. Either
+would have been superfluous. Instead he ate with the hearty appetite of
+a healthy human, and thereafter, swiftly and methodically as he had
+prepared the meal, cleared the table and put all in order. Then at last,
+the fire replenished and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown
+within the radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the
+perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and awaited
+the something he knew had brought the other to him at this unusual hour.
+"There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of the little table at your
+right," he assisted.
+
+Landor roused with a trace of surprise.
+
+"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.
+
+"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the superfluous, the
+obvious explanation.
+
+Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and pressed the
+brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match he lit crackled
+explosively, and he started at the unexpected sound as one whose nerves
+were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still sat for a moment puffing hard.
+
+"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a favour.
+Will you promise me?"
+
+The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my power,
+yes, sir," he said.
+
+That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the relation of
+the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the younger, the trace of
+almost patriarchal respect that never left his manner when, addressing
+the elder. "If in my power, yes, sir."
+
+"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly. "It's
+simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of waiting until the
+day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though the speaker were uncertain
+whether or no to say more. "I have a particular reason for wishing it,"
+he completed inadequately.
+
+For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question was voiced;
+there was no probing of the confidence the other preferred not to give.
+
+"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.
+
+Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already glowing
+bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had done.
+
+"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong now, but
+nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day while I was in
+town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form, but I feel
+better to have things settled." With forced matter of factness he
+knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the grate and filled the
+bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any responsibility, so I left
+practically everything to Bess. I know that if anything should happen to
+me you'd take care of her mother."
+
+No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.
+
+"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very different
+from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher to-night, very
+obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear natural. "I know you'll
+make her happy, my boy."
+
+Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted uncomfortably.
+As well as he knew his own name he knew that his secret was secret no
+longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild thing that hides itself to die
+alone he avoided direct mention of the fact, direct wording of the
+inevitable. But something in the attitude of the motionless figure
+before him prevented further dissimulation. Some influence urged him to
+hasten the _dénouement_ which he knew was but postponed. With an effort
+he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the other's black
+eyes steadily.
+
+"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned directly.
+
+"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is that I'm
+sorry you did as you did."
+
+"Sorry, How?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Very sorry."
+
+"And why?"
+
+No answer.
+
+The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon the Indian's
+face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the corner by the stove was
+in shadow.
+
+"I will tell you why." He returned to his place and stretched himself as
+before, his hands locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr.
+Landor, and Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you
+will compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have
+seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."
+
+For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with a
+fragment of coal from the grate.
+
+"I don't see why, How," he refuted.
+
+"You do, though, sir."
+
+"No. Tell me."
+
+There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other would not
+answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black eyes fixed upon him
+unshiftingly.
+
+"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As we are now
+I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because--I love her." He
+paused, and into the tent there came the long-drawn-out wail of the baby
+prisoner. Silence returned. "As surely as that little wolf is lonely,
+Bess will know the trouble money brings if you do as you intend. Not
+myself, but other men will teach her."
+
+Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his fingers.
+
+"Once more I ask why, How?"
+
+The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.
+
+"Because she is white and they are white, and I--am an Indian."
+
+At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto
+succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no
+longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true.
+Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing--as they would
+do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a
+child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make
+it possible!
+
+Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move
+about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by
+inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been
+dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great
+hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last
+he turned.
+
+"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and understand the way
+you feel. God knows I wish it were different, wish I did not believe
+what you say true; but things are as the are. What we have to do now is
+the best thing possible under the circumstances." He sat down in the
+chair again heavily, his hands still locked in his lap. "If wrong has
+been done I am to blame, I myself, in raising you and Bess together. I
+might have known that it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for
+each other; but I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess--"
+
+"Mr. Landor--"
+
+The big man halted. For the first time he realised the admission of what
+he had been saying, the inevitable implication--and he was silent. For
+seconds likewise the Indian was still; but in them he was looking at the
+other steadily, in a way he had never looked at him before, with an
+intensity that was haunting.
+
+"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There was no anger
+in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes, pathos--terrible,
+gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else felt so--everyone except
+Bess herself; but you--you--I did not know that before, Mr. Landor."
+
+Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the bottom of
+his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in self-defence; but
+he could not. There was nothing to say.
+
+"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the repressed voice,
+"not even when at first you were slow to give your consent to our
+marriage. I fancied it was merely because you thought me impractical,
+because I cared nothing for a life that was different, was not my own.
+Nor again, even a bit ago when you asked me to promise--what I did
+promise--I did not suspicion such a thing. I thought it a compliment,
+the sincerest compliment I had ever received in my life: the fact that
+you should trust me so, with all that was dear to you in the world."
+Just perceptibly he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's
+face. "But I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You
+are like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that we've
+lived together for half a generation makes no difference. You're square,
+square to the end. You even like me in a way. You've given your word and
+won't go back on it; but nevertheless you're sorry. Even while you urge
+us to marry, to have the thing over, to have a responsibility off your
+mind, you feel you are sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a
+second, and even at this time Landor was conscious that it was
+infinitely the longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't
+blame you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
+race; but nevertheless, nevertheless--"
+
+The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes were of a
+sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at the roof of the
+tent. No power on earth could have made him complete that sentence, made
+him admit the deadly hurt it suggested. From the unusual confidence of a
+bit ago he merely lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive
+self. Yet as plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the
+difference, realised as well that while outwardly there would be no
+change, from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
+the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to exist. He
+had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the knowledge for the
+first time in the years they two had lived together he realised how much
+after all he had grown to depend upon this laconic human, how much he
+had lost. It was the last drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing
+straw. His great ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in
+his hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
+marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with his
+deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them, silence that by
+word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from the stable there
+sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a moment later, muffled,
+echo-like from the distance, the answering call of one of its own kind
+free upon the infinite prairie; but apparently neither man noticed,
+neither man cared--and the silence returned. Long minutes passed. The
+fire in the stove burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a
+suggestion of the coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without
+a word he put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were
+unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a moment
+he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of attempting an
+explanation where none was possible; but he realised it would but make
+matters worse, and desisted. The Indian, too, had arisen, and
+repressedly courteous, stood ready to open the flap of the tent for the
+other to pass. For a moment, the last moment they were ever to see each
+other alive, they stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each
+knowing that the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly,
+Landor took a step forward.
+
+The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he passed; then
+closed again, shutting him out.
+
+For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man remained
+as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an inanimate thing. The
+kerosene lamp was burning low now and sputtered dismally; but he did not
+notice, did not hear. For the third time, tremulous against the
+background of night and of silence, came the wail of the lonely little
+captive. It was a kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the
+figure responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute
+later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey, bright-eyed
+something, happy as a puppy at release and companionship. Methodically
+the man banked the coal fire and put out the lantern. He did not make a
+bed, did not undress. Instead, weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid
+the buffalo robes, lay still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed,
+inquiring nose in the darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no
+response, and becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the
+silent being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly--and likewise
+became still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+The darkness that precedes morning had the prairie country in its grip
+when Howard, the gaunt foreman of the B.B. ranch, drew rein before the
+silent tent, and with the butt end of his quirt tapped on the heavy
+canvas.
+
+"Wake up," he called laconically. "You're wanted at the ranch house."
+
+Echo-like, startling in its suddenness, an inverted V opened in the
+white wall and in it, fully dressed, vigilant, appeared the figure of
+its owner.
+
+"What is it?" asked a voice insistently.
+
+The Texan stared in unconcealed surprise.
+
+"In Heaven's name, man, don't you ever sleep?" he drawled. "The boss is
+dead," he added baldly at second thought.
+
+The black V closed again, and distinct in outline against the white
+background appeared the silhouette of the listener. His arms were folded
+across his chest in a way that was characteristic, and his moccasined
+feet were set close together. He spoke no word of surprise, asked no
+question; merely stood there in the silence and the semi-darkness
+waiting.
+
+The foreman was by no means a responsive soul, yet, watching, there
+instinctively crept over him a feeling akin to awe of this other silent
+human. There was the mystery of death itself in that motionless,
+listening shadow.
+
+"It was just before I came over to tell you that Mrs. Landor raised the
+house," he explained. "She woke up in the night and found the boss
+so--and cold already." Unconsciously his voice had lowered. "She
+screamed like a mad woman, and ran down-stairs in her nightdress,
+chattering so we could hardly understand her." He slapped at his baggy
+chaperajos with his quirt absently. "That's all I know, except there's
+no particular use to hurry. It's all over now, and he never knew what
+took him."
+
+Silently as before the aperture in the tent opened and closed and the
+listener disappeared; to reappear a moment later with a curled-up woolly
+bundle in his arms. Without a word of explanation he strode toward the
+barn, leaving Howard staring after him uncertainly. Listening, the
+latter heard a suppressed little puppyish protest, as though its maker
+were very sleepy, a moment later the soft, recognising whinny of a
+broncho, and then, startlingly sudden as the figure had first emerged
+from the tent, it appeared again, mounted, by his side.
+
+For half the distance to the ranch house not a word was said; then of a
+sudden Howard drew his horse to a walk meaningly.
+
+"I suppose it's none of my business," he commented without preface, "but
+unless I'm badly mistaken there'll be hell to pay around the Buffalo
+Butte now."
+
+Again, as at the tent door, his companion made no answer; merely waited
+for the something he knew was on the other's mind. The east was
+beginning to lighten now, and against the reddening sky his dark face
+appeared almost pale.
+
+Howard shifted in his saddle seat and inspected the ground at his right
+as intently as though there might be jewels scattered about.
+
+"The boss's relative--Craig," he added, "has taken possession there as
+completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead of been a
+visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the man's face an
+unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted characteristically. "I like you,
+How, or I wouldn't stick my bill into your affairs. That boy is going to
+make you trouble, take my word for it."
+
+Even then there was no response; but the overseer did not seem surprised
+or offended. Instead, the load he had to impart off his mind, his manner
+indicated distinct relief. But one thing more was necessary to his
+material comfort--and that solace was at hand. Taking a great bite of
+plug tobacco, a chew that swelled one of his thin cheeks like a wen, he
+lapsed into his normal attitude of disinterested reverie.
+
+The ranch house was lighted from top to bottom, abnormally brilliant,
+and as the Indian entered the odour of kerosene was strong in his
+nostrils. In the kitchen as he passed through were the other two
+herders. They sat side by side in uncomfortable inaction, their big
+sombreros in their hands; and with the suppression of those unused to
+death nodded him silent recognition. The dining-room was empty, likewise
+the living-room; but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled
+catch of a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative,
+the voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
+even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of the
+three who were already present knew that he was there.
+
+Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one corner of
+the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She did not look up
+as he entered, apparently did not see him, did not see anything. The
+first wild passion of grief past, she had lapsed into a sort of passive
+lethargy. Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the loose dressing
+sack she had put on, and now and then her thin lips trembled; but that
+was all.
+
+Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to the bed;
+shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done when Howard first
+broke the news, his feet came close together and his arms folded across
+his chest in characteristic, all-observing attention. Not a muscle
+moved, he scarcely seemed to breathe. He merely watched.
+
+And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at first
+beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised until the face
+was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as she had thrown herself
+down, her head all but buried from view, was the girl Bess. She was
+sobbing as though her heart would break: sobbing as though unconscious
+of another human being in the world. Above her, leaning over her, was
+the form of a man: Craig. His uncle had brought his belongings from the
+tiny town the day before, and even at this time his linen and cravat
+were immaculate. He was looking down at the little woman before him,
+looking and hesitating as one choosing between good and evil.
+
+"Bess," he was saying, "you must not. You'll make yourself sick.
+Besides, it's nearly morning and people will be coming. Don't do so;
+please!"
+
+No answer, no indication that he had been heard; only the muffled,
+racking, piteous sobs.
+
+"Bess," insistently, "Bess! Listen to me. I can't have you do so. Uncle
+Landor wouldn't like it, I know he wouldn't. He'd be sorry if he knew.
+Be brave, girlie. You're not alone yet."
+
+Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty, curved
+shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.
+
+The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face went very
+close.
+
+"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't let you
+cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl; infinitely too
+much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly, hurts me more than I
+can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated, and like an inexperienced
+gambler his face went tense and white. "You must listen to me,
+Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are others who will take care of
+you. I myself will take care of you, girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's
+something I must tell you, something you make me tell you now." Swiftly,
+unhesitatingly, he leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed
+about her and he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle,
+could not prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you
+two days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is
+why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love you!"
+
+This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the roof,
+came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living actors
+remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the
+tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting
+before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking
+at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in
+bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him
+tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the
+climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself
+into a man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the
+close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a sound,
+one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate--and again the first.
+Unexpected as death itself would have been at that instant, Craig felt
+two mighty irresistible hands close on his shoulders; close with a grip
+that all but paralysed. Irresistibly again he felt himself turned about,
+put upon his feet; realised of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly
+even to admit of a cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot
+distant, he was staring into the face of the one being on earth from
+whom he had most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully
+intervening, a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came
+between. The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.
+
+"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he didn't.
+Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive him--for my
+sake."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test kerosene still
+hung about the closed living-room where the same four people sat in
+council. No effort had as yet been made to put the place to rights, and
+in consequence it was stuffy and disordered and proportionately
+depressing. The mound of cigarette stumps which Craig had builded the
+night before lay unsightly and evil of odour on the table. The faded rag
+carpet was littered with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding
+blouse and cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat,
+which he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a
+chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences of
+his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two days'
+residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete possession.
+Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority in the past,
+concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That voice was speaking
+now.
+
+"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is buried in
+Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's father." The voice
+halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his other sister, who died
+years and years ago, are both there." Obviously, too obviously, he
+turned away until his face was hid. Into the voice there crept a throb
+that was almost convincing. "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure,
+even though he wouldn't have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned
+it the first night I came, but of course I didn't realise--then--" The
+voice was silent.
+
+As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no emotion, did
+not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain awakened, had she
+grasped the full meaning of the thing which had happened to her. Later,
+indefinitely later, the knowledge would come, and with it the hour of
+reckoning; but for the present she was a mere puppet in the play. Craig,
+the dominant, had told her to dress, and she had dressed. He had
+summoned her to the council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her
+now that he had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had
+entered, stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had
+spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.
+
+"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who cares for him
+or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was becoming unmanageable
+and the girl halted, winking hard. "It seems cruel."
+
+"Not if he would have wished it, Bess."
+
+"But if he hadn't wished it--"
+
+"I repeat I think he would." Craig shifted until his back was toward the
+other man. "I think that his mentioning the possibility at all, the
+first night I came, proves that he wished it."
+
+"Perhaps.... I don't know." ... A long pause; then of a sudden the girl
+arose and walked to the window. But subterfuge was from her a thing
+apart, and she merely leaned her face against the casement. "I can't
+bear to think of it," she trembled.
+
+Craig moved half way toward her; then remembered, and halted.
+
+"Yes, let's decide, and not talk about it," he returned swiftly. "You
+agree with me after all, don't you, Bess?"
+
+The girl did not look up.
+
+"Don't ask me. You and How and Aunt Mary decide." With an effort she
+resumed her former place; but even yet she did not glance at him.
+"Wherever you take him I shall go along, is all."
+
+Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.
+
+"Yes, I think he would have liked that. I ... You agree with me too,
+don't you, Aunt Mary?"
+
+The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up vacantly.
+"What?" she queried absently.
+
+Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.
+
+"Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me," she returned
+monotonously.
+
+In sympathy, the girl's brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig turned away
+almost impatiently. "Let's consider it settled then," he said.
+
+For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at Craig that she
+looked. It was at that other figure in the background, the figure that
+not once through it all had stirred or made a sound. "What shall we do,
+How? what ought we to do?" she asked.
+
+For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig recognise
+the other's presence by so much as a glance. Only the look of exultation
+left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids tightened perceptibly.
+
+"Don't consider what I think, Bess," said a low voice at last. "Do what
+you feel is right."
+
+It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who brought the
+decision to pass. How Landor, the Indian, it was who, alone in the
+dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man out decently, and for
+five dragging minutes thereafter, before the others had come, stood like
+a statue gazing down at the kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own
+that no living human had ever seen or would ever see. How Landor, the
+Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with the closely drawn
+canvas curtains, drove all that day and half the night to the nearest
+undertaker at the railroad terminus beyond the river, seventy-five miles
+away. How Landor, the Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses,
+but barely a pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail,
+and ere it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre,
+knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of Mary
+Landor he knew. How Landor it was once more who, before twenty-four
+hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the unwilling visitor
+by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch yard. Last of all, How
+Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the old surrey once more to the
+east, and with still another team before him and a cold lunch in his
+pocket, sat waiting within the hour to take the departing ones away.
+
+Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was superfluous.
+What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew. That he had expected
+what had taken place in his absence, his bringing Mrs. Burton proved. At
+last realisation had come, and Mary Landor was paying the price of the
+brief lethargic respite; paying it with usury, paying it with the
+helpless abandon of the dependent. The dreary weather-coloured ranch
+house was not a pleasant place to be in that day. Craig left it
+thankfully, with a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting
+topcoat, as the door closed behind him. The other passenger, the one who
+should have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth--.
+
+How Landor it was again who, when minutes of waiting had passed, minutes
+wherein Craig consumed cigarettes successively, tied the team and
+disappeared within doors. What he said none save the girl herself knew;
+but when he returned he was not alone, and though the eyes of his
+companion were red, there was in her manner no longer a trace of
+hesitation.
+
+The two passengers comfortably muffled in the robes of the rear seat,
+the driver buttoned the curtains tight about them methodically. The day
+was very still, not a sound came to them from over the prairie, and of a
+sudden, startlingly clear, from the house itself there came an
+interruption: the piteous, hopeless wail of a woman in a paroxysm of
+grief, and a moment later the voice of another woman in unemotional,
+comforting monotone.
+
+"How," said a choking, answering voice, "I can't go after all, I can't!"
+
+Within the carriage, safe from observation, her companion took her hand
+authoritatively, pressed it within his own.
+
+"Yes, you can, Bess," he said low. "Aunt Mary will have to fight it out
+for herself. You couldn't help her any by staying."
+
+But already the Indian was gone. Within the house as before, even
+keen-eared Mattie Burton failed to catch what he said. Had she done so,
+she would have been no wiser, for apparently that moment a miracle took
+place. Of a sudden, the hysterical voice was silent. The man spoke again
+and--the watcher stared in pure unbelief--her own hand in her
+companion's hand, Mary Landor followed him obediently out to the surrey.
+
+"We haven't any time to lose," he said evenly, as he drew back the flap
+of the curtain. "You'd better say good-bye now."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Bessie, girl. Bessie!"
+
+Again within the ranch house, Mary Landor sank into a seat with the
+utter weariness of a somnambulist awakened. Fully a half minute the
+Indian stood looking down at her. For one of the few times in his life
+his manner indicated indecision. His long arms hung loose from his
+shoulders. His wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes. The watcher thought he
+looked very, very weary. Then of a sudden he roused. Bending over--did
+he foresee what was to come, that moment?--he did something he had never
+done before.
+
+"Good-bye, mother," he said, and kissed her on the lips.
+
+The door closed behind him noiselessly, and a half minute later the
+loose-wheeled old surrey went rumbling past the door. Mrs. Burton was
+feminine and curious, and she went to the window to watch it from sight.
+The Indian, alone on the front seat, sat looking straight ahead. The
+bronchos, fresh from the stall, and but a few weeks before wild on the
+prairie, tugged at the bit wickedly, tried to bolt; but the driver did
+not stir in his place. The left hand, that held the reins, rose and fell
+with their motion, as an angler takes up slack in his line; that was
+all. The woman had lived long on the frontier. She was appreciative and
+pressed her face against the pane the better to see. They were through
+the gate now, well out on the prairie. The clatter of the waggon had
+ceased, the figure of the driver was concealed by the curtains; but the
+bronchos were still tugging at the bit, still--.
+
+"Mary! In heaven's name!" The sound of a falling body had caught her ear
+and she had turned. "Mary Landor!" The dishes in the cupboard against
+the wall shook as something heavy met the floor. "Mary!" A pause and a
+tongue-tied examination. "My God! The woman is dead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was ten minutes before starting time. The old-fashioned engine,
+contemptuously relegated to the frontier before going to the junk heap,
+was puffing at the side of the low sanded station platform. The rough
+cottonwood box was already in the baggage car. How himself had assisted
+in putting it there, had previously settled for its transportation.
+Likewise he had bought the girl's ticket, and checked her scanty
+baggage. The usual crowd of loafers was about the place, and his every
+action was observed with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the
+spectators followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels
+for his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the
+vanquished--and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing upon
+the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop sounded; and
+when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was repeated intrepidly
+near at hand. They put themselves elaborately in his way, to move at his
+approach with grunts of guttural protestation. Already, even here on the
+frontier, the Sioux and his kind were becoming a novelty. Verily they
+were rare sportsmen, those mimicking loafers; and for Indians it was
+ever the open season. All about sounded the popping of their artillery;
+to be, when exhausted, as often reloaded and fired again.
+
+But through it all, apparently unseeing, unconscious, the man had gone
+about his business. Now as he left the ticket window and approached the
+single coach, it was nearly starting time. The girl had already entered
+and sat motionless in her seat watching him through the dusty window
+glass. Craig, his feet wide apart, stood on the platform smoking a last
+cigarette. He shrugged in silence as the other passed him and mounted
+the steps.
+
+Save for the girl, the coach was empty; but, destitute of courtesy, the
+spectators without stared with redoubled interest. Without a word the
+man handed over the ticket and checks. Still in silence he slipped a
+roll of bills into her passive hand. Until that moment the girl had not
+thought of money; but even now as she accepted it, there never occurred
+the wonder from whence it had come. Had she known how those few dollars
+had been stored up, bit by bit, month by month--But she did not know.
+Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless, was
+Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on the
+threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was entering,
+she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was merely passive,
+trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down from the prairie
+milkweed plant, she was to be the sport of every breath of wind that
+blew. And already that wind was blowing. She had watched the scene on
+the platform, had understood the intent of the mimicry, had seen the
+winks and nudges, had heard the mocking war whoop. All this she had
+seen, all this had been stored away in her consciousness to recur again
+and again in the future. Even now her cheeks had burned at the
+knowledge, and at last she had watched the man's coming with a feeling
+of repression she had never known before, whose significance she did not
+try to analyse, did not in the least understand. She did not thank him
+for the money. To do so never occurred to her. It was the moment for
+parting, but she did not throw her arms about his neck in abandon, as
+she would have done a week before. Something, she knew not what,
+prevented. She merely sat there, repressed, passive, waiting. A moment,
+by her side, the Indian paused. He did not speak, he did not move. He
+merely looked at her; and in his dark eyes there was mirrored a
+reflection of the look there had been in the eyes of the wild thing he
+had stalked and captured that day alone on the prairie. But the girl was
+not looking at him, did not see. A moment he stood so, unconsciously as
+so many, many times before, in pose; then deliberately, gently, ignoring
+the row of curious observant eyes, he took her hand and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said low. "Come back as soon as you can; and don't
+worry. Everything will come right." Gently as he had lifted the hand, he
+released it. A smile--who but he could have smiled at that
+moment?--played for an instant over his face. Then, almost before the
+girl realised the fact, before the repressive something that held her in
+its grip gave release, he was gone.
+
+As he left the coach, Craig, who was waiting, started without a word or
+a hint of recognition to enter. His foot was already on the step, when
+he felt a hand upon his arm; a hand with a grip whose meaning there was
+no misinterpreting. Against his will he drew back. Against his will he
+met the other, face to face, eye to eye. For what seemed to him minutes,
+but which in reality was only a second, they stood so. Not a word was
+spoken, of warning or of commonplace. There was no polite farce for the
+benefit of the spectators. The Indian merely looked at him; but as once
+before, alone under the stars, that look was to remain burned on the
+white man's memory until he went to his grave.
+
+"A'board," bawled the conductor, and as though worked by the same wire,
+the engineer's waiting head disappeared within the cab window.
+
+Side by side, Clayton Craig and Elizabeth Landor sat watching the
+weather-stained station and the curious assembled group, as apparently
+they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the alien figure of an
+Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless after them; and by his side,
+in baiting pantomime, one gawky urchin engaged in the labour of scalping
+a mate. The last sound that reached their ears was the ironic note of a
+war whoop repeated again and again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the girl had
+left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the bare lot
+adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith, the twelfth since
+How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny railway terminus. The one train
+from the East was due at 8:10 of the morning. It was now eight o'clock.
+Within the shambling, ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior
+and its wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and
+freshly dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the
+single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed according
+to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey, recently oiled and
+tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn up conveniently to the
+door. In a tiny room, designated the study, of the Methodist parsonage,
+on the straggling outskirts of the town, the only minister the
+settlement boasted sat staring at the unpapered wall opposite. He was a
+mild-featured young man of the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from
+a school of theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the
+frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared marriage
+licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time to time he
+glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to the tiny
+fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and frowned
+unconsciously.
+
+At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the arrival or
+departure of a train were congregated. In some way suggestions of the
+unusual had passed about, and this day their number was greatly
+augmented. Just what they anticipated they did not know; they did not
+care. Restless, athirst for excitement, they had dumbly responded to the
+influence in the air and come. In the foreground, where a solitary
+Indian stood motionless, waiting, there was being repeated the same
+puerile pantomime and horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals,
+from the rear, sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as
+that afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar
+even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily into the
+sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and lighter, became
+denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy, the humorists on the
+platform redoubled their efforts. The instinct of anticipation, of
+Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that had brought them there, urged them
+on. Not one throat but many underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection.
+A half dozen voices caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to
+throat. Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing
+became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before, who had
+come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd pressed closer and
+closer about the alien, the centre of attraction. When he moved farther
+along the platform to avoid them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the
+innate racial hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air
+jostled him--and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no
+retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion redoubled,
+drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators in the rear began
+mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to see. Within the station
+itself the shirt-sleeved agent surreptitiously locked the door to the
+ticket-room and sprung the combination of the safe. Beginning
+harmlessly, the incident was taking on a sinister aspect, and he had
+lived too long in this semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning
+to his place of observation at the window, he was just in time to see a
+decayed turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with
+enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear. Simultaneously, with
+a roar and a puff of displaced air, the light train drew into the
+station, on time.
+
+Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move twice
+farther away along the platform, he had not stirred. Unbelievable as it
+may seem, even when the missile had struck him, though it had left a
+great red welt, he gave no sign of feeling. For a space following the
+arrival of the train there was a lull, and in it, as though nothing had
+happened, he approached the single coach and stood waiting.
+
+It was the last of the week and travel was very light.
+
+A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip descended
+first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared with speed. A
+big rancher with great curling moustaches and a vest open save at the
+bottom button followed. He likewise took stock of the surroundings, and
+discreetly withdrew. Following him there was a pause; then of a sudden
+onto the platform, fair into view of the crowd, appeared one for whom
+apparently they had been looking, one who on the instant caused the
+confusion, temporarily stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a
+dainty brown girl with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth
+Landor returned alone!
+
+"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the refound voice
+of the expectant crowd.
+
+"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had introduced the
+jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her; we don't mind."
+
+A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far up the
+single street, and that brought curious faces to a half score of doors.
+
+"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!"
+
+Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had appeared. Her
+great eyes opened wider than before, her face shaded paler momentarily,
+the soft oval chin trembled. Another minute, another second even.
+
+"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll take
+care of you."
+
+It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure curiosity the
+crowd went silent, listening--silent until he was silent; then with the
+lack of originality ever manifest in a mob, they caught up his words
+themselves.
+
+"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't keep him
+waiting."
+
+But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that moment, she
+could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the chin had at first
+presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but she was beyond the reach
+of tears now. The complete meaning of the scene had come to her at last,
+the realisation of personal menace; and a fear such as she had never
+before known, gripped her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word;
+but her muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old
+telescope satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes,
+wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now rapidly
+accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.
+
+"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't stand there,
+come."
+
+At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly, with
+trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then of a sudden
+she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted defensively. But she was
+not quick enough, had seen too late; and that instant came the
+_dénouement._ A second turnip, decayed like its predecessor, aimed
+likewise unerringly, caught her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke
+into fragments that fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain
+after a thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down
+her face.
+
+Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still prairie about
+them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had themselves wittingly or
+unwittingly done. Save one, not a human being stirred. That one, no need
+to tell whom, transformed visibly; transformed as they had never seen a
+human being alter before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself
+on the platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from
+sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically. In the
+stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear distinctly. For
+an instant after he had reached her the Indian stood so, his left arm
+about her, his back toward them. He did not say a word, he did not move.
+For the first time in his life he dared not. He did not see red that
+moment, this man; he saw black--black as prairie loam. Every savage
+instinct in his brain was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his
+free hand was clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind
+his right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone, it
+was nothing, he could forgive; but now--now--He stared away from them,
+stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky; but, listening, they,
+who almost with fascination watched, could hear beneath the catch of the
+girl's sobs the sound of his breathing.
+
+Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second or a
+minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell. What they
+did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them. All their lives
+they had seen passion, seen it in every phase, seen it until it was
+commonplace. It was in the very air of the frontier, to be expected,
+life of the life; but as this man shifted they saw a kind of which they
+had never dreamed. For How Landor was master of himself again, master,
+as well--they knew it, every man and youth who saw,--of them. For
+another indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them;
+looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face within the
+surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a drunken cowman, had
+seen that identical look. Now not one but a score saw it, felt a
+terrible ice-cold menace creep from his brain into their brains. Even
+yet he did not speak, did not make a sound; nor did they. Explain it as
+you will, he did this thing. Another thing he did as well; and that was
+the end. Slowly, deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out
+his hand. Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes
+were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but she had
+grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully calm--almost as much so
+as the man. Deliberately as he had stepped down into the spectators'
+midst, the Indian took the old telescope from the girl's hand and, she
+following by his side, moved a step forward. He did not touch her again
+nor did she him. They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up
+the single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were
+alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed;
+through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by magic
+closed behind them, until they were within a solid human square. But of
+all the assembled spectators that day, an aggregation irresponsible,
+unchivalrous as no other rabble on earth--a mob of the frontier,--not
+one spoke to challenge their action, not one attempted to bar their way.
+The complete length of the platform they went so, turned the corner by
+the station--and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view, hid
+by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl weakened.
+Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it fast.
+
+"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this with you and
+me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"
+
+But the man said never a word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire crackled
+cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room where the same two
+people sat alone. Already the world had taken on a different aspect. Not
+that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten that recent incident at the depot.
+She would never forget it. It had merely passed into temporary
+abeyance, taken its proper place in the eternal scheme of things.
+Another consideration, paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded
+it from the stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent
+far longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that at
+last prompted speech.
+
+"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried suddenly.
+
+"How did _you_ know I would be at the train to meet you?" echoed a
+voice.
+
+The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.
+
+"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow when you
+wrote as if I--I--" A swiftly gathered shower called a halt. Tear drops,
+ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell me," she completed.
+
+The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic life, so there
+was little to record of the death of Mary Landor. "It was best that you
+were away," he ended. "It was best for her that she went when she did."
+
+"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious query.
+"You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"
+
+"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."
+
+A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something more.
+
+"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would--go while I was
+away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me away on
+purpose."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How. I want to know."
+
+"I thought so, Bess," simply.
+
+For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new understanding
+of this solitary human stole over her, an appreciation that drowned the
+sadness of a moment ago. "How you must care for me," she voiced almost
+unconsciously. "How you must care for me!"
+
+She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again a silence
+fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she was thinking.
+Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were passively waiting. At the
+parsonage the young minister still sat scowling in his study. No time
+had been set for the visit he expected. There was no apparent reason why
+he should not have gone about his work; but for some reason he could
+not. Angry with himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket
+and, placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked
+over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.
+
+Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl shifted, dropped
+to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged slowly red.
+
+"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me to-day that
+I would come alone?"
+
+The Indian showed no surprise.
+
+"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."
+
+"Why, How?" The question was just audible.
+
+"Because I trusted you, Bess."
+
+Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes glanced
+up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance fell. A longer
+pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not have spoken if she
+would. A great preventing lump was in her throat, an obstacle that
+precluded speech. Many things had happened in the short time since she
+had last been with this man, some things of which she was not proud; and
+beside such a trust as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition
+upon her part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise
+without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The memory of
+that draught was with her now. Under its influence she spoke.
+
+"You are better than I am, How," she said.
+
+If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He did not
+even look at her. Time was passing, time which should have found them
+upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It was his day, his moment,
+his by right; but no one looking at him would have doubted that he
+himself would never first suggest the fact. Conditions had changed very
+rapidly in the recent past, altered until, from his view-point, it was
+impossible for him to make the move toward the old relation, to even
+intimate its desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In
+the fulness of time he was rewarded.
+
+"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed voice, "will
+you do me a favour?"
+
+"What is it, Bess?"
+
+The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the recall
+had come, and for the first time he was looking at her steadily.
+
+"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.
+
+"I promise."
+
+Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she wished to
+say.
+
+"You won't be--offended or angry, How?"
+
+"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me angry."
+
+"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you humour
+me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married to-day you'll
+be dressed--well, not the way you usually dress." Her colour came and
+went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed like--You understand, How."
+
+Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he checked
+himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the immaterial, went, as
+ever, straight to fundamentals without preface or delay. Scarce one
+human in a generation would have held aloof at that moment. It was his,
+his by every right; but even yet he would not take it, not until--.
+
+"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to
+answer me--as you would answer your mother were she alive." Once again,
+unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms across his breast, his great
+shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr. Landor's will. He has left you
+nearly everything. You are rich, Bess; I won't tell you how rich because
+you wouldn't understand. You are young and can live any life you wish.
+You know what marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You
+know what others, people of your own race, think when you are with me.
+They have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all
+this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish to come?
+Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer. Don't do it, or
+we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as you know I love you,
+whether you have thought of all this and still wish to marry me. Tell
+me." He was silent. Once again it was a climax, and once again came
+oblivion of passing time. For minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide
+open eyes, the girl made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision
+made, not as before in ignorance of what that decision meant.
+Deliberately, with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight
+of future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.
+
+"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I wish to
+marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's no one in the
+world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry you to-day, How."
+
+Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until then, he
+accepted his reward.
+
+"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise. "Bess!" That
+was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled with
+portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was gathered; only
+now it was not at the station, but at a place of far more sinister
+import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope" saloon. Again in
+personnel it was different, notably different from that of the first
+occasion. The same irresponsibles were there, as ever they are present
+at times of storm; but added to the aggregation now, outnumbering them,
+were others ordinarily responsible, men typical in every way of the time
+and place. A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
+gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had
+brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last, these
+dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously. Rumour,
+inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story
+buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to
+haunt the station at the time of the incoming train. The incident of the
+morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had
+followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become
+certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the
+point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its
+place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the
+girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street
+through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
+prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the
+ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet
+well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as
+on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet
+call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous
+familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an
+instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace. Not once did
+he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his
+side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when
+he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor
+realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as
+surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise--and
+that soon, very, very soon.
+
+Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever
+garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously
+grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and
+the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable
+unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying
+dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not
+the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the
+alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they
+went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them,
+at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and
+noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope
+saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
+William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where
+the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in
+sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to
+the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed--for they were
+in the residence section now--had its pair or multiple pairs peering out
+through the slats of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a
+performance, at the side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had
+spread; like turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their
+shells; yet everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to
+take a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the pedestrians
+were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding across the lawn to
+pause at a safe distance and growl a menace; and again the all-noting
+Indian had observed the cause of the unwonted bravery, had heard the low
+voice from the kitchen that had urged the beast on.
+
+Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm approached.
+Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the girl not been
+living in the future instead of the present, she would have recognised
+its coming. For the pursuers were gaining rapidly now. They had crossed
+onto the same street, the principal residence thoroughfare, and were
+coming as a crowd ever moves: swiftly, those in the rear exerting
+themselves to get to the fore, and so again. Far from silent by this
+time, the man ahead, the man who never deigned a backward glance, could
+hear their voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
+interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
+seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a commander, a
+directing spirit--and as well as he knew his own name he knew who that
+leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in the ways of the world was this
+man; but in the reading of his fellows he was a master.
+
+Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had congregated at
+the train, he had nevertheless observed them individual by individual;
+and in his own consciousness had known that the moment, his moment, had
+not come: for a leader, the leader, was not there. Again when the train
+had pulled in he had watched--and still the leader did not appear. But
+he was not deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had
+trusted in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that
+one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been right. For
+the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained on them so
+rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in those brief hours the
+Indian and the girl had been alone in the tiny room at the hotel had
+vitalised the lukewarm racial hostility into a thing of menace, was the
+same man whose life he had once saved, the same man about whose throat
+ere the identical night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig
+by name, one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master
+of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!
+
+Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was again
+looking out the single window. Time and time again he had tried to
+work--and as often failed. At last he had conformed to the inevitable
+and was merely waiting. The house was on the outskirts of the town and
+the window faced the open prairie; bare and rolling as far as the eye
+could reach. He was city bred, this mild-faced servant of God, and as
+yet the prairie country was a thing at which to marvel. He was looking
+out upon it now, absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and
+its silence--when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no longer
+silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by moment,
+penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an indistinct roar; rising,
+lowering, yet ever constant: a sound unlike any other on earth,
+distinctive as the silence preceding had been typical--the clamour of
+angry, menacing human voices _en masse._ Once, not long before, in a
+city street the listener had heard that identical sound; and
+recognition was instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike
+that had been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden
+appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate figure of
+the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment only, for life, in
+their midst. Swift as memory came that picture; and swift upon its
+heels, blotting it out, the present returned. Clifford Mitchell had not
+been among this people long; yet already he had caught the spirit of the
+place, and as he listened he knew full well what a similar gathering
+among them would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor;
+not a drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after
+moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first real
+terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind was there a
+doubt as to the destination of that oncoming multitude. Premonition had
+been too electric in the air that day for him to question its meaning.
+They were coming to him, to him, Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible
+menacing humans. It might be another for whom they had gathered; but he
+as well would share in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he
+was a party to the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from
+the time the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours
+of trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
+anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a certainty.
+Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring out on his
+forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand.
+Following came a purely physical weakness; and stumbling across the room
+he took the seat beside the desk. Unconsciously nervous, restless, his
+fingers fumbled with the pile of papers before him until they came to a
+certain one he had buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to
+do so he spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
+waiting.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
+cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by it
+alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He could hear
+them down the street at the other end of the block before the residence
+of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a certainty because part of those who
+came were on the sidewalk, and that was the only piece of cement in
+town. Again, by the same token, he knew when they passed the only other
+house in the block besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk
+there, and when the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps
+went suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in a
+moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own yard, the
+roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could even distinguish
+what they were saying now, could catch names, his own name.
+
+Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed before
+his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously faces, not a few
+but as many as could crowd into the space, appeared outside the panes,
+staring curiously in. Involuntarily he arose to draw the shade; and at
+that moment, interrupting, startlingly loud, there came a knock at his
+front door.
+
+Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood irresolute;
+and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of curious faces
+multiplied.
+
+The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but deliberately
+and with an insistence there was no misunderstanding.
+
+This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out the faces
+of the curious. The licence he had been absently holding was still in
+his hand; but he did not delay to put it down. There was something
+compelling in that knock; something that demanded instant obedience, and
+he obeyed. The living-room through which he passed on his way had two
+windows and, identical with that of his study, each was black with
+humanity; but he did not even glance at them. His legs trembled
+involuntarily and his throat was dry as though he had been speaking for
+hours; yet, nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly
+he turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto the
+street, looked out.
+
+While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the uncounted
+throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that October day, they
+remembered that moment, the moments that followed. As real life is ever
+stranger than fiction, so off the stage occur incidents more stirring
+than at the play. Standing there in the narrow doorway, white-faced,
+hesitant, awaiting a command, the minister himself exemplified the fact
+beyond question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had
+thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his consciousness for
+but one impression; and that was for the drama ready there before him.
+And small wonder, for, looking out, this was what he saw:
+
+An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass
+and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on
+fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In
+the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of
+his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was
+a solid zone of motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and
+untrimmed beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation
+and passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously aping
+their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments; all ages and
+conditions of the human frontier male were there--but in that zone not a
+single woman. Ranchers there were in corduroys and denims, cowboys in
+buckskin and flannel, gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of
+their kind, business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in
+anything and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the
+surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to bay.
+
+In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple of paces
+of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them, a rather small
+brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of ready-made clothes
+and a derby hat of the model of the year before, were nearest; so near
+that the door, which swung outward, all but touched them. The other, a
+well-built, smooth-faced Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands,
+was opposite. His dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat
+and patent leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his
+linen was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin.
+Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to prevent, as
+he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and left. One look told his
+story. He had been drinking, drinking for days; and, worst of all, he
+had been drinking this day, drinking in anticipation of this very
+moment, swallowing courage against the necessity of the now. All this
+the stage and its setting, upon which the white-faced minister raised
+the curtain. Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the
+real play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used
+front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not a
+sound marked the opening of the drama.
+
+A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could feel; then
+of a sudden it was broken--not by words, but by action. One step the
+white-skinned man took forward; a step toward the girl. A second step he
+advanced, and halted; for, preventing, the hand of the other man was
+upon his own.
+
+"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for
+congratulations yet. Stand back, please."
+
+Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a curse, a
+challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical terrified little
+cry the girl shrank back into the doorway itself. But none other, not
+even the minister, stirred.
+
+"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in the
+stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to stand back. I
+don't warn you, I merely request--but I shall not ask it again." Of a
+sudden the speaker's hand left the other's arm, dropped by his own side.
+"Stand back, please."
+
+Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working, passionate,
+menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky overhead. A moment they
+remained so while the breathless onlookers expected anything, while from
+the doorstep the minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then
+slowly, lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took
+silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still another, and
+was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first time he found voice.
+
+"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd have let
+you go if you'd given up the girl; but now--now--May God have mercy on
+your soul now, How Landor!"
+
+Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first meeting on
+the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It was the crisis,
+and as before an instinct which she did not understand, which she merely
+obeyed, brought her to the Indian's side; held her there motionless,
+passive, mysteriously unafraid. Her usually brown face was very pale and
+her eyes were unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably
+calm--calm as a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that
+solid zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or
+no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that motionless,
+dominant human by her side.
+
+A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear each other
+breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the minister's lips
+became audible; then came the end. Incredible after it was over was that
+_dénouement_, inexplicable to a legion of old men, then among the boys,
+who witnessed it, to this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take
+place in this world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate
+other men it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first
+challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken. The
+only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life found
+voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that listening,
+expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion his arms folded
+across his chest.
+
+"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done my best to
+avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything at your hands,
+every insult which you could conceive, things which no white man would
+have permitted for a second; and so far without resentment. But I shall
+stand it no more. I'm one to a hundred; but that makes no difference.
+Bess Landor and I are to be married now and here; here before you all. I
+shall not talk to you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace;
+but as surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to
+me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I shall
+kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing." A
+moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms;
+then, still facing, he moved back a step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we
+are ready."
+
+And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred
+curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night
+itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married. The
+minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close
+before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the
+pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet it was done, and, save
+one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent
+stayed and listened to the end. That one, a tall, modish alien with a
+red, flushed face covered with a two-days' growth of bread, was likewise
+watching when it began. But when it was over he was not there; and not
+one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling,
+sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl
+of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of
+them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a
+straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling
+brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall,
+the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
+mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after
+three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though
+the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey
+flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the
+ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the
+ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at
+intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of
+the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried
+grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was
+no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny
+town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
+behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
+followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he
+was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce visible landmarks he
+alone distinguished was returning to his own, to the wild that lay in
+the distance beyond.
+
+Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went; and back of
+them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built terminus grew
+dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as completely as though it
+had never been. Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot
+against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three
+miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious
+motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind
+them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue
+surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there
+with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
+alone.
+
+As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From
+horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion
+of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or
+hate--and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she
+could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift
+her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of
+fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have
+been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so,
+did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch
+her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the
+last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something
+which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing
+taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of
+darkness. But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had
+awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they
+had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
+panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations,
+thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been
+hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare
+on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the
+experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events
+had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but _en masse_ the
+effect had been definite--startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may
+seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
+consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
+metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an
+adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place.
+Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself
+to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as
+existence itself, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back
+there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not,
+mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came
+to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing
+that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear
+again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
+taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the
+woman.
+
+Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the
+swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the
+personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into
+abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the
+hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent
+dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain
+itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by
+minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
+impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming
+bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it
+blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had
+done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that
+the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite
+loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a
+child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
+intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future
+endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied
+a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony
+would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature
+impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration
+intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
+distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled
+the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for
+worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was
+no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge
+overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born,
+became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first
+time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable.
+Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she
+sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her
+eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.
+
+"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"
+
+The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not
+yet completely returned.
+
+"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."
+
+"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a
+walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close.
+"I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."
+
+"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has
+never hurt it. It merely is."
+
+At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not
+move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change
+had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful
+as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The
+high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made
+a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious.
+Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a
+colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The
+black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
+of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of
+exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a
+standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour
+had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the
+truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was
+almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it
+should prove a myth.
+
+Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
+worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his
+God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus
+the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been
+eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his
+again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork,
+watched to the end; and then, observing that _finale_, laughed--and with
+the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
+understand, and I can't tell you."
+
+She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture
+she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly
+with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all
+right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She
+laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
+"It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
+someone else; even though that property were a girl."
+
+Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On
+his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that
+something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true
+to his instincts, waited.
+
+"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl,
+"even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
+anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to
+do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to
+you; not even as possibility."
+
+Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light
+came.
+
+"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never
+occur to me to do so."
+
+More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of
+Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the
+vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I
+hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than
+you; but now--now--" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap
+the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a
+sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"
+
+More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to
+fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled
+with the reins impotently.
+
+"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell
+me what it is, won't you?"
+
+"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?"
+Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is
+wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as
+you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone?
+Wrong: the preposterous idea!"
+
+She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to
+be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking
+at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible
+in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He
+did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the
+seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace
+of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
+the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab
+she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and
+contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood
+changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears.
+In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed
+close to his face.
+
+"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous
+and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the
+map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere
+to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.
+
+Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when,
+far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had
+seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short
+fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn,
+was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low
+sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the
+old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the
+tall frost-cured grass to feed.
+
+"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it
+face north, south, east, or west?"
+
+"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the
+morning."
+
+With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set
+about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box.
+The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More
+quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take
+shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself
+was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and
+swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed
+and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by
+legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed
+the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the
+frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task
+was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
+and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that
+light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole.
+Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless
+earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for
+her to descend.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a
+time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook
+supper and all. Come, girlie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel
+William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the
+same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light
+from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face.
+In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo
+robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was
+toward her. His eyes--eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature
+man--were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was
+living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was
+at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
+made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
+worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a
+devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they
+had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence
+at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had
+apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said,
+"we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day--" he had
+looked down as he had spoken--"to-day I felt somehow as though I could
+not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."
+
+Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time;
+and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing
+at her--and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return
+that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning,
+her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was
+afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
+gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths
+of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such
+confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it--and still she did
+not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save
+the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason
+therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to
+shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively,
+almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the
+way.
+
+"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly.
+"It makes me afraid of myself--afraid of dropping. Supposing I should
+fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you,
+could ever put the pieces together."
+
+"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be
+there to catch you."
+
+"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth,
+you know."
+
+"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in
+the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated,
+too, then."
+
+The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon,
+very carefully.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm
+perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very--bad at times."
+
+The other smiled; that was all.
+
+"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I
+don't like you and run away."
+
+"If you did you'd return very soon."
+
+"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"
+
+"I know so."
+
+"Why, How?"
+
+"Because you care for me."
+
+"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."
+
+"You'd find your mistake and come back."
+
+The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.
+
+"And when I did--come back--you'd forgive me, How?"
+
+"There'd be nothing to forgive."
+
+"It wouldn't be wrong--to leave you that way?"
+
+"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."
+
+"Not if I did anything, if I--ran away with another man?"
+
+The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.
+
+"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."
+
+"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no
+matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"
+
+For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the
+man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since
+they had been speaking his eyes dropped.
+
+"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have
+everything go on as before--I am human. I could not."
+
+A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of
+a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.
+
+"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say
+it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry
+a mortal, you know."
+
+The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
+
+"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the
+girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me
+anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run
+away? Would you forgive him, too?"
+
+Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
+
+"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't
+give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
+
+Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted
+in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood
+out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
+
+"Forgive _him_, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
+
+That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking
+at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no
+human being could have misread the answer. With the same little
+hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense
+hands went lax.
+
+"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day,
+you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things
+lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed
+before that I possessed them."
+
+Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man
+arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the
+girl to her feet.
+
+"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something
+you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now,
+girlie?"
+
+Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look
+up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long
+lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow
+of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.
+
+"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She
+smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for
+me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How,
+man; absolutely nothing."
+
+For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but,
+still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip
+that was a caress his hands dropped.
+
+"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel
+that you are unhappy, is all."
+
+"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so
+easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm
+very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't
+you?"
+
+"Forgive you!--Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast,
+the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as
+the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only
+realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you
+could only realise!"
+
+Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes,
+sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
+
+"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that
+you love me. Tell me! tell me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read
+and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth
+of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were
+left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only
+nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a
+tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once
+"unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the
+aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate
+not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had
+builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city
+bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
+could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my
+adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of
+greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned
+laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but
+incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other
+names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called
+How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred
+words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet
+was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
+who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William
+Landor of the Buffalo Butte.
+
+Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution.
+Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated
+manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that
+score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather
+case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a
+kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence
+he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
+Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took
+possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo
+Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place
+upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked
+to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
+
+Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a
+memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and
+wife--and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back
+from the land of nothingness they came--and again no one was at hand to
+welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that
+plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration
+of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced.
+Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay
+for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
+Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle
+against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew
+not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks
+she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The
+very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of
+change on the morrow. The next day it was the same--and the next. When
+they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
+time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her
+companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and
+the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day
+by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was
+struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way
+they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days
+that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the
+change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she
+lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
+precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it
+was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly.
+What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever
+know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man
+and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had
+there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another.
+That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could
+have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
+which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have
+questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed.
+The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown
+sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics.
+Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the
+first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had
+shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit
+the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this
+newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the
+prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
+returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.
+
+One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that
+was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax
+boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had
+intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch,
+and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its
+furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up
+in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable,
+in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that
+frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he
+led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he
+threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
+her.
+
+"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said,
+and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.
+
+A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and
+cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never
+before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl
+realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive
+human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his
+own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the
+knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms
+flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.
+
+"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"
+
+"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.
+
+For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening
+the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.
+The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision
+of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection
+of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch
+for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left
+astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark
+or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever
+considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and
+the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl
+stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into
+the darkness.
+
+"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone
+about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and
+that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.
+
+Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his
+manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a
+blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the
+obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by
+nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable.
+Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne
+what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;
+but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched
+linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant
+town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he
+polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly
+an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who
+knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from
+humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing
+at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in
+this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How
+Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it
+all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of
+a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered
+his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish
+undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes
+to observe, to pity perchance, then--But let it pass what he did then.
+It is another tale and extraneous.
+
+Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew
+shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No
+human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on
+pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had
+both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the
+execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a
+distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They
+accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further
+than that--they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
+whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on--whither no
+one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old
+Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had
+been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the
+olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor
+was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were
+gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did
+a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when
+by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His
+reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again,
+they were white and he was red--and between them the chasm yawned.
+
+Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It
+was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was
+one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and
+there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal
+white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights
+the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh
+layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more
+into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
+migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or
+at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the
+booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this
+impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God
+is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally
+manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite
+bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon
+beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of
+words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the
+girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
+at a time did not glance without.
+
+Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long
+before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its
+advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the
+range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound
+was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and
+frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page
+appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and _en masse_,
+wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of
+an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of
+prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies
+branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on
+the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were
+changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though
+soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
+white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day,
+as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they,
+and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky
+now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of
+his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed
+through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.
+After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
+in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks;
+flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not
+only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white
+blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long
+absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on
+motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their
+five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders,
+appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and
+grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last,
+the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable,
+with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
+whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
+following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in
+their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with
+their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's
+advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical
+as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie
+and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
+that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive,
+alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and
+re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it
+repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each
+to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung
+slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the
+stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no
+sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the
+newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable,
+did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway,
+he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his
+long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.
+
+The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in approved riding
+togs, halted likewise and returned the look; equally minutely, equally
+suspiciously. The horse he rode was one of a kind seldom seen on the
+ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider
+sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another
+life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance
+they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective
+"smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness
+of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general
+youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there,
+have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so, taking in every detail
+of the commonplace surroundings. Then, apparently satisfied, he
+dismounted and, tying the animal to the wheel of an old surrey drawn up
+in the yard, he approached the single entrance of the house and rapped.
+
+To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a
+frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a plain gingham gown.
+A moment they looked at each other; then the man's riding cap came off
+with a sweep and he held out his hand.
+
+"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was all. Then he
+looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see your husband," he
+exclaimed. "Is he at home?"
+
+The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched hand.
+
+"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that you had
+returned."
+
+A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his hand
+dropped; but his eyes held their place.
+
+"Yes. I only came yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to
+talk over with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"
+
+Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.
+
+"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man. "Aren't we to
+be even neighbourly?"
+
+"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be otherwise."
+
+"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming positive
+now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."
+
+"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately. "Answer?" She
+undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by courtesy, that after
+I've lived the last four months I'm still such a child as that? Do you
+really wish me to answer, Neighbour Craig?"
+
+For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins in his
+trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously. Then again he
+looked up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave an hour
+ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It was you I came
+to see. May I stay?"
+
+Again the girl ignored the question.
+
+"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you wouldn't have
+come, that nothing you know of could have made you come? Let's
+understand each other in the beginning. You admit this?"
+
+"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"
+
+The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the eyes;
+silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could not fathom,
+could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as deliberately she released
+him, looked away.
+
+"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."
+
+"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an obvious effort
+he checked himself "Thank you," he completed repressedly.
+
+This time the girl did not smile.
+
+"Don't you realise yet that sort of thing is useless?" she queried
+unemotionally.
+
+It was the man this time who was silent.
+
+"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so; but for
+once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us good, we're both
+living a lie; but at least we understand each other. Let's not waste
+energy in pretending--when there's no one to be deceived."
+
+Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too much a part
+of his life to shake off instantly. Then he laughed.
+
+"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway be it so.
+And now, that I'm to stay--" A meaning glance through the open door.
+"You were working, weren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch. You
+remember another morning once before, don't you--a morning before you
+grew up--"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."
+
+"I am quite deficient in imagination."
+
+"At least, though, dishes must be washed."
+
+"Not necessarily--this moment at least. They have waited before."
+
+"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or interfere."
+
+"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and enjoy the
+sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated? They're clean, I
+know. I scrubbed them this very morning myself."
+
+The man hesitated. Then he sat down.
+
+"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm going to
+return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit--the way you are now.
+You've changed terribly."
+
+"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely as I am
+this moment for--a lifetime."
+
+"For--how long, Bess?"
+
+"A lifetime, I think."
+
+"For four months, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps--it's all the same."
+
+"Since you did a foolish thing?"
+
+"I have done many such."
+
+"Since the last, I mean."
+
+"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened. "The last
+was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in the smallest
+possible manner since then."
+
+The man inspected his boots.
+
+"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at length.
+
+"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took a place
+beside him. "I had forgotten."
+
+They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real perplexity.
+
+"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."
+
+"I have not denied it," evenly.
+
+The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for anything;
+but he was finding his mistake.
+
+"This life you've--selected, is wearing on you," he added. "Frankly, I
+hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and happy."
+
+"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin mine. You're
+dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the signs."
+
+The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank criticism
+than to receive it.
+
+"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said intimately, "nor
+attempt to deny it. There is a reason, however."
+
+"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually is an
+explanation for everything we do in this life."
+
+"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."
+
+"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."
+
+"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."
+
+The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back against the
+lintel of the door. She looked very young that moment--and very old.
+
+"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my explanation for
+being--as I am. What is yours?"
+
+"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"
+
+"I wish to know the reason."
+
+"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be here."
+
+"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you have
+married?"
+
+"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life, and--the man you
+have named."
+
+"I don't believe I understand, Bess."
+
+"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence I
+possessed, for two weeks."
+
+"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.
+
+"I repeat you have the compliment--if you consider it such."
+
+Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all the time,
+the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them now, steadily,
+immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without, against the background
+of the dark interior his eyes shone as though they were afire.
+
+"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I have
+made you unhappy."
+
+"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a voice.
+
+"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"
+
+"No. I merely understand you--now. You're not sorry, because otherwise
+you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be here--even though my
+husband were away."
+
+Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly a novelty
+in his life to be treated as he was being treated this day. Ordinarily
+glib of speech, for some reason in the face of this newfound emotionless
+characterisation, he had nothing to say. It is difficult to appear what
+one is not in the blaze of one's own fireside. It was impossible under
+the scrutiny of this wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events
+gone by.
+
+"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've got other
+things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway." He looked at her
+openly, significantly. "Your own self, for instance."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I'm listening. Tell me everything."
+
+"You really fancy I will after--the past?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And why, please?"
+
+"You've already told me why."
+
+"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to be
+ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."
+
+"I'm still listening."
+
+"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"
+
+"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your husband?
+You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"
+
+The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively, impassively.
+Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an untrained eye, a black dot
+stood out above the horizon line. Her eyes paused upon it.
+
+"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Never, Bess."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"I swear."
+
+Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.
+
+"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still perjure
+yourself. To answer your question, I really don't know."
+
+"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll stand a lot
+from you, but there's a limit--"
+
+"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's not a soul
+but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be seated."
+
+From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily,
+resentfully--then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were
+mingled. He sat down.
+
+The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and on.
+
+"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my soul, if I
+have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make the exchange, no
+one who can give me light. Does that answer your question?"
+
+Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.
+
+"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"
+
+"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are why."
+
+No answer, only silence.
+
+"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl. "A little
+tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit? You're not plural,
+but nevertheless you personified that pack. You and the unknown things
+you represented were pressing me close. I was confused and afraid. I was
+a babe four months ago. I was not afraid of How, I had loved him--at
+least I thought I had, I'm sure of nothing now--and, as I say, I was
+afraid of you--then."
+
+"And now--"
+
+Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she looked
+away.
+
+"I'm not in the least afraid of you now--or of anything."
+
+"Not even of your husband?"
+
+"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."
+
+Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.
+
+"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I made a
+mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am afraid of
+something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are of death, of this
+infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip deep, unconsciously. "I
+sometimes think the old fear of everything were preferable, were the
+lesser of the two evils."
+
+Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose skin under
+his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.
+
+"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think you've
+gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked away; but
+unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the landscape that
+spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you realise what a mess
+you've made of your life."
+
+The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.
+
+"Yes, I think I do," she said.
+
+"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a brute after
+all in attempting to prevent your doing as you did."
+
+"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't been a
+brute."
+
+Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.
+
+"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then, Bess? Cared
+for me myself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that I frightened you back here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.
+
+"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it now?"
+
+The girl looked away in silence.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"
+
+"I can't tell you. I don't know."
+
+"Don't know?"
+
+"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days--anything except
+that I'm afraid."
+
+"Of the future?"
+
+"Yes--and of myself."
+
+For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said nothing. A
+long silence fell between them. It was the girl herself who broke it.
+
+"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and the voice
+was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with Uncle Landor."
+
+"Was I to blame, Bess?"
+
+"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."
+
+"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."
+
+The girl said nothing.
+
+"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can restore
+the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making you unhappy?"
+
+"Yes. I admit it."
+
+The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.
+
+"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.
+
+"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't. You're too
+selfish."
+
+"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.
+
+"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.
+
+The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.
+
+"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively maddening!"
+
+"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be ourselves
+to-day. I merely told you things as they are."
+
+Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in silence. One of
+his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay in his lap. Against
+his will now and then a muscle contracted nervously; and of a sudden he
+thrust the telltale member deep into his trousers pocket.
+
+"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't go on
+this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Haven't you ever thought of it?"
+
+"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else--for an age."
+
+"And you've decided nothing?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing."
+
+Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his voice
+trembled.
+
+"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.
+
+"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By what right
+should you be permitted to decide?"
+
+The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His eyes were
+steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that he would win,
+that the moment was his moment.
+
+"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said simply.
+
+"Love me, after what you have done?"
+
+"Yes. I have been mad--and done mad things. But I've discovered my
+fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you so--and to make amends."
+
+Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look; but the
+man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure that he voiced a
+challenge.
+
+"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you ran away,
+in spite of the fact that you are married, you love me!"
+
+Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her lips
+parted, but she said no word.
+
+"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't--because it is true."
+
+A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second time that day
+Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise. While yet he was
+master of the situation, while yet the time was his, he arose.
+
+"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He looked at her
+deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say, for I've told you
+that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember this: If I've stolen
+your happiness, I'll give it all back. As God is my witness, I'll give
+it all back with interest." Swiftly, before she could answer, he turned
+away and strode toward the impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he
+undid the tie strap and mounted. Without another word, or a backward
+glance, he rode away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the
+damp spring earth.
+
+Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not move. She
+did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at the C-C ranch
+house, until the buildings hid the owner from view, did her eyes leave
+him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she looked away over the
+prairie, away where the last time she had glanced a tiny black dot stood
+out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not
+find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not.
+Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the
+unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes.
+With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable
+doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening, and as he
+came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled his feet as one
+unconsciously will when very weary. He was wearing his ready-made
+clothes and starched collar; but the trousers were deplorably baggy at
+the knees from much riding, and his linen and polished shoes were soiled
+with the dust of the prairie.
+
+Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared. Serving
+it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the
+slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and
+throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek. A
+young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his
+hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the
+buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace
+just outside the ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly,
+continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year
+before. To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her
+companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned,
+unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a
+note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted
+colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every
+motion. Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing
+human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation:
+yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the
+unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never
+was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive,
+sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not remarkable.
+He had never done so except when she had not. When he looked at her
+there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that
+also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery in the depths of his
+steady black eyes. Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious
+was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the
+girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring
+night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes
+intimately close.
+
+Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south
+breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears;
+about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the
+subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing
+things. But not even then could the girl be still. Far too full of this
+day's revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be
+silent. The mood of her merely changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless,
+ceased. In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a
+definite question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed
+arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown,
+when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she did not alter her
+position.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "whether if one has made a mistake, it were better
+to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to
+admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay
+the penalty?" She paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do
+you think, How?"
+
+In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the lighter sky her
+face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a silhouette.
+
+"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he answered.
+
+"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from suffering?"
+
+"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."
+
+The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.
+
+"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the truth makes
+one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any difference, How?"
+
+The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with his steady
+eyes.
+
+"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he said. "I
+think this is one of them."
+
+Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.
+
+"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.
+
+"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with
+ourselves or not."
+
+"You think that, really?"
+
+"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."
+
+Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last,
+abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new
+query.
+
+"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
+
+"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no
+irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain.
+"How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at
+all?"
+
+Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words
+themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
+
+"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
+
+This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where
+the running might read.
+
+"Yes, I have an idea--and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness,
+has always been the first thing in my life."
+
+Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by
+step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she
+was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched
+her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he
+made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately
+from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was
+filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke
+no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not
+but have admired her child that night.
+
+One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had
+walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no
+hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.
+
+"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I
+haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She
+paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been
+watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become
+restless week by week. Last night,--you didn't notice, but I did,--I
+heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see
+what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and
+I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn.
+It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost
+as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but
+all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere
+away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing
+there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that
+second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he
+could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He
+didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he
+couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the
+chain stretched across his back--" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat
+up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she
+pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me
+you'll let him go!"
+
+Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.
+
+"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save Shaggy's
+life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out of her den and
+shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when I found him."
+
+"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't make any
+difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him here."
+
+Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with the
+argument.
+
+"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't live
+through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will shoot him on
+sight."
+
+"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the girl. "We
+all have to take our chances in this life."
+
+For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.
+
+"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill the first
+animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of that?"
+
+The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.
+
+"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I made him as
+he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to be; and if he's bad,
+God alone is to blame." Her glance returned, met the other fair. "I wish
+you'd let him go, How."
+
+The man made no answer.
+
+"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"
+
+"You really wish it, Bess?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a sudden he
+arose.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said.
+
+Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more, followed his
+lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But
+there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung
+from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the
+way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep,
+but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise
+there was no move. Look where one would within the building, there was
+no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the Indian led the way
+outside, made the circuit of the stable, paused at the south end where
+a chain hung loose from a peg driven into the wall. A moment he stood
+there, holding the light so the girl could see; then, impassive as
+before, he extinguished the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.
+
+They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke; then,
+detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.
+
+"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."
+
+They walked on so.
+
+"You wanted him to go?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.
+
+"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.
+
+For the second time there was no answer.
+
+"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.
+
+"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I thought
+I--understood."
+
+For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither
+stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the hand dropped.
+
+"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.
+
+Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his chest.
+That was all.
+
+The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.
+
+"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.
+
+"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.
+
+"No, Bess," repeated.
+
+"But still you're not coming?"
+
+"No."
+
+Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.
+
+"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She scarcely
+recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with me again?"
+
+"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that, Bess." A
+second halt. "Not until things between us are different, at least."
+
+"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped the casing
+of the door. "Oh, How! How!"
+
+No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a breath;
+just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl stood it, hoping
+against hope, praying for a miracle; then she could stand it no longer.
+Gropingly clutching at every object within reach, she made her way into
+the dark interior; flung herself full dressed onto the bed, her face
+buried desperately among the covers.
+
+All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth in front
+of the ranch house door; back and forth like an automaton, back and
+forth in a motion that seemed perpetual. Within the tiny low-ceiled
+room, in the fulness of time, the girl sobbed herself into a fitful
+sleep; but not once did the sentinel pause to rest, not once in those
+dragging hours before day did he relax. With the coming of the first
+trace of light he halted, and on silent moccasined feet stole within.
+But again he only remained for moments, and when he returned it was
+merely to stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before
+the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did everything, he
+rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into the darkness to the
+west.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague sense of
+depression and of impending evil. The door was open and the bright
+morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance stretched the open
+prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny brown island, her own
+dooryard, in the foreground. With dull listlessness, the girl propped
+herself up in bed and sat looking about her. Absently, aimlessly, her
+eyes passed from one familiar object to another. Without any definite
+conception of why or of where, she was conscious of an impression of
+change in the material world about her, a change that corresponded to
+the mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the
+sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering joy.
+Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message passed her by.
+Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a haunting memory of
+the past night and of what it had meant. As a traveller lost in this
+fog, she lay staring about, indecisive which way to move, idly waiting
+for light. Ordinarily action itself would have offered a solution of the
+problem, would have served at least as a diversion; but this morning she
+was strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no
+adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything more
+than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow higher and,
+lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her palm and lay with
+wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.
+
+Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The doorway faced
+south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had entered therein began
+moving to the left across the floor. Unconsciously, for the lack of
+anything better to do, she watched its advance. It fell upon a tiny
+shelf against the wall, littered with a collection of papers and
+magazines; and the reflected light from the white sheets glared in her
+eyes. It came to the supper table of the night before, the table she had
+not cleared, and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of
+her own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on;
+crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live thing,
+began climbing the wall beyond.
+
+Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched its
+advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its relentless
+stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny. Like a hostile
+alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in the tiny room for
+something definite, something it did not find. Fatuous as it may seem,
+the impression grew upon her, augmented until in its own turn it became
+a dominant influence. Her glance, heretofore absent, perfunctory, became
+intense. The glare was well above the floor by this time and climbing
+higher and higher. Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat
+up free in bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her
+fairly.
+
+The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light was
+mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from rough-fashioned wooden
+pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant wardrobe. At first glance
+there seemed to the girl nothing unusual revealed thereon, nothing
+significant; and, restlessly observant, the inspection advanced. Then,
+ere the mental picture could vanish, ere a new impression could take its
+place, in a flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came
+realisation complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute
+thereafter she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and
+wider, her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a
+minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of weariness
+and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place, and covered her
+face from sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+SACRIFICE
+
+A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the
+slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren
+dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition
+the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was
+perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long
+waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he
+had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully
+concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
+litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had
+grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the
+visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer
+present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had
+come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever
+rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.
+
+For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been
+invited to enter, yet he had entered--and the girl had spoken no word to
+prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a
+peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged,
+they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging
+intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the
+bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was
+present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids,
+whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour
+of putting the place to rights.
+
+"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that
+unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching.
+Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"
+
+The girl did not smile.
+
+"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were
+tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer--" She drew another
+chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.
+
+A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the
+whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had
+grown to assume in her presence took its place.
+
+"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm
+when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible
+offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
+
+"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of
+punishment?"
+
+The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the
+past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed
+plain.
+
+"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held
+me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
+
+"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that
+I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
+
+For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that
+the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to
+abandon at once.
+
+"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he
+objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all.
+Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
+
+"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to
+appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten
+immeasurably farther away from another."
+
+"Your husband you mean?"
+
+"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
+
+The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to
+each other not to know everything there is to know."
+
+"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The
+inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly--and she herself had
+chosen. "He's merely given me up."
+
+"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something
+else as well, something akin to exultation.
+
+"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
+
+"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
+
+Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old
+pride, broke forth.
+
+"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before
+this if he objected?" she flamed.
+
+"Bess!"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had
+died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean
+to."
+
+The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the
+last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon
+blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive,
+conscious conformity such as this--The thing was unbelievable,
+providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic
+moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a
+change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to
+permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he
+had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to
+avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not
+alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to
+himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not
+the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the
+girl--particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be
+gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He
+merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
+that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.
+
+"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"
+
+"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."
+
+"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any
+longer. It's intolerable for both of us."
+
+"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."
+
+Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had
+imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now
+that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He
+hardly knew how to begin.
+
+"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very
+dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided
+the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in
+keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any
+longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the
+responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that
+before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from
+this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad--at least leave for a
+time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we
+wish; but for the present--I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
+another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.
+
+"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we
+can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He
+cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've
+arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last
+week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses
+waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the
+ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before
+morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again,
+nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say,
+not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been
+enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
+the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at
+the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.
+Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.
+There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on
+her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows
+you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to
+live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess;
+happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"
+
+He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the
+dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat
+looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As
+she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.
+Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an
+evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden,
+within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
+instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than
+life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading,
+distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her
+ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn
+philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she
+had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full
+knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him
+so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
+wife--.
+
+The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face
+drew nearer.
+
+"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense.
+Will you go?"
+
+With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back
+until she was free.
+
+"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to
+think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes;
+but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must
+consent--"
+
+"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I
+can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you
+must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not
+insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"
+
+The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.
+
+"I can't now, as things are."
+
+"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"
+
+For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.
+
+The man came a step forward, and another.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"
+
+"I have told you," said a low voice.
+
+Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human
+being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move
+or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he
+commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily,
+irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."
+
+"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent
+effort to be free. "You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but
+not wholly. Please let me go."
+
+Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the
+moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to
+escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out
+of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.
+
+But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His
+back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in.
+Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out
+the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same
+all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the
+doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first
+woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might
+have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.
+
+"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten
+you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and
+not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could
+no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you
+go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're
+mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--"
+
+The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible
+muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the
+shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside
+them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the
+invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent
+poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent
+passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder
+in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count,
+the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical
+spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction
+had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure,
+there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense,
+desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.
+
+"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips
+and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I
+guess. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the
+two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his
+presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once
+more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful,
+he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More
+maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that
+passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot
+blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
+his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband,
+tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward
+menacingly.
+
+"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps,
+not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word
+his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost,
+lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"
+
+From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that
+instant the room became deathly still.
+
+A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then,
+white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so,
+motionless:--for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was
+speaking.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step
+the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the
+white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice,
+unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was
+even as before.
+
+"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said.
+"I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I
+expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may
+listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but
+now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a
+moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the
+old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they
+rested on the face of the girl.
+
+But for still another moment--he was as deliberate as nature herself,
+this man--he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more
+so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death.
+His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands,
+folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but
+look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath
+the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now,
+very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
+expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite
+in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in
+the low-pitched voice.
+
+"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a
+request to make--and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly,
+to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came
+because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had
+reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the
+folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned
+abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon
+for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to
+do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into
+it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the
+girl's recollection while memory lasted.
+
+"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on.
+"Things are as they are--and final. I don't judge you, I--understand.
+Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now
+I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At
+least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to
+tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he
+stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment,
+please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to
+say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.
+
+"I said I had a request to make. This is it--that you don't leave until
+you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have
+inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you
+will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned
+anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he
+halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise
+me this, Bess?" he asked.
+
+Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened
+through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent,
+and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever
+in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was
+no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A
+myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was
+gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed
+nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was
+expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.
+
+"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently.
+"I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall
+again."
+
+At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips
+were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.
+
+"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."
+
+Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality;
+but the girl did not break it, said no more--and forever the moment, her
+moment, vanished into the past.
+
+"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely
+different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room.
+"There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he
+explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."
+
+With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope
+satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly
+here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No
+one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence,
+except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the
+satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army
+greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap
+which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered
+in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
+there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small,
+and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood
+beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover
+and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes
+large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At
+last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and
+the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the
+last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from
+nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
+heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his
+burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out
+his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her
+very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but
+I don't, so I'll only say good-bye--and--I wish you happiness." Just a
+moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her
+hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.
+
+"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it--as you cared for me once.
+Don't make things any harder--make them impossible!" Desperately,
+without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door.
+Beside the entrance--for he was not watching these last minutes--stood
+the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted.
+Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant,
+wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did
+everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those
+words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
+grave.
+
+"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say.
+Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so,
+if you will. If you do not--" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace--"if
+you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not
+a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall
+know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times
+better, if you do as I say."
+
+Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then,
+similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there
+broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+REWARD
+
+The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch
+house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the
+supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The
+vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained
+likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
+powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried.
+Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking
+permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a
+convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the
+eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the
+house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking
+permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
+
+Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were
+eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one
+corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
+
+Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor,
+Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy
+queensware proceeded.
+
+"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his
+chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to,
+stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
+
+In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his
+work.
+
+Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete
+was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had
+filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on
+the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
+
+"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
+
+The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of
+cigars.
+
+"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
+
+Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter--for cigars were a rarity on
+the frontier--puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content.
+The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and
+washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a
+cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue,
+disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor
+introduced himself.
+
+"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the
+Centre."
+
+The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
+
+"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at
+last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now.
+You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up
+the two kids."
+
+It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
+
+"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you
+were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look
+reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other
+side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over
+here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
+
+The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he
+glanced up.
+
+"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and--" Hawkins
+laughed peculiarly--"made a fizzle of it."
+
+"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
+
+"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even
+heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with
+his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl
+went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud
+of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
+
+"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing
+the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they
+hit it off well together?"
+
+Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands
+fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
+
+"While the money lasted, yes."
+
+"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
+
+"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
+
+"And then--"
+
+"It's the old story."
+
+"They went to pieces?"
+
+"Craig left her--for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter
+and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he
+was supporting the other woman all the time."
+
+Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the
+cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the
+mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
+
+"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
+
+"Bess came back."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed
+by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes
+were blazing.
+
+"Yes, she was alone," he said.
+
+The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The
+blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
+
+"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
+
+"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday,
+just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
+
+The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
+
+"Back at the ranch--with the Indian?"
+
+Equally directly Manning returned the look.
+
+"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not
+there."
+
+"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
+
+Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
+
+"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came
+here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to
+tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
+
+Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the
+lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing.
+For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face
+incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
+
+"Know where he is? Of course I do--now." He leaned back in his chair.
+"To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here,
+or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
+
+He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
+
+"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last
+week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for
+me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We
+never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a
+sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the
+board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm
+with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a
+two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
+
+For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand
+on the chair arm loosened its grip.
+
+"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think
+we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two
+fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its
+mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the
+morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded
+things a bit on the way up."
+
+For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
+unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
+
+"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty
+miles, and there's plenty of time."
+
+Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old
+storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
+
+"Yes, there's plenty of time--after How Landor knows," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny
+dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a
+shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam.
+In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized
+pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little
+altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was
+very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near
+and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet,
+they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in
+flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
+been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was
+pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking
+mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho
+had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and
+grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were
+unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened,
+something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror
+they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this
+something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and
+invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the
+confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had
+been interrupted.
+
+Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late
+September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy
+brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish
+speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all
+the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as
+irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while
+time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within
+the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
+
+Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On
+soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing,
+he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than
+once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did
+not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within
+stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an
+Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that
+object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he
+peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
+instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its
+revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken
+prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely
+beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent
+human in their midst this autumn day.
+
+How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could
+have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last,
+interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great
+quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost
+before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had
+ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up
+beside the tent.
+
+Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched
+himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was
+waiting.
+
+They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat
+eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
+
+"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be
+enough around when I came."
+
+The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
+
+"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
+
+A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he
+dismounted.
+
+"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed
+abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before
+I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to
+dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind
+I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
+
+In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the
+flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
+
+Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew
+on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then,
+however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now
+at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was
+intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of
+a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old
+storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The
+message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
+begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with
+a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite
+care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man
+himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the
+sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the
+impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied,
+well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him
+at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a
+measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
+that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
+emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
+inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white
+he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an
+inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice,
+with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's
+sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence
+calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless
+savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken
+for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
+realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine
+punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal,
+with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that
+had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his
+interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances
+unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling
+suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a
+readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the
+dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came
+fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal--if the other wished;
+but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the
+decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit
+it afresh suggestively.
+
+"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not
+Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
+
+The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
+
+"I thought so," it said simply.
+
+Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight,
+the glow lit up his face.
+
+"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service--and
+I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
+
+Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless,
+smiling infinite.
+
+"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I
+should know."
+
+The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
+
+"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
+
+Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his
+heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved.
+Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe
+opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground--his
+long fingers locked across his knees.
+
+"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
+
+For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white
+man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit
+now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering
+outside the bowl onto his knee.
+
+"About a month ago"--the speaker cleared his throat raspingly--"on
+August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started
+from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It
+wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one
+was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp
+crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker.
+"It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
+
+Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
+
+"Go on, please," requested a voice.
+
+"Early yesterday morning"--again the narrator halted perforce, to clear
+his throat--"just before I left three men went through town on their way
+to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man
+who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water
+their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch
+house closing the bargain now."
+
+"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
+
+The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged
+when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted
+physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness
+and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set
+eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when
+telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was
+all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by
+request.
+
+"I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old
+formula.
+
+For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a
+match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the
+sound, came a question.
+
+"Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they
+looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the
+mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
+
+"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two
+days old."
+
+"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
+
+"Yes. Several weeks."
+
+"She returned alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to stay?"
+
+Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the
+inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the
+other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
+
+"Yes," answered Manning.
+
+"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
+
+"No, Craig had left her."
+
+Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither
+man noticed the change.
+
+"There was a reason?"
+
+"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
+
+The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as
+the sunlight without.
+
+"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
+
+"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
+
+"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had
+done? You mean to tell me this?"
+
+Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white
+man got to his feet, stood so silent.
+
+"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear
+against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
+
+"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
+
+"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the
+third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come.
+"There could be but one other way!"
+
+Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face
+opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the
+moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so
+was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big
+game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the
+expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the
+end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted,
+waiting, postponing the inevitable.
+
+"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
+repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
+
+To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow
+fell.
+
+"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to the east
+whither he had taken his way not even a dot now indicated his former
+presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon the wheels of the old road
+waggon had temporarily blazed a trail had returned normally erect.
+Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over the parched earth, the storm had
+gathered and broken; and passed on as though it had not been. All about
+smiled the sunshine; sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing,
+heard nothing. On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned,
+swam and splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal
+breeze of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
+song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had nature, the
+serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her
+customary course. Man alone it is who changes to conform with the
+passing mood. Man alone it was amid this primitive setting who had
+altered now.
+
+For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming. Instead, his
+every action was that of one with a definite purpose. Yet even then he
+did not hurry. At first he seemed merely to be going about the ordinary
+routine of his life. Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself
+a generous meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for
+the first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
+unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or even
+touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward the tent and
+disappeared inside.
+
+For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to place; and
+when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing indeed. In his arms
+were several articles of clothing rolled into a bulky bundle. Without a
+halt he made his way back to the place where he had eaten. The fire
+which he had builded had burned low ere this; and, standing there beside
+it, he scraped away the ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until
+the glowing embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had
+opened with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which
+it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a
+battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A moment the
+Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely; then gently as
+though they were a lost child he was returning to its mother's arms he
+laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool is slow to catch ablaze and
+for the moment they lay there black against the brown earth; then of a
+sudden, like the first lifting of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column
+of blue went trailing upward. Second by second it grew until with a
+muffled explosion the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood
+watching; now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned
+to the tent.
+
+This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with an armful
+of books--and something more. The fire was crackling merrily now, and
+volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for the first time he
+hesitated. There was still something to destroy, something which he had
+gathered in the old felt hat from off his own head; yet he hesitated.
+Greedy as a hungry animal deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept
+sending out spurts of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he
+delayed. Like the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into
+passive waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
+this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But this
+time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head glistening
+in the sunlight, he started away toward the now expectant broncho; and
+back of him the pathetic little gathering of useless trinkets, bearing
+indelibly the mark of a woman's handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with
+the ashes of the things which had gone before.
+
+Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking cayuse
+following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back; waiting
+impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a land where
+prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever leaves fire alive
+when out of his sight; and to this instinct the Indian was true. Minute
+after minute he waited; until the flame vanished and in its stead there
+lay a mass of blazing coals. Then with a practical hand he banked the
+whole with a layer of earth until, look where one would, not a dot of
+red was visible. The act was the last, the culmination of preparation.
+At its end, with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his
+head high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in anticipation. Well
+he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was there of a
+second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost ere the taking of
+the single leap that put the rider in his seat the little beast was
+away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing deep of the prairie air, the
+patter of his tiny hoofs a continuous song upon the close-cropped sod.
+As two human beings living side by side grow to know each other, so this
+dumb menial had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to
+the dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He did
+so now; and as time passed and the miles flowed monotonously beneath his
+galloping feet the relentless determination of the man himself was
+repeated in that undeviating pace.
+
+Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the dragging hours of
+the September afternoon it continued. Many a time before the little
+beast had followed the trail from sun to sun. As well as the rider knew
+his own endurance he knew the possibilities of his mount, knew that now
+he would not fail. He did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he
+check it. He spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual
+drouth of fall, and as time passed on the dust the pony raised collected
+upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he noticed
+it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the broncho grew
+darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on the diminutive
+beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was unconscious. Silent
+as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his place; his lithe body
+conforming involuntarily to the motion, to the play of muscles beneath
+his legs; yet as unconsciously as one breathes in sleep. Not until the
+sun was red in the west, until of its own accord the broncho had drawn
+up at the first bit of water they had met on the way--a shallow marshy
+pond--did he move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the
+man washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition,
+shook the dust from his clothing.
+
+For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by side the man
+and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved and ever southward.
+Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but the sky was clear as it
+had been during the day, and the man needed no guide but the stars to
+show him the way. As he moved the hand of the Indian remained on the
+broncho's neck; and bit by bit as the time passed he felt the moist hair
+grow stiff and dry. Then, and not until then, came the final move, the
+beginning of the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion,
+apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and again
+as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly, that instant
+the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent as before, a
+ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into the night and the
+solitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch had
+changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer had driven
+about the place. One by one the cowboys had given testimony of the
+fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At first resignedly
+complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had grown cumulatively
+impatient at the inevitably dragging inventory. Nothing but necessity
+absolute in the shape of an imminent foreclosure had brought him back to
+this land at all. Delay had followed delay until at last immediate
+action was imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in
+a fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since they
+had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had been upon him.
+The team that had brought them out could not move fast enough. The
+preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had been, nevertheless
+dragged interminably. Strive as he might to combat the impression, to
+ignore it, this land had of a sudden become to him a land of terror.
+Every object which met his eye called forth a recollection. Every minute
+that passed whispered a menace. In a measure it had been so a half year
+ago ere he had tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had
+occurred in that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented
+immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a minute
+since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had he been
+without a revolver at hand. All the previous night, despite the
+grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had bunked, a lamp had
+burned beside the bed; yet even then he could not sleep. Whether or no
+he felt contrition for the past, this man, he could not have told, he
+never paused to consider. All he knew was that he had a deathly fear of
+this silent waste and of a certain human who dwelt somewhere therein.
+Repugnant as consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing
+compared with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual
+experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of money,
+badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence. Now that he
+was here he must needs see the transaction through; he could not well do
+otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a close and the necessity of
+tarrying a second night became assured, the premonition of retribution,
+that had before lowered merely as a possibility, loomed into the
+proportions of certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink;
+not at stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but
+continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged glances
+of understanding.
+
+To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal was
+complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with tobacco smoke, by
+the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene lamp Craig had accomplished
+a sprawling signature and received in return a check on a Chicago bank.
+It was already late, and very soon the new owner, with a significant
+look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt
+"Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a thinly
+veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself, and Craig and
+his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes thereafter the two
+men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite his muddled brain, the
+former realised that the big Irishman was observing him with a
+concentration that was significant. Ever short of temper, the man's
+nerves were stretched to the jangling point this night, and the look
+irritated him. Responsive, he scowled prodigiously.
+
+"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"
+
+No answer; only, if possible, the look became more analytic than before.
+
+"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous staring that
+way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't you like my selling
+and putting you out of a job?"
+
+"No, it's not that," refuted the Hibernian. "There are plenty of other
+places I can get. I could stay right here for that matter if I wanted
+to--but I don't. I wouldn't live in this house any longer if my pay were
+doubled." As he spoke he had looked away. Now of a sudden his glance
+returned. "I meant to quit anyway, whether you sold or not."
+
+"Why so?" queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was repeated. "You
+seemed glad enough to come."
+
+"I was--then," shortly.
+
+"And why not now? Talk up, if you've any grievance. Don't sit there like
+a chimpanzee, hugging it."
+
+"You know why well enough," ignored the other. He passed a knotty hand
+through his shock of red whiskers absently. "I've expected the devil or
+worse here every night these last weeks."
+
+Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.
+
+"God," he satirised, "who'd ever imagined you were the superstitious
+sort! Weren't you ever in a place where anyone died before?"
+
+"I never was where a woman and her child were murdered," deliberately.
+
+Quick as thought Craig's red face whitened.
+
+"Damn you, O'Reilly," he challenged, "you're free with your tongue." He
+checked himself. "I don't wish to quarrel with you to-night, though," he
+conciliated.
+
+"Nor I with you," returned the other impassively. "I was merely telling
+you the truth. Besides, it's none of my affair; and even if it were, I'm
+thinking you'll pay for it dear enough before you're through."
+
+Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude
+supercilious.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean, O'Reilly? You keep suggesting things, but
+that is all. Talk plain if you know anything."
+
+"I don't know anything," impassively; "unless it is that I wouldn't be
+in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you've made out of this
+cursed business."
+
+Bit by bit Craig's face whitened. If anything the air of conciliation
+augmented.
+
+"You think circumstances weren't to blame?" he queried. "That, in other
+words, I've brought things about as they are deliberately?"
+
+"I don't think anything. I know what you've done--and what you've got to
+answer for."
+
+Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about him.
+
+The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he arose
+unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a jerk.
+
+"You're beastly hard on me," he commented, "but let that pass. It's
+probably the last time we'll ever see each other, and we may as well
+part friends." He was back in his place again with the flask before him,
+and with a propitiatory motion he extended the liquor toward the other
+man. "Come, let's forget it," he insinuated. "Have a drink with me."
+
+"Not a drop."
+
+"Not if I requested it?"
+
+"Not if you got down on your knees and begged."
+
+"All right." The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little laugh. "I'll
+have to spoil it all myself, then."
+
+The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down swallow
+after swallow. The hand of the drinker trembled uncontrollably, and a
+tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven chin to the starched linen
+beneath.
+
+"If you'll take a word of advice," commented the spectator at last,
+"you'll cut that--for the time being at least." He hesitated; then went
+on reluctantly. "I've been in your pay and I'll try to be square with
+you. If you've got an atom of presentiment you'll realise that this is
+no place for you to get into the shape you're getting." Again he halted,
+and again with an effort he gave the warning direct. "If I were you I
+wouldn't be at this ranch a second longer than it took me to leave; not
+as long as I had a broncho or a leg or a crutch to go on."
+
+Slowly and more slowly came the words. Then followed silence, with the
+two men staring each other face to face. Breaking it, the overseer
+arose.
+
+"I've said more than I intended already," he added, "and now I wash my
+hands of you. Do as you please. I'm going to bed."
+
+Preventing, of a sudden sobered, Craig was likewise on his feet.
+
+"In common decency, even if you're no friend of mine, don't go,
+O'Reilly," he pleaded. He had no thought of superiority now, no thought
+of malice; only of companionship and of protection. "I know what you
+mean. I'm no fool, and what you suggest is exactly what's been driving
+me insane these last two days. I'm going in the morning, as soon as it's
+daylight; the team is all ordered; but to-night, now--" instinctively he
+glanced at the window where recollection pictured the darkness
+without--"I haven't nerve to face it now. I'd go plumb mad out there
+alone."
+
+The Irishman shrugged in silence and attempted to pass.
+
+"Please don't go," repeated Craig swiftly. "I know I'm acting like a
+child, but this cursed country's to blame. Stay with me this last night.
+I couldn't sleep, and it's madness to be alone. See me through this and
+I swear you'll not regret it. I swear it!"
+
+Just for a second O'Reilly paused; then of a sudden his face flamed red
+through his untrimmed beard.
+
+"To hell with your money!" he blazed. "I wouldn't lift my finger for you
+if How Landor were to come this second." He checked himself and took a
+step forward meaningly. "Besides, I couldn't help you any if I would.
+God himself couldn't protect you now unless He performed a miracle. Out
+of my way. I tell you I'm done with you."
+
+Craig had not stirred. He did not now; and of a sudden the overseer
+turned to pass around. As he did so for the first time he faced the
+single window that looked north toward the second ranch house: the house
+which How Landor had builded to receive his bride. The curtain was still
+down, but to the Irishman's quick eye there rested upon it now a dull
+glow that was not a reflection of the light within. A second after he
+noticed the man halted, looking at it, speculating as to its meaning.
+Then of a sudden he realised; and in two steps he was across the room
+and simultaneously the obscuring shade shot up with a crash. Instantly
+following, startlingly unexpected, the red glow without sprang through
+the glass and filled the room.
+
+"Fire!" announced the observer involuntarily to the sleepers above. "The
+other ranch house is afire!" Then, as they were slow in awakening, the
+cry was repeated more loudly: "Fire! Fire!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A conflagration is the universal contagion, the one excitement that
+never palls. Forth into the night, forgetful of his companion, forgetful
+of all save the interest of the moment, rushed O'Reilly. Half dressed,
+hatless, working with buttons as they went, Parker, the new owner, and
+Mead, the lawyer, descended the rickety stairs like an avalanche and
+without pausing to more than look followed running in his wake. The
+unused ranch house was dry as cardboard and was burning fiercely. Though
+there was still no moon and the overseer had several minutes the start,
+against the light they could see his running figure distinctly. Standing
+in the living-room as they rushed through, white faced, hesitant, was
+Clayton Craig; but though he had spoken to them--they both recalled that
+fact afterward--neither had paused to listen or to answer. That he would
+not follow never occurred to them until minutes thereafter. Not until,
+panting, struggling for breath after the unusual effort, they had
+covered the intervening mile, and the heat of the already diminishing
+fire was on their faces, did they think of him at all. Even then it was
+not the first thought which occurred; for the moment they arrived
+O'Reilly, who was waiting, turned, facing them excitedly.
+
+"Do you see that?" he queried, pointing to a black band that surrounded
+the building in a complete circle.
+
+Parker nodded understandingly; but Mead, who was city bred, looked
+mystified. "What is it?" he returned.
+
+"A firebreak," explained the Irishman. "Someone didn't want the blaze to
+spread and scattered earth clear around the place, with a spade."
+Leaning over he picked up a clod and thumbed it significantly. "It
+hasn't been done a half hour. The dirt isn't even dry."
+
+Brief as the time had been, already the frail walls were settling to
+embers. There was nothing to do; and standing there the three men looked
+understandingly into each other's faces. The same thought stood clear on
+all; for all alike knew every detail of the story.
+
+"The Indian, How Landor," suggested Mead adequately.
+
+"Yes," corroborated Parker, "and I'm glad of it. I'm not squeamish, but
+the Lord knows I'd never have used the place myself."
+
+Of a sudden, O'Reilly, who had turned and was staring into the blaze,
+faced about. That second he had remembered.
+
+"Where's Craig?" he queried swiftly, glancing back the way they had
+come. "Didn't he follow?"
+
+Until that moment none of the three had thought of the other man. Now
+they realised that they were alone. But even then two of the trio did
+not understand.
+
+"Evidently he didn't start," said Mead. "He couldn't have missed the
+light if he did."
+
+"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left," added Parker.
+
+"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly. "As
+there's a Heaven and a Hell he's not standing there now, I'll wager!"
+
+Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of that meaning
+black band, the three spectators there beneath the stars stood staring
+at each other. It was O'Reilly again who broke the silence.
+
+"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's happened?"
+he interrogated unbelievingly.
+
+"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no doubt
+about that," said Mead.
+
+"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor, and he's
+been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone back there in the
+ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you see now? At last the
+Indian has found out!"
+
+For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home, not a man
+stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and started back into
+the night.
+
+"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We can't get
+there a second too quick."
+
+"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We couldn't get
+there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over before this, take my
+word for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back they were too
+late. As O'Reilly had anticipated, the ranch house was empty, deserted.
+Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the adjoining tool shed. Though
+they searched every nook, until a mouse could not have escaped
+detection, they found not a trace of him for whom they looked, nor a
+clue to his disappearance. Though they shouted his name until they were
+hoarse not an answer came back from the surrounding darkness. Within the
+ranch house itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a
+struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it had
+been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap and topcoat
+were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the stable every horse
+was within its own stall: every piece of saddlery was intact. While the
+three men were looking, attracted by the blaze, the distant cowboys one
+by one began drifting in; and when they had heard the tale joined in
+the search. All through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns,
+like giant fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a
+radius of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming
+of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches
+appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on the
+prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was assembled.
+Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of riders scoured the
+country for miles and miles. And once more, from all, the testimony was
+as before. There was not a clue to the disappearance, nor the semblance
+of a clue. As out of the darkness of night surrounding, a great horned
+owl swoops down upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the
+Indian had come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as
+well into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the
+ranchers dispersed--and the search was over.
+
+And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery unsurmountable. One
+morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly had gone, when the new
+master of the ranch arose it was to find a wicked-looking mouse-coloured
+cayuse standing motionless by the stable door. Upon him was neither
+saddle nor bridle nor mark of any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless
+waste he had been released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he
+had returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He
+could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out there
+amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to pass; but what it
+was only Nature and Nature's God, who alone were witness, could ever
+know.
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Where the Trail Divides</p>
+<p>Author: Will Lillibridge</p>
+<p>Release Date: March 23, 2004  [eBook #11683]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: iso-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES***</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><b>E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Jeremy Eble,<br>
+           and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</b></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+  <center>
+    <hr>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>Where the Trail Divides</h1>
+
+    <h2>By WILL LILLIBRIDGE</h2>
+
+    <p>Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.</p>
+
+    <p><img src="cover.png"
+         border="0"
+         alt="Knot from Title Page"></p>With Frontispiece in
+         Colors<br>
+    By The Kinneys<br>
+
+    <p>1907</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr width="50%">
+
+  </center>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <table border="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+    <tr>
+      <td></td>
+
+      <td>
+        <h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+      </td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">I.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#I">PRESENTIMENT</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">II.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#II">FULFILMENT</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">III.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#III">DISCOVERY</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">IV.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#IV">RECONSTRUCTION</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">V.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#V">THE LAND OF LICENCE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">VI.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#VI">THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">VII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#VII">A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">VIII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#VIII">THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">IX.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#IX">THE VOICE OF THE WILD</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">X.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#X">THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XI.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XI">THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XII">WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN
+      COUNTRY</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XIII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XIII">THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XIV.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XIV">FATE, THE SATIRIST</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XV.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XV">THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XVI.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XVI">THE RECKONING</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XVII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XVII">SACRIFICE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XVIII.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XVIII">REWARD</a></td>
+    </tr>
+
+    <tr>
+      <td align="right">XIX.</td>
+
+      <td><a href="#XIX">IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE</a></td>
+    </tr>
+  </table><a name="I"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+  <p>PRESENTIMENT</p>
+
+  <p>The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard
+  line. In addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now
+  he moved with a limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue
+  flannel shirt, open at the throat, exposed a broad hairy chest
+  that rose and fell mightily with the effort he was making. And
+  therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot&mdash;with the heat of a
+  cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The country
+  he was traversing was wild, unbroken&mdash;uninhabited apparently of
+  man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the
+  dancing heat rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe
+  of green trees. To his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a
+  tree nor a shrub nor a rock the height of a man's head; only
+  ungrazed, yellowish-green sun-dried prairie grass. The silence
+  was complete. Not even a breath of wind rustled the grass; yet
+  ever and anon the man paused glanced back the way he had come,
+  listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of repressed
+  breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
+  then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand
+  gripping the butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his
+  shoulder, the other, big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a
+  pendulum at his side.</p>
+
+  <p>Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in
+  civilisation, humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it
+  here, solitary, exotic, no observer would have laughed. Fear,
+  mortal dogging fear, impersonate, supreme, was in every look,
+  every action. Somewhere back of that curved line where met the
+  earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have been
+  adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused.
+  The sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop
+  by drop from the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but
+  apparently he never noticed it. Now and then he attempted to
+  moisten his lips; but his tongue was dry as powder, and they
+  closed again, parched as before.</p>
+
+  <p>No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the
+  way he was going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his
+  only landmark; yet as hour after hour went by and the sun sank
+  lower and lower he never halted, never seemed in doubt as to his
+  destination. The country was growing more rolling now, almost
+  hilly, and he approached each rise cautiously, vigilantly. Once,
+  almost at his feet a covey of frightened prairie chickens sprang
+  a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped like a stone in
+  his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall grass; then,
+  reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
+  on.</p>
+
+  <p>It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from
+  absolute physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at
+  last rebelled, and not even fear could suffice longer to
+  stimulate him. The grass was wet with dew, and prone on his knees
+  he moistened his lips therefrom as drinks many another of the
+  fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back, not sleeping, but
+  very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the return of
+  strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat the
+  sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and
+  thicker, dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day
+  had appeared the fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost
+  brightened; until at last, like a curious face, the full moon,
+  peeping above the horizon, lit up the surface of prairie.</p>
+
+  <p>At last&mdash;and ere this the moon was well in the sky&mdash;the man
+  arose, stretched his stiffened muscles profanely&mdash;before he had
+  not spoken a syllable&mdash;listened a moment almost involuntarily,
+  sent a swift, searching glance all about; then moved ahead,
+  straight south, at the old relentless pace.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls
+  vacillated between vexation and solicitude.</p>
+
+  <p>"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or
+  not," he announced in ultimatum.</p>
+
+  <p>Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid,
+  folded his arms across his chest with an air of finality.</p>
+
+  <p>"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the
+  warning. I know your intentions are good, but you people are
+  afraid of your own shadows. I know as well as you do that there
+  are Indians in this part of the world, some odd thousands of them
+  between here and the Hills, but they were here when I came and
+  when you came, and we knew they were here. You expect to hear
+  from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,' don't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>The other made a motion of annoyance.</p>
+
+  <p>"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he
+  returned swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you
+  were alone, Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine
+  without another word; but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord
+  she's down in Sioux City where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should
+  be, and for her sake&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon."</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned
+  back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for
+  little niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge
+  Amidon and his son, murdered in their own hayfield not three
+  miles from here, the boy as full of arrows as a cushion of pins.
+  This isn't ancient history, man, but took place this very day.
+  It's Indian massacre, and at our own throats. The boys are down
+  below the falls getting ready to go right now. By night there
+  won't be another white man or woman within twenty-five miles of
+  you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here arguing. If you will
+  stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and the girl. I'll
+  take care of them myself and bring them back when the government
+  sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
+  reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should
+  jump it there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come
+  on."</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the
+  tone of vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had
+  appeared upon the scene.</p>
+
+  <p>"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed.
+  "Take my advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we
+  leave you behind."</p>
+
+  <p>"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked
+  unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared.
+  "Danger, with Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail!
+  Is it possible you two don't realise things as they are?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the
+  Tetons are hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us
+  would rebel if we were hustled away into a corner like naughty
+  little boys, as they are; but actual danger&mdash;" The woman threw a
+  comprehensive, almost amused glance at the big man, her husband.
+  "We've been here almost two years now; long before you and the
+  others came. Half the hunters who pass this way stop here. It
+  wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a whole
+  antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
+  those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would
+  be in Sioux City."</p>
+
+  <p>"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the
+  other. "I don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own
+  eyes."</p>
+
+  <p>"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland
+  glanced at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost
+  superciliously. "Indians are like white people. They have their
+  loves and hates the same as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran
+  once before when everyone was going, and when we got back not a
+  thing had been touched; but the weeds had choked our corn and the
+  rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good to the Indians, and
+  they appreciate it."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came
+  forward swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to
+  the other.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and
+  it's pure madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a
+  big-eyed, solemn-faced mite of humanity, had come up now and
+  stood staring the stranger silently from the side of her mother's
+  skirts. "I hope for the best, but before God I never expect to
+  see any of you again."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right&mdash;when you return,"
+  commented Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and
+  without a backward glance started at a rapid jog trot for the
+  tiny settlement on the river two miles away.</p>
+
+  <p>Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the
+  departing frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes
+  accentuated by the tightened lids.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there
+  ever was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual
+  disturbance somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down
+  at the settlement leaving&mdash;they'd go if they heard a coyote
+  whistle; but Brown tells me there've been three different
+  trappers from Big Stone gone through south in the last week, and
+  when they leave it means something. If you say the word we'll
+  leave everything and go yet." "If we do we'll never come
+  back."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not necessarily."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not.
+  We went before because the others went. If we left now it would
+  be different. We'd be tortured day and night if we really
+  feared&mdash;what happens now and then to some. We came here with our
+  eyes wide open. We can't start again in civilisation. We're too
+  old, and there's the past&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"You still blame me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned
+  toward the rough log shanty unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's
+  hungry."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its
+  feet, one hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the
+  dishes on the rough pine dining table clattering with the
+  suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who are you, man, and what's the
+  trouble? Speak up&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced
+  about the interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but
+  protruded.</p>
+
+  <p>"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.</p>
+
+  <p>"But who are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Water!" fiercely, insistently.</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner,
+  and without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made
+  for it,</p>
+
+  <p>grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after
+  measure, the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping
+  onto the sanded floor.</p>
+
+  <p>"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"</p>
+
+  <p>After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir;
+  but at his side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering
+  around the fortress of her skirts as when before she had argued
+  with Frontiersman Brown, stood the little wide-eyed girl, type of
+  the repressed frontier child.</p>
+
+  <p>Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working
+  unconsciously.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly,</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Why do you ask?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
+  Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you;
+  you live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop
+  to save anything."</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of
+  perspiration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk
+  so I can understand you."</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of
+  the massacre along the Minnesota River?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a
+  trapper." Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive
+  questioner doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell
+  you along the way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw
+  their signal smokes this very morning. They're murdering
+  everyone&mdash;men, women, and children. It's Little Crow who started
+  it, and God knows how many settlers they've killed. They chased
+  me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave out yesterday;
+  and since then&mdash;But come. It's suicide to chatter like this." He
+  turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
+  minute."</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a
+  word; but at last the woman shook her head slowly.</p>
+
+  <p>Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin
+  folding over his soft flannel shirt.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of
+  amusement.</p>
+
+  <p>"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed
+  almost to roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."</p>
+
+  <p>"There is no settlement."</p>
+
+  <p>"What?"</p>
+
+  <p>Rowland repeated his statement impassively.</p>
+
+  <p>"They've&mdash;gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of
+  scorn.</p>
+
+  <p>For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite
+  tan and dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller
+  whitened. The same expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all
+  but insane, that had been with him alone out on the prairie
+  returned, augmented. Heedless of appearances, all but unconscious
+  of the presence of spectators, he glanced about the single room
+  like a beaten rabbit with the hounds close on its trail. No
+  avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope of
+  protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his
+  forehead, at the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he
+  mopped it away with the back of a fat, grimy hand.</p>
+
+  <p>In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated
+  another vacant beside the board.</p>
+
+  <p>"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be
+  hungry as a coyote."</p>
+
+  <p>"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless
+  mood returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He
+  started shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you
+  think I lie. We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught
+  like a beaver in a trap." Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did
+  they go!"</p>
+
+  <p>Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.</p>
+
+  <p>"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City;
+  part west toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the
+  inevitable contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak.
+  "You'd better take a lunch along. It's something of a journey to
+  either place."</p>
+
+  <p>Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous
+  hospitality of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint
+  Indian basket of coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely
+  touched, from the table. A loaf of bread followed: a bottle of
+  water from the wooden pail in the corner. "You're welcome,
+  friend," she proffered.</p>
+
+  <p>Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm
+  sorry&mdash;" He lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the
+  doorway. "Good-bye."</p>
+
+  <p>Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected
+  dinner.</p>
+
+  <p>"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think
+  we'll run at sight of them," he commented.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through
+  which Mueller had gone, did not answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few
+  mouthfuls, pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak,
+  and, rising, the man made his way across the room to put an arm
+  with rough affection around his wife's waist.</p>
+
+  <p>"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.</p>
+
+  <p>The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable
+  after her former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his
+  shoulder.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd
+  gone too; but now,"&mdash;her arms crept around his neck,
+  closed,&mdash;"but now&mdash;now it's too late!"</p>
+
+  <p>For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but
+  involuntarily his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the
+  woman could not have turned. He had been looking absently out the
+  door, south over the rolling country leading to the deserted
+  settlement.</p>
+
+  <p>In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans
+  Mueller was still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline.
+  Through the trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark
+  spot; like an ant or a spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at
+  the base of the rise was rank and heavy, reaching almost to the
+  waist of the moving figure. Rowland watched it all absently,
+  meditatively; as he would have watched the movement of a coyote
+  or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was the only
+  visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life responds
+  to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late,"
+  with the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the
+  first time, to his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of
+  fear, but near akin, as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and
+  the red man its child. In a hazy way came the question whether
+  after all it were not foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that
+  invisible, intangible something before which, almost in panic,
+  the others had fled. To be sure, precedent was with him, logic;
+  but&mdash;of a sudden&mdash;but a minute had passed&mdash;his arms tightened;
+  involuntarily he held his breath. Hans Mueller had been moving on
+  and on; another half minute and he would have been behind the
+  base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf at one's
+  feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
+  tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm
+  of other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score&mdash;in front,
+  behind, all about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had
+  come, autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked
+  his eyes; then, as came swift understanding, instinctively he
+  shielded the woman in his arms from the sight, from the
+  knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears from over the prairie:
+  not a single call for help. That black swarm simply arose, there
+  was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic through the curling
+  heat waves; then one and all, the original dark figure, the score
+  of others, disappeare d&mdash;as suddenly as though the earth from
+  which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
+  spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
+  green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as
+  pale as had been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against
+  the lintel of the door.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he
+        echoed.</p><a name="II"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+  <p>FULFILMENT</p>
+
+  <p>The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth.
+  Barred it was&mdash;the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating
+  with the brown of earth that filled the spaces between&mdash;like the
+  longitudinal stripes of a prairie gopher or on the back of a
+  bob-white. Long wiry slough grass, razor-sharp as to blades,
+  pungent under rain, weighted by squares of tough, native sod,
+  thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork of man, it
+  crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified by
+  the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the
+  miniature waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it,
+  stretching northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod
+  corn: the ears already formed, the ground whitened from the
+  lavishly scattered pollen of the frayed tassels. In the dooryard
+  itself was a dug well with a mound of weed-covered clay by its
+  side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over its mouth. It was
+  deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the surface, and
+  midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a rope
+  ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
+  meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as
+  well it was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a
+  pillow marking the spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat
+  all about, slept away the long, sultry afternoons.</p>
+
+  <p>Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The
+  single horse Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured,
+  was breaking sod far to the west on the bank of the Jim River.
+  Not a live thing other than human moved about the place. With
+  them into this land of silence had come a mongrel collie. For a
+  solitary month he had stood guard; then one night, somewhere in
+  the distance, in the east where flowed the Big Sioux, had sounded
+  the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately nearer and
+  more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
+  collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild
+  they never knew, nor ever filled his place.</p>
+
+  <p>Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that
+  afternoon of late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he
+  had seen; elaborately careful likewise to carry out the family
+  programme as usual.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.</p>
+
+  <p>Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent
+  corroboration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to
+  all fours and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the
+  doorway as only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun
+  and the dust; climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly
+  about his neck, down the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the
+  pillow and the patchwork quilt with a deftness born of
+  experience.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sing! I can't sing, kid."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"</p>
+
+  <p>"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."</p>
+
+  <p>"Please, papa; pretty please!"</p>
+
+  <p>The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do,
+  braced himself in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he
+  knew of the song again and again&mdash;his voice rough and unmusical
+  as that of a crow, echoing and re-echoing in the narrow
+  space&mdash;bent over at last, touched his bearded lips softly to the
+  winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an irresistible catch in
+  his breath, silently to the surface, sent one swift glance
+  sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
+  cabin.</p>
+
+  <p>Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer
+  shotgun, and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy
+  beside the door.</p>
+
+  <p>"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he
+  overhauled the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not
+  deceived. This done, notwithstanding the fact that the sun still
+  beat scorchingly hot thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit
+  his pipe, drew his weather-stained sombrero low over his face,
+  through half-closed eyes inspected the lower lands all about,
+  impassively silent awaited the coming of the inevitable. Of a
+  sudden there was a touch on his shoulder, and, involuntarily
+  starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret Rowland.</p>
+
+  <p>The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
+  something."</p>
+
+  <p>In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more
+  brightly as Rowland drew hard.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"</p>
+
+  <p>The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded
+  reluctant corroboration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You&mdash;saw them?"</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as
+  well, after all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of
+  the rise before them. "They waylaid Mueller there."</p>
+
+  <p>"And you&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all
+  he&mdash;Margaret!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous
+  suggestion!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the
+  quiver of her body against his, the involuntary catch of her
+  breath. "Forgive me, Margaret."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're not to blame. Perhaps&mdash;Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"</p>
+
+  <p>Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above
+  the scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very
+  breath of prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a
+  sunflower stirred, or a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of
+  Indian corn each individual plant drooped, almost like a sensate
+  thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf contracted, like a roll
+  of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In sympathy the colour
+  scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of the paler
+  green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had done
+  Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
+  "Water! Water! Give us drink!"</p>
+
+  <p>Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the
+  woman; like children awed by the sudden realisation of their
+  helplessness, their hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute
+  understanding. Usually at this time of day with nothing to do
+  they slept; but neither thought of sleep now. As passed the slow
+  time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour of supper;
+  but likewise hunger passed them by. Something very like
+  fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at
+  motionless impassive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that
+  nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod
+  corn again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded
+  in preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out,
+  out&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes,"</p>
+
+  <p>"You saw, too?"</p>
+
+  <p>An answering pressure of the hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"The eyes of him, only the eyes&mdash;out there at the edge of the
+  corn!"</p>
+
+  <p>"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his
+  breath tightened. "They're all about: a score at least&mdash;I don't
+  know how many. The tall grass there to the east is alive&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam! They're there again&mdash;the eyes! Oh, I'm
+  afraid&mdash;Sam&mdash;baby!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Hush! Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our
+  only chance. Let them make the first move." Again the hand
+  pressure so tight that, although she made no sound, the blood
+  left the woman's fingers. "Tell me you forgive me, Margaret;
+  before anything happens. I'm a criminal to have stayed here,&mdash;I
+  see it now, a criminal!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't!"</p>
+
+  <p>"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."</p>
+
+  <p>"I love you, Sam."</p>
+
+  <p>Again in the expanse of grass to the east there was motion;
+  not in a single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was
+  visible, not a sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here
+  and there it stirred, and became motionless, and stirred
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>"And&mdash;Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take
+  either of us alive. The last one&mdash;I can't say it. You
+  understand."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I understand. The last load&mdash;But maybe&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this
+  way if&mdash;Margaret, in God's name&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely
+  beneath the grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see
+  her again; must, must&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Margaret!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I must, I say!"</p>
+
+  <p>"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless
+  we show the way. Think&mdash;as you love her."</p>
+
+  <p>"But if anything should happen to us&mdash;She'll starve!"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come&mdash;now; and
+  Landor knows."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, Sam, Sam!"</p>
+
+  <p>There was silence. No human being could give answer to that
+  mother wail.</p>
+
+  <p>Again time passed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that
+  were a hell of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun
+  sank from sight. In the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed
+  red as from a distant conflagration. For and eternity previous it
+  seemed to the silent watchers there had been no move; now again
+  at last the grass stirred; a corn plant rustled where there was
+  no breeze; out into the small open plat surrounding the house
+  sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across the clearing, headed
+  for the protecting grass, halted at the edge irresolute&mdash;scurried
+  back again at something it saw.</p>
+
+  <p>"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained,
+  unnatural. "They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."</p>
+
+  <p>"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural
+  tone!</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man
+  dies."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam Rowland&mdash;my husband!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Margaret&mdash;my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes,
+  regardless of everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how
+  can you forgive me, can God forgive me!" Tight in his arms he
+  kissed her again and again; passionately, in abandon. "I've
+  always loved you, Margaret; always, always!"</p>
+
+  <p>"And I you, man; and I you!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on
+  the field mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water
+  hole, so it came. Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse
+  call of a catbird where no bird was, and again, and again. In
+  front of the maize patch, always in front, a dark form, a mere
+  shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out clear against the light
+  of sky. To right and left appeared others, as motionless as
+  boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler Rowland
+  been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No
+  Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not
+  understand. Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old
+  smoothbore, he waited passive before the darkened doorway of the
+  cabin, looking straight before him, God alone knows what thoughts
+  whirling in his brain. Again in front of him sounded and
+  resounded the alien call. The dark figures against the sky took
+  life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch of the cabin
+  roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in front.
+  Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge
+  pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in
+  front. Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the
+  rear, reached the edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the
+  maize patch, out of the grass, seemingly out of space itself,
+  came a new cry&mdash;the trilling call of the prairie owl. It was the
+  signal. Like twin drops of rain from a cloudless sky fell the two
+  figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter a sound, could
+  offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere, everywhere,
+  swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them forth
+  in legion. In the multitude of hands he was as a child. Within
+  the space of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything
+  had happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the
+  clearing before the door not a human being was visible, not a
+  live thing; only on the thatched roof, silent as before, patient
+  as fate, awaited two other s hadows, darker but by contrast with
+  the weather-coloured grass.</p>
+
+  <p>Minutes passed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the
+  silence. Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a
+  thing of which insanity is made.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!" called a voice softly.</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!" repeated more loudly.</p>
+
+  <p>Again no answer of voice or of action.</p>
+
+  <p>In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly
+  fearful.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped
+  outside.</p>
+
+  <p>A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The
+  earth was not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie
+  owl. As dropped the figures from above there broke forth the
+  Sioux war-cry: long drawn out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood
+  curdling, more savage infinitely than the cry of any wild beast,
+  the others took it up, augmented it by a score, a hundred
+  throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth. Naked,
+  breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they
+  swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two
+  prisoners in their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours,
+  of a sudden they seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage
+  abandon, of drunken exhilaration in the cunning that had won the
+  game without a shot from the white man's gun, without the injury
+  of a single warrior. They were in haste, and yet they were not in
+  haste. They looted the cabin like fire and then fought among
+  themselves for the plunder. They applied the torch to the
+  shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then capered
+  fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until,
+  tinder</p>
+
+  <p>dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all,
+  purposely reserved as a climax, they gave their attention to the
+  pair of half-naked, bound and gagged figures in their midst. Then
+  it was the scene became an orgy indeed. The havoc preceding had
+  but whetted their appetite for the finale. Savagery personified,
+  cruelty unqualified, deadly hate, primitive lust&mdash;every black
+  passion lurking in the recesses of the human mind stalked
+  brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister, unashamed.
+  But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand similar
+  scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
+  the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a
+  nation's expansion, as its progression.</p>
+
+  <p>It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle
+  of prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
+  unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
+  irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed
+  their journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed
+  fair in the print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly,
+  undulatory shadows, forming the most treacherous deadly serpent
+  that ever inhabited earth, they moved eastward until they reached
+  the bank of the swift little river; then turned north, leaving
+  the abandoned, desolated settlement, the ruined cornfields, as
+  tokens of their handiwork, as a message to other predatory bands
+  who might follow, as a challenge to the white man who they knew
+  would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they moved
+  swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
+  almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the
+  pat, pat of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of
+  eaves from a summer rain, the rustle of their passing bodies
+  against the dense vegetation a soft accompaniment. Autochthonous
+  as they had appeared they disappeared. Night and distance
+  swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined grainfield, the
+  smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the glaring
+  white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the background
+  of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for this,
+  and one other thing&mdash;a single sound, repeated again and again,
+  dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.</p>
+
+  <p>"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its
+  depths that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm
+  afraid!"</p><a name="III"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+  <p>DISCOVERY</p>
+
+  <p>More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in
+  construction, as necessity ever induces the unusual, it was
+  nevertheless formidable. To the north was a typical entrenchment
+  with a ditch, and a parapet eight feet high. To the east was a
+  double board wall with earth tamped between: a solid curb higher
+  than the head of a tall man. Completing the square, to the south
+  and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close together and
+  pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by numerous
+  portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers</p>
+
+  <p>near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated,
+  mingled and intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as
+  diverse a gathering of humans as ever graced a single structure
+  even in this land of myriad types. Virtually the entire
+  population of frontier Yankton was there. Likewise the settlers
+  from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the far-away country
+  of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground of the
+  Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the
+  peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild
+  west of the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the
+  Blackfeet, the Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the
+  alarm of rapine and of massacre had spread afar. Very late to
+  arrive, doggedly holding their own until rumour became reality
+  unmistakable, was the colony from the Jim River valley to the
+  east; but even they had finally surrendered, the dogging grip of
+  fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their throats, had
+  fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the
+  Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as
+  you please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux
+  Falls. Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for
+  with the actual retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow
+  mile, thanking the Providence which had permitted them to arrive
+  unmolested, a sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old
+  smoothbore cannon before the big south gate and craved
+  admittance. Out to them went Colonel William Landor, colonel by
+  courtesy, scion of many generations of Landors, rancher at
+  present, cattle king of the future. The conversation that
+  followed there with the east reddening in the morning sun was
+  very brief, very swift to the point.</p>
+
+  <p>"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing
+  them collectively, compellingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"My name is McPherson."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mine is Horton."</p>
+
+  <p>"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."</p>
+
+  <p>"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered
+  McPherson who took the lead.</p>
+
+  <p>"From where?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Sioux Falls."</p>
+
+  <p>"Any news?"</p>
+
+  <p>Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now
+  a day old.</p>
+
+  <p>"And the rest of your settlement&mdash;where are they?"</p>
+
+  <p>McPherson told him.</p>
+
+  <p>"They all went, you say?"</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one
+  family," he qualified.</p>
+
+  <p>"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the
+  company collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did
+  not go?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"That you&mdash;men here went off and left him and his wife and
+  little girl alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were
+  closing ominously. "You come here with that story and ask me to
+  let you inside?"</p>
+
+  <p>McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently,
+  his shoulders squared.</p>
+
+  <p>"We're here," he announced laconically.</p>
+
+  <p>"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids.
+  "Moreover, strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned
+  forward involuntarily; his breath came quick. "It gives me the
+  opportunity, sir, to tell you to your face that you're a damned
+  coward." In spite of an obvious effort at repression, the great
+  veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A damned coward,
+  sir!"</p>
+
+  <p>"What! You call me&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Men! Gentlemen!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor
+  was himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll
+  be no blood shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now,
+  and, as he had done with the newcomers, he addressed them
+  collectively, authoratively. "When I fight it will not be with
+  one who abandons a woman and a child at a time like this.... God!
+  it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the Rowlands for ten
+  years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had been
+  flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my
+  sight, every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in
+  command here. If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside
+  this stockade&mdash;not if the Santees scalped you before my
+  eyes."</p>
+
+  <p>For a second there was silence, inaction.</p>
+
+  <p>"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We
+  tried&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them
+  in, there are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader
+  of men, he turned to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late
+  now,&mdash;I'm afraid it is; but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to
+  bring him here. Who's with me? Who's willing to make the ride
+  back to Sioux Falls?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced,
+  slow of speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit
+  superfluous, pard? We're all with you&mdash;that is, as many as you
+  want, I reckon. None of us ain't cats, so we can't croak but
+  once&mdash;and that might as well be now as ten years from now."</p>
+
+  <p>"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar
+  and the motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report
+  here. The first twenty to return, go."</p>
+
+  <p>From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was
+  McPherson.</p>
+
+  <p>"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.</p>
+
+  <p>No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an
+  inverted V; then silent as they, equally swiftly, he
+  followed.</p>
+
+  <p>Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle
+  back. Not in ignorance of possibilities in store did they come.
+  They had no delusions concerning the red brother, these
+  frontiersmen. Nor in the hot adventurous blood of youth did they
+  respond. One and all were middle-aged men; many had families. All
+  save Landor were strangers to the man they went to seek. Yet at a
+  moment's call they responded; as they took it for granted others
+  would respond were they in need. Had they been conscious of the
+  fact, the action was magnificent; but of it they were not
+  conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal brotherhood
+  of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated abode
+  urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and,
+  supercilious, smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we
+  humans. First of all to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek
+  swelled round with a giant quid. Close at his heels followed
+  Trapper Conway: grizzled, parchment-faced veteran, who alone had
+  followed the Missouri to its source and, stranger to relate, had
+  alone returned with his scalp. Then came Landor himself, the wiry
+  little mustang he rode all but blanketed under the big army
+  saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as though an event
+  of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson, drew up in
+  place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat appreciatively,
+  but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one but many
+  riders; a half dozen, a score,&mdash;enough to make up the allotment,
+  and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly
+  accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho,
+  the mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of
+  apparel, from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or
+  saddleless, across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel
+  of a long rifle, at the hip of every rider hung a holster, from
+  every belt peeped the hilt of a great knife. Long ere this word
+  of the unusual had passed about, and now, on the rise of ground
+  at the back of the stockade, a goodly group had gathered. Silent
+  as the prairies, as the morning itself, they watched the scene
+  below, awaited the <i>d&eacute;nouement.</i> Not without
+  influence was the taciturn example of the red man in this land
+  from which he was slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to
+  the east the red face of the morning sun was just peeping when
+  Landor separated himself from the waiting group, led the way to
+  the big gate and paused. "Twenty only, men," he repeated. "All
+  ready."</p>
+
+  <p>First through the opening went Crosby.</p>
+
+  <p>"One."</p>
+
+  <p>Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.</p>
+
+  <p>"Two."</p>
+
+  <p>From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came
+  Scotchman McPherson; but though he passed fair before the
+  leader's eyes and not a yard away, no number was spoken; no hint
+  of recognition, of cognisance, crossed the latter's face.
+  Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited the next in line, then
+  voiced the one word: "Three."</p>
+
+  <p>On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts
+  silent&mdash;halting at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and
+  twenty men who counted but as a score, started into motion,
+  halted again; as by common consent every head save one of a
+  sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the watching group
+  back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All but to the
+  ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out where
+  no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
+  tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the
+  column one rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear.
+  Implacable as Landor himself, he looked straight before him,
+  awaited the silence that would bring with it renewed
+  activity.</p>
+
+  <p>And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat
+  returned to its place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From
+  his position by the gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind
+  him, impassive again as figures in a spectacle, the others fell
+  in line. At first a mere walk, the pace gradually quickened,
+  became a canter, a trot. By this time the confines of the tiny
+  frontier town were passed. Before them on the one hand, bordering
+  on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown from its
+  coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
+  glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on
+  myriad dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open
+  prairie. Straight into this Landor led the way, and as he did so
+  the cavalcade for the first time broke into a gallop; not the
+  fierce, short-lived pace of civilisation, but the long-strided,
+  full-lunged lope of the frontier, which accurately and as
+  tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off the passing
+  miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.</p>
+
+  <p>Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
+  settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was
+  the prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century
+  before; yet with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead,
+  straight as a line drawn taut from point to point. Nothing
+  stopped their advance, nothing made them turn aside. Seemingly
+  destitute of animal life, the country fairly teemed at their
+  approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the blue-faced
+  anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks. Troops of
+  antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away from
+  the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the
+  safety of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight.
+  Every marshy spot, every prairie pond, had its setting of ducks.
+  The teal, the mallard, the widgeon, the shoveller, the
+  canvasback&mdash;all mingled in the loud-voiced throng that arose
+  before the leader's approach, then, like smoke, vanished with
+  almost unbelievable swiftness into the hazy distance. Prairie dog
+  towns, populous as cities of man a minute before their approach,
+  went lifeless, desolate, as they passed through. In the
+  infrequent draws and creek beds between the low, rolling hills,
+  great-eyed cotton tails scampered to cover or, like the antelope,
+  just out of harm's way, watched the passage of this strange
+  being, man. Wonder of wonders that display of life would have
+  been to another generation; but of it these grim-faced riders
+  were apparently unconscious, oblivious. Their eyes were not for
+  things near at hand, but for the distance, for the possibility
+  that lurked just beyond that far-away rise which formed their
+  horizon, when they had reached that for the next beyond, and the
+  next.</p>
+
+  <p>Hour by hour the morning wore away. Hotter and hotter rose the
+  sun above them. Instead of drops of dew, tiny particles of
+  sun-dried grass flew away from beneath the leaders' feet, mingled
+  with the dust of prairie, became a cloud shutting the leaders
+  from the sight of those in the rear. From being a mere breath,
+  the south wind augmented, became positive, insistent. Hot with
+  the latent heat of many days, it sang in their ears as they went,
+  bit all but scorching, at their unprotected hands and throats.
+  Under its touch the horses' necks, dark before with sweat, became
+  normal again: between their legs, under the, edges of the great
+  saddles where it had churned into foam, dried into white powder,
+  like frostwork amid the hair. Gradually with the change, their
+  breathing became audible, louder and louder, until in unison it
+  mingled with the dull impact of their feet on the heavy sod like
+  the exhaust of many engines. No horseman who values the life of
+  the beast between his legs, fails to heed that warning. Landor
+  did not, but at the first dawdling prairie creek that offered
+  water and, with its struggling fringe of willows, a suggestion of
+  shade, he gave the word to halt, and for four mortal, blistering
+  hours while, man and beast alike, the others slept, kept watch
+  over them from the nearest rise. Relentless to others this man
+  might be, but not even his dearest enemy could accuse him of
+  sparing himself.</p>
+
+  <p>It was three by the clock when again they took up the trail.
+  It was 3.45 when they swam what is now the Vermilion River, the
+  last water-course of</p>
+
+  <p>any size on their way. The dew was again beginning to gather
+  when, well to the south, they approached the bordering hills that
+  concealed the site of Sioux Falls settlement. Then for the first
+  time since they began that last relay Landor gave an order.</p>
+
+  <p>"It'll be a miracle if we don't find Sioux there in the
+  bottom, men," he prophesied. "Perhaps there are a whole band,
+  perhaps it'll only be stragglers; but no matter how many or how
+  few there may be, charge them. If they run you know what to
+  do&mdash;this is no holiday outing. If they stand, charge them all the
+  harder." He faced his horse to the north and gave the word to go.
+  "It's our only chance," he completed.</p>
+
+  <p>What followed belongs to history. Over that last intervening
+  rise they went like demons. The first to gain the crown, to look
+  down into the valley beyond, was Landor. As he did so, grim
+  Anglo-Saxon as he was, his whole attitude underwent a
+  transformation. Back to the others he turned his face, and, plain
+  as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage, and the lust of
+  battle.</p>
+
+  <p>"They're there; a hundred, if a single red!" he shouted. "Come
+  on!" and the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse's
+  flanks, dug until the blood spurted.</p>
+
+  <p>But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction
+  of the time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground.
+  Outnumbering those who charged many times, it was not in savage
+  nature to face that unformed oncoming motley of howling,
+  bloodthirsty maniacs. Slowly at first began the retreat; then as,
+  with great swiftness, the others shortened the distance
+  intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a stampede. Every
+  brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the dismantled
+  ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling like
+  their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for
+  the thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in
+  their ears, cutting at the vegetation about them. Into its
+  friendly cover they plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the
+  surface of a lake, and were swallowed from sight. That is, all
+  but one. That one, unhorsed by accident, was left to face that
+  oncoming flood. . . . But why linger. Like the charge itself, his
+  fate is history. These men were but human, and thick about them
+  were the ashes from the roof-trees of their friends.</p>
+
+  <p>Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind,
+  musical with the drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs
+  from the low land adjoining the river, melancholy with the call
+  of the catbird, with the infrequent note of the whip-poor-will,
+  was upon the land of the Mandans when the score and one, their
+  dripping ponies once more dry, took up the last relay of their
+  journey. Night had caught them there in the deserted settlement,
+  and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait. Now, far to the
+  east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the
+  face of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves
+  through the heated air, slowly rising, lit up the level country
+  softly as by early twilight. Lingeringly, almost reluctantly,
+  Landor got into his saddle. Just to his left, impassive as the
+  night, well to the front of the company as he had been that
+  mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman McPherson. Not once since that
+  early morning scene at Fort Yankton had he spoken a word, not
+  once had he been addressed, had another man shown consciousness
+  of his presence. A pariah, he had so far kept them company; a
+  pariah, he now awaited the end. A moment, fair in his seat,
+  Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for
+  hours came to pass. Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein
+  beside the other man.</p>
+
+  <p>"McPherson," he said, "this morning I called you coward. That
+  you are not such you have proven, you are proving now. For this
+  reason I ask your pardon. For this reason as well, I give you
+  warning. What we will find&mdash;where we are going, I do not doubt,
+  now. I do not believe you doubt. For it I hold you responsible.
+  You had best turn back before belief becomes certainty."
+  Unnaturally precise, cold as November raindrops came the words,
+  the sentences. Deadly in meaning was the pause that followed. "I
+  repeat, you had best turn back."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long half minute, face to face there in the moonlight,
+  Landor waited; but no answer came. Just perceptibly he shifted in
+  his place.</p>
+
+  <p>"I may forget, give my promise of the morning the lie. Do you
+  understand?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I understand."</p>
+
+  <p>Another half minute, ghastly in its significance, passed; then
+  without a word Landor turned. "You have heard, men," he said,
+  "and may God be my judge."</p>
+
+  <p>The full moon was well in the sky, showing clear every detail
+  in that scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter,
+  patter sounded their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more
+  loud they grew, muffled yet penetrating in the silence of night,
+  always augmenting in volume. Out of the shadows figures came
+  dimly into view, taking form against the background of
+  constellations. The straining of leather, the music of steel in
+  bit and buckle, the soft swish of the sun-dried grass proclaimed
+  them very near; then across the trampled corn patch, into the
+  open where had stood the shanty, where now was a thin grey layer
+  of ashes, came the riders, and drew rein; their weary mounts
+  crowding each other in fear at something they saw. Like a storm
+  cloud they came; like the roll of thunder following was the oath
+  which sprang to the lips of every rider save one. Good men they
+  were, God-fearing men; yet they swore like pirates, like humans
+  when ordinary speech is not adequate. In the pause but one man
+  acted, and none intervened to prevent what he did. Out into the
+  open, away from the others, rode Scotchman McPherson; halted, his
+  hand on the holster at his hip. For a second, and a second only,
+  he sat so, the white moonlight drawing clear every line of his
+  grizzled face, his stocky figure. Then deliberately his hand
+  lifted, before him there appeared a sudden blaze of fire, upon
+  the silence there broke a single revolver report, from beneath
+  his lifeless bulk the horse he rode broke free, gave one bound,
+  by instinct halted, trembling in every muscle; then over all, the
+  quick and the dead, returned silence: silence absolute as that of
+  the grave.</p>
+
+  <p>How long those twenty men sat there, gazing at that mute,
+  motionless figure on the ground not one could have told. Death
+  was no stranger to them. For years it had lurked behind every
+  chance shrub they passed, in the depths of every ravine, in the
+  darkness of night, from every tangle of rank prairie grass in
+  broad daylight. To it from long familiarity they had become
+  callous; but death such as this, deliberate, cold-blooded,
+  self-inflicted&mdash;it awed them while it fascinated, held them
+  silent, passive.</p>
+
+  <p>"In God's name!" Again it was Landor who roused them, Landor
+  with his hand on the holster at his hip, Landor who sat staring
+  as one who doubts his own sight. "Am I sane, men? Look, there to
+  your right!"</p>
+
+  <p>They looked. They rubbed their eyes and looked again.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I'll be damned," voiced Crosby; and no man had ever
+  heard him express surprise before. To the north, from the edge of
+  the tall surrounding grass, moving slowly, yet without a trace of
+  hesitation or of fear, coming straight toward them across the
+  trampled earth, were two tiny human figures, hand in hand. No
+  wonder they who saw stared; no wonder they doubted their eyes.
+  One, the figure to the right, was plump and uncertain of step and
+  all in white; white which in the moonlight and against the black
+  earth seemed ghostly. The other was slim and certain of movement
+  and dark&mdash;dark as a copper brown Indian boy, naked as when he
+  came on earth. On they came, the brown figure leading, the white
+  following trustfully, until they were quite up to the watchers,
+  halted, still hand in hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," said a voice, a piping childish voice.</p>
+
+  <p>Like rustics at a spectacle the men stared, turned mystified
+  faces each to each, and stared anew. All save one. Off from his
+  horse sprang Landor, caught the bundle of white in his arms.</p>
+
+  <p>"Baby Rowland! Baby Bess! And you,"&mdash;he was staring the other
+  from head to toe, the distance was short,&mdash;"who are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Uncle Billy," interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of
+  femininity nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa and mamma! I
+  want them."</p>
+
+  <p>Closer and closer the big bachelor arms clasped their burden;
+  unashamed, there with the others watching him, he kissed her.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never mind now, Kiddie. Tell me how you came here, and who
+  this is with you."</p>
+
+  <p>About the great neck crept two arms, clinging tightly.</p>
+
+  <p>"He just came, Uncle Billy. I was calling for papa. Papa put
+  me to sleep and forgot me. The boy heard me and took me out. I
+  was afraid at first, but&mdash;but he's a nice boy, only he won't talk
+  and&mdash;and&mdash;" The narrative halted, the tousled head buried itself
+  joyously. "Oh, I'm so glad you came, Uncle Billy!"</p>
+
+  <p>In silence Landor's eyes made the circle of interested
+  watching faces, returned to the winsome brown face so near his
+  own.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aren't you hungry, Kid?" he ventured.</p>
+
+  <p>On his shoulder the dark poll shook a negative.</p>
+
+  <p>"No. We had corn to eat. The boy roasted it. He made a big
+  fire. He's a nice boy, only&mdash;only he won't say anything."</p>
+
+  <p>Again Landor's eyes made the circle, halted at the intrepid
+  brown waif who, that first word of greeting spoken, had silently
+  stared him back.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're sure you don't know anything more, baby? You didn't
+  hear anything until the boy came?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Uncle Billy. I was asleep. When I woke up it was dark,
+  and I was hungry and&mdash;and&mdash;" At last it had come: the spattering,
+  turbulent tear storm. Her small body shook, her arms clasped
+  tighter and tighter. "Oh, Uncle Billy, I want my papa and mamma.
+  I tried to find them, and I couldn't. Please find them for me,
+  Uncle Billy, Please! Please!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It was well past midnight. The big full moon, high now in the
+  sky, cast their shadows almost about their feet when, their
+  labour complete, the party took up the homeward trail. But there
+  were twenty no longer. At their head as before rode Landor, in
+  his arms not a rifle but a blanket; a blanket from which as they
+  journeyed on came now and anon a sound that was alien indeed: the
+  sobs of a baby girl who wept as she slept. Back of him, likewise
+  as when they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby; but he, too,
+  was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in front of
+  him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat,
+  was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide
+  awake indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every
+  movement about him, every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist
+  chance had put him there, what fate for good or evil, they could
+  only conjecture, could not know, could never know; yet there he
+  was, strangest figure in a land that knew only the bizarre, with
+  whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now, weary to death
+  with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable reaction
+  from the excitement of the past hours, they moved away, to the
+  south, to the west. In front of them, glittering in the
+  moonlight, seemingly infinite, stretched the waves of the rolling
+  prairie, bare as the sea in a calm. Behind them, growing lesser
+  and lesser minute by minute, merging into the infinite white,
+  were three black dots like tiny boats on the horizon's edge. On
+  they went, a half mile, a mile, looked behind; and, with an awe
+  no familiarity could prevent, faced ahead anew. Back of them now
+  as well as before, uniformly endless, uniformly magnificent,
+  stretched that giant ocean: silent, serene, as mother nature, as
+  nature's master, God himself.</p><a name="IV"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+  <p>RECONSTRUCTION</p>
+
+  <p>The day of the Indian terror had passed. No longer did the
+  name of Little Crow carry stampede in its wake. The battles of
+  Big Mound, of White Stone Hill, and of the Bad Lands had been
+  fought, had become mere history; dim already to the newcomer as
+  Lexington or Bull Run. Still in the memory, to be sure, was the
+  half-invited massacre of Custer at the Little Big Horn; but the
+  savage genius of Sitting Bull, of Crazy Horse, and of Gall, who
+  had made the last great encounter bloodily unique in the conflict
+  of the red man and the white, was never to be duplicated. Rightly
+  or wrongly deprived of what they had once called their own,
+  driven back, back on the crest of the ever-increasing wave of
+  settlement, facing the alternative of annihilation or of
+  submergence in that flood, the Sioux had halted like a wild thing
+  at bay, with their backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot
+  of earth on the face of the globe, the Black Hills country, and
+  as a cornered animal ever fights, had battled ferociously for a
+  lost supremacy. But, robbers themselves, holding the land on the
+  insecure title of might alone, fighting to the end, they had at
+  last succumbed to the inevitable: the all-conquering invasion of
+  the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a name stood out:
+  "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," "Little Crow," "Sitting
+  Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall," "John
+  Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic
+  suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had
+  long since passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to
+  desperation, might incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an
+  incorrigible by a harrowing reference to one or to another; yet
+  to the incoming swarms of land-hungry settlers they were mere
+  supplanted play actors, fit heroes for fiction, for romance
+  perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small herds safe in the
+  pasture of a reservation, preserved as a relic of a species
+  doomed to extinction.</p>
+
+  <p>A thing at which to marvel was the growth of the eastern
+  border of Dakota Territory in this, the time of the great boom.
+  History can scarcely find its parallel. In the space of a decade
+  the census leaped from two-score thousand to nearly a half
+  million. New towns sprang up like fungi in a night. Railroads
+  reached out like the tentacles of an octopus, where a generation
+  before the buffalo had tramped its tortuous trail. Prosperous
+  farms came into being in the meadows where the antelope had
+  pastured. Artesian wells, waterworks, electric lights, street
+  railways, colleges, all the adjuncts of a higher civilisation,
+  blossomed forth under the magic wand of Eastern capital. Doomed
+  to reaction, as an advancing pendulum is doomed to retrace its
+  cycle, was this premature evolution; but temporarily, as a
+  springtime freshet bears onward the driftwood in its path, it
+  carried its predecessor, the unconventional, fighting,
+  wild-loving adventurer, before. On it went, on and on until at
+  last, fairly blocking its path, was the big, muddy, dawdling
+  Missouri. Then for the first time it halted; halted in a pause
+  that was to last for a generation. But it had fulfilled its
+  mission. High and dry on the western side of the barrier, imbued
+  as when they had settled to the east, with the restless spirit of
+  the frontier, unsubdued, unchanged, it cast its burden. There, as
+  they had done before, the newcomers immediately took root, and,
+  after the passage of a year, were all but unconscious of the
+  migration. Over their heads was the same blue prairie sky. Around
+  them, treeless, trackless, was the same rolling, illimitable
+  prairie land. In but one essential were conditions changed; yet
+  that one was epoch-making. Heretofore, surrounded by a common, an
+  alien danger, compelled at a second's warning to band together
+  for life itself, all men were brothers. Now, with the passing of
+  the red peril, with eradication of necessity for any manner of
+  restraint, an abandon of licence, of recklessness, born of the
+  wild life, of overflowing animal vitality i nsufficiently
+  employed, swept the land like a contagion. Unique in the history
+  of man's development was this the era of the cowboy, as fantastic
+  now as the era of the red peril, its predecessor; yet vital,
+  bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously human, as no other period has
+  ever been, as in all probability none will ever be again.
+  Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed, chivalrous,
+  fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate, wilful
+  and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented,
+  seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as
+  certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied
+  their own Hell and, impartial, chose from each to weave the web
+  of their lives.</p>
+
+  <p>Of this period, life of this life, was Colonel William Landor;
+  colonel no longer, plain Bill, from the river to the Hills,
+  husband these ten years now, but not father, Cattle King of an
+  uncontested range. Of this life likewise, bred in it, saturated
+  in it, was a dark young woman, his adopted daughter, two years
+  past her majority, Elizabeth Rowland Landor by name. Of it most
+  vitally of all, born of it, rooted in it through unknown
+  centuries of ancestral domicile, was a copper-brown young man,
+  destitute as a boy of twelve of a trace of beard, black as a
+  prairie crow of hair and eyes, deep-lunged like a race-track
+  thoroughbred, wiry as a mustang, garbed as a white man, but
+  bearing the liquid name of a Teton Sioux, "Ma-wa-cha-sa, the lost
+  pappoose," yet known wherever the Santee Massacre and the tale of
+  his appearance was known, as "How" Landor. Of this period, last
+  of all, was the great B.B.&mdash;Buffalo Butte&mdash;ranch, giant among the
+  giants, whose brand was familiar as his own name to every cowboy
+  west of the Missouri, whose hospitable ranch house, twenty-odd
+  miles from the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote Centre, which in
+  turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles from
+  nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into
+  this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the
+  reverse side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one
+  lunger," who, with gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie
+  sun and prairie air.</p><a name="V"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+  <p>THE LAND OF LICENCE</p>
+
+  <p>For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay
+  Creek ranch had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the
+  day previous they had suddenly blown in from the north; a great
+  cloud of yellow dust, lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty
+  panting of winded bronchos, a single demoniacal dare-man whoop
+  heralding their coming, a groaning of straining leather, a jingle
+  of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented stillness even in this
+  silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was, Pete Sweeney,
+  "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was who first
+  entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who, ere
+  ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only
+  man who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute
+  ownership. Pete it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared
+  away, assisted in laying out that same misguided citizen, in
+  decent fellowship, beneath the cottonwood bar, and thrust an
+  adequate green roll in the stiffening hand for funeral
+  expenses.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I
+  don't visit you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to
+  make it square, and this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all.
+  D'ye understand?" and from Manning, the greybearded storekeeper,
+  to Rank Judge, the one-legged saddler, there was no one to say
+  him nay, none to contest his right of authority.</p>
+
+  <p>By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre.
+  Under ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even
+  aggressively, upheld by its representative, Marshal Jim Burton.
+  Likewise there was no lack of pilgrims, who by devious and
+  circuitous routes sought his residence on this occasion, with
+  tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one and all
+  departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
+  not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an
+  even more indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one
+  regretted the mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who
+  imparted the information, no one deplored the lost opportunity
+  for distinction so much as she; but nevertheless the fact
+  remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was thrown upon its
+  own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as best it
+  might.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the
+  beginning of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned,
+  and that more than intermittently, all but continuously, the red
+  liquor had flowed; to the alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins
+  and his straw-haired Norwegian rival across the street&mdash;Gus
+  Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were who fancied that ere
+  this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity for absorption
+  had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable intention
+  of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
+  themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of
+  the town, all of them were now down and out, and in various
+  retired spots, where they had been deposited by their
+  sympathising friends, were snoring in peaceful oblivion. Even Len
+  Barker, game disciple of the great master, had reached his limit
+  and, no longer formidable, had, without form of law, been
+  deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
+  corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the
+  hawk eye and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of
+  solid sustenance, was, to all visible indications, as fresh and
+  aggressive as at the beginning.</p>
+
+  <p>Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor
+  down the single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its
+  face. One and all had succumbed long before to the god of
+  gunpowder. Not a stray dog, and Coyote Centre was plethoric of
+  canines, raised its voice nor showed even a retreating tail near
+  the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire for deepest
+  obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden annihilation to
+  the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a cyclone were
+  imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They were a
+  tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
+  experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object
+  lesson of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at
+  last patience was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of
+  the town hall a tiny group of men were gathered, a group who
+  spoke scarcely above a whisper, who kept a sharp lookout all
+  surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch of an eyelash to
+  disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient. In the
+  single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
+  plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy
+  bearded, had the floor.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included
+  indiscriminately. "You come here with your stories and croak and
+  croak, and still not one of you would dare say a word to Pete's
+  face, not one of you but would stand and let him twist your nose
+  if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of the silent,
+  listening semicircle to the other, with all-including disdain.
+  "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
+  Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're
+  damned cowards, I say."</p>
+
+  <p>In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud
+  Smith, the weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat
+  hurt him.</p>
+
+  <p>"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and
+  agin p'raps you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new
+  marshal, but as fer's I've been able to discover there's no one
+  hereabouts hankerin' fer the job." He spat at a crack in the
+  cottonwood floor meditatively, struck true, and seemed mildly
+  pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin' comfortably rapidly as it
+  is, without adding any marshals to the collection. I've known
+  Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private advice is to let
+  him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the river to
+  supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
+  feelin' as he's feelin' now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky
+  Missourian, who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the
+  first time he isn't looking."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
+  meditatively.</p>
+
+  <p>"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he
+  commented at last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of
+  Pete not lookin'. I ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the
+  feller who tackles that job to say his prayers before he starts.
+  He won't have much time afterwards." With a swifter movement than
+  he had yet made, the speaker slid from his place to the floor,
+  involuntarily cast a glance into the street without. "I ain't
+  perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and I ain't lookin'
+  fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it ain't at
+  all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound to
+  peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better
+  scatter and let it blow over."</p>
+
+  <p>"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if
+  you want to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying
+  here as long as I see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."</p>
+
+  <p>"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning
+  with his deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well,
+  maybe I've got something to say about that." He came out from
+  behind the counter, faced the lanky figure before him, with
+  deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty stiff-backed boy in the
+  daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the dark&mdash;" He halted and
+  his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if you're so anxious
+  for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you take the
+  job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth curled
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went
+  white. Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered
+  dog, and until it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I
+  might ask you the same question. I ain't no property interest
+  here being destroyed like you have. Why don't you do the trick
+  yourself, dad?"</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the
+  old man stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to
+  square his shoulders; but they remained round as before.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand&mdash;minus the index and
+  middle fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled
+  with rheumatism. "Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny
+  storeroom and back again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why
+  don't I?" repeated for the third time. "Do you imagine for the
+  fraction of a second, Walt Wagner, that if I was back twenty
+  years and sound like you are, I'd be asking another man why he
+  didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly, he stood there
+  before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent, distorted
+  senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
+  and ask that question of me?"</p>
+
+  <p>In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked
+  nervously. His face went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud
+  Smith it was, Bud Smith, five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie
+  wind had made like a lobster display in a cafe window, who had
+  halted at the door, but who now came back, he it was who
+  spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested
+  slowly, "you might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by
+  intimatin' that I had cold feet. We'll listen to that, too, any
+  time you see fit to explain, pardner."</p>
+
+  <p>"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become
+  normal again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his
+  elbows back against the glass showcase, glancing the while down
+  at the small man, almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your
+  benefit, I was merely observing that you filled the bill of what
+  dad here said a bit ago we all were." He smiled tantalisingly;
+  again showing the vacancy in his dental arch. "You remember what
+  that was, don't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin'
+  fer trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit.
+  To be dead sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his
+  place behind the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he
+  moved. In it likewise there was an interruption from without; the
+  subdued clatter of a horse's feet on the packed earth of the
+  street, the straining of leather, as the man, its rider,
+  alighted, a moment later the click of the door latch as the same
+  man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered and halted abruptly
+  at what he saw. But those within did not notice. Silent as the
+  night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete Sweeney,
+  they were staring at those two actors there before them.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin'
+  fer trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller
+  of my own age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to
+  hear you say it. I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt
+  Wagner."</p>
+
+  <p>Again within the room there was silence, and again from
+  without there approached an interruption. From up the street,
+  from out the door of Red Jenkins's joint it came; the patter,
+  patter of many feet, leading it the heavy clump of mighty cowhide
+  boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the jingle of spurs on those
+  same boots at every step, the deep breathing of a cowman
+  intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
+  doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and
+  nearer. Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had
+  noticed. The arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In
+  the depths of his pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly,
+  nervously. His face had gone whiter than before. Once he had
+  opened his lips to speak, revealing the blackness of the vacant
+  tooth; but he had closed them again silently. Now at last he
+  cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a long breath.
+  Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew. What
+  if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
+  at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street
+  swung open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it,
+  blocking it, appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman,
+  while upon their ears, like the menacing bellow of an enraged
+  bull, burst a voice&mdash;the challenging, bullying voice of Pete
+  Sweeney, inebriate.</p>
+
+  <p>"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was
+  no answer repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"</p>
+
+  <p>For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction
+  while every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker;
+  at first almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the
+  interruption came over them, with sensations as divergent as
+  their various individual minds. There was no need to tell them
+  who looked at that towering, intruding figure that tragedy lurked
+  in the air, that death on the slightest provocation, at the
+  twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in those big twin Colts lying
+  menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic escaped was a
+  pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with Pete
+  Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god&mdash;bull
+  mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
+  hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad
+  from the soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to
+  the bulging holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt
+  around his waist, to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red
+  silk handkerchief about his throat, to the dark unshaven face, to
+  the drink-reddened nose, to the mere slits of eyes, to the
+  upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of wiry hair; bad in
+  detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence
+  he came a step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart.
+  "What've you got to say for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker
+  meeting. Speak up. What're you all doin' here?"</p>
+
+  <p>Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red
+  Bud Smith.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained
+  evenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes.
+  "You lie by the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of
+  skunks." From man to man he passed the look, halted at last at
+  the figure of the lanky Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to
+  pot me, and I'm lookin' to see the colour of his hair. Who was
+  it, I'd like to know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as
+  before Smith spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do.
+  You can own the whole county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend
+  to your knittin'. Dad here wants to close up, now."</p>
+
+  <p>"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon
+  as you name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted,
+  dropped like claws on the figure of the little land man. "You
+  know who it is I'm lookin' for. Tell me his name."</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know me very well, Pete."</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was
+  inspecting the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its
+  paws. "In other words, you mean you know, but won't tell me."
+  Lingeringly, baitingly, almost exultingly, he was dragging the
+  <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> on and on. "That's what you mean to
+  imply, is it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's
+  body twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even
+  tone. There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime,
+  knowing as he knew that but one man present could interfere to
+  prevent, that that man wouldn't, he spoke those four words:
+  "You've guessed it, Pete." And but minutes before Manning had
+  called this man coward!</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his
+  slow brain failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of
+  the refusal; then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood,
+  came comprehension, came action. Swifter than any human being
+  would have thought possible, unbelievably ferocious even in this
+  land of licence, something took place, something which the
+  staring onlookers did not realise until it was done. They only
+  knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had reached the
+  single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at the
+  same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that
+  the odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting
+  slowly toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a
+  curtain that once raised made them shudder, made their blood run
+  cold, for it revealed there, stretched on the floor, huddled as
+  it had dropped, lifeless, motionless, the figure of the man who
+  had refused, the weazened face of Land Man Bud Smith! All this
+  they realised in that first second; then something that was
+  almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man who had done
+  this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the only
+  means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two
+  great revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now.
+  As swiftly as that horrible thing had been done he had gone
+  sober. Yet no man who saw him that instant feared him one whit
+  less. Not a man present, believer or scoffer, but breathed a
+  silent prayer. And there was reason. If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete,
+  had possessed a real friend on earth, he possessed that one no
+  more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but friends&mdash;there
+  had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant of
+  oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend;
+  murdered him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his
+  tracks. Not another had done this thing but he himself, he,
+  Cowman Pete. Small wonder that they who watched this man prayed,
+  that surreptitious glances sought for an avenue of escape where
+  there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner went whiter and
+  whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon the
+  floor, there would be a reckoning,&mdash;and what that reckoning would
+  be God alone could tell!</p>
+
+  <p>And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary
+  movement, he had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did
+  not waver the breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes
+  he was looking at that mute figure on the floor; looking at it
+  immovably, indescribably, with an impassivity that was horrible.
+  For the moment he seemed to have forgotten the others' presence,
+  seemed at their mercy; and to the mind of Walt Wagner there came
+  a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand came out of his
+  pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his hip;
+  advanced and halted and advanced again, reached
+  almost&mdash;almost&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a
+  snarl: the snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your
+  breeches or by God&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as
+  though drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed,
+  useless thing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had
+  known was but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's
+  son of you. Step lively."</p>
+
+  <p>They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men
+  of them there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and
+  jaws set like a trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his
+  pockets; Rank Judge, stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose
+  Buck Walker, who ran the meat market; Slim Simpson, from the
+  eating joint opposite, pale as the tucked-in apron around his
+  waist; last of all the stranger, tall, smooth-shaven, alien in
+  knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed, at his throat the
+  arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up they came at
+  the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons to
+  recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at
+  another time and another place, that compliance would have been;
+  but with that mute, prostrate figure there before them on the
+  floor, with that other menacing, dominating figure facing them,
+  it was far from humorous. It was ghastly in its confession of
+  impotence, in its mute acquiescence to another's will.</p>
+
+  <p>The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some
+  reason Pete did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed
+  eyes travelling from man to man, the fissure between them
+  deepening, the heavy lids narrowing, moment by moment. A long
+  half minute he waited, gloating on their misery, prolonging their
+  suspense; then came the interruption. A step sounded on the walk
+  without, a step that was all but noiseless. A hand tried the knob
+  of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on the panel.</p>
+
+  <p>Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but
+  the narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the
+  unshaven jaws tightened.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.</p>
+
+  <p>This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's
+  hand moved to the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands,"
+  snarled a voice.</p>
+
+  <p>Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted
+  in air.</p>
+
+  <p>"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another
+  followed, until there were not two but twelve.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make a move, damn you,"&mdash;one of the revolvers had returned to
+  its holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,&mdash;"and I'll drop
+  you, every cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I
+  swing the next second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and
+  like a flash the hand returned to the holster. "Come in, you
+  idiot," he challenged into the darkness without, "come in and
+  take your medicine with the rest."</p>
+
+  <p>Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open
+  doorway, peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw
+  nothing; then of a sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily,
+  noiselessly on moccasined feet, entered a brand new actor,
+  advanced half across the room, while his eyes adjusted themselves
+  to the light, halted curiously. Back of him that instant the door
+  again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty bolt grating
+  in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded the
+  snarl the others knew so well.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin'
+  here?"</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer
+  turned. From his height of six feet one, an inch below that of
+  Pete himself, he returned the other's look fixedly, without
+  answer. He wore a soft flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown
+  corduroy trousers, supported by a belt. Unconsciously, as though
+  he were alone, he hitched the corduroys up over his narrow hips,
+  in the motion of one who has been riding. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable
+  disfigurement. Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his
+  voice was almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to
+  you. What the devil are you here for?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or
+  a muscle.</p>
+
+  <p>Ten seconds passed, fifteen.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with
+  an effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of
+  a rusty spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the
+  habit of doin' that either, pard." He halted and his great chest
+  heaved with the effort of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned
+  a bit forward. "Tell me what you want here, and tell me quick, or
+  by the eternal I'll fill you so full of holes your own mother
+  wouldn't recognise you."</p>
+
+  <p>One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were
+  focussed upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling
+  collar of the flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant
+  in the career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded
+  room. No need to tell seven of them at least that it was a moment
+  of life or death. If something, something which seemed
+  inevitable, happened, if one of those curling, itching fingers on
+  the triggers tightened, if but once that took place, their lives
+  were not worth the wording of a curse. If once again that
+  black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there would
+  be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
+  cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and
+  man by man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The
+  jaws of Bob Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from
+  beneath their sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the
+  centre of a howling pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting
+  with closed lips; his lips as grey as those of the dead man on
+  the floor. Rank Judge had not moved, but the harness on his
+  wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted from leg to
+  leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like an
+  earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
+  uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
+  before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out,
+  as a somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the
+  end of the line was the stranger from the East, representative of
+  another world. Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but
+  he&mdash;but for his clothes, his most intimate friend would not have
+  recognised him at that moment. In him, blind, racking terror was
+  personified. To have saved his soul he could not keep still, and
+  his heavy walking shoes grated as they shuffled on the rough
+  floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood in his mouth and
+  trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes, like those
+  of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting constantly in
+  a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety. If aught
+  in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a hundred
+  times over and over that second.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could
+  reproduce, no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth
+  there ever was a hell, that tiny frontier room with the
+  smoke-blackened ceiling and the single kerosene lamp sputtering
+  on the wall, was the place. Not an imp thereof, but Satan
+  himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete; doubly
+  vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
+  blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who
+  watched, was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy
+  of fourteen, soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a
+  weapon. One branded unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one
+  apparently helpless as a woman. Yet there that night, within the
+  space of minutes, from the time there fell that last speaking
+  silence, with this man the chief actor, there took place
+  something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire, from
+  the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
+  Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and
+  of man mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that
+  night Coyote Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew
+  him no more. Not that he was murdered in cold blood as he had
+  murdered others: it was not that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in
+  the starlight of that very night; but he knew, and they who
+  permitted him to go, knew that it had been better&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>But we anticipate.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.</p>
+
+  <p>But he heard nothing:&mdash;yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe,
+  catlike figure straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw
+  this same figure look at him fully, squarely; as though for the
+  first time really conscious of his presence. He saw two
+  unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek bones, out of a
+  copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them; hold
+  them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
+  owner of those eyes move&mdash;he did not hear, there was no sound,
+  not even a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw&mdash;and move
+  toward him. He saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to
+  pass a prostrate body on the floor; always silent, but always
+  coming, always drawing nearer. He saw this thing, he, Pete
+  Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was terror. He knew what
+  it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had sworn to do; the
+  muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but he made
+  no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
+  unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this
+  man. As his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
+  preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the
+  message that would make the muscles tense; but he could not.
+  Those two eyes were holding him and he could not. All this he
+  knew; and all the while that other was coming nearer and nearer.
+  He began to have a horror of that coming that he could not halt.
+  The great unshaven jaw of him worked; worked spasmodically,
+  involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a sudden felt
+  cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands. Something
+  he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
+  others like those six in the background, began to grip him;
+  something that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden
+  weak&mdash;weak as he had never felt before. And still those eyes were
+  upon him, still that dark face came closer and closer. Once more
+  his brain sent the message to kill, once more he battled against
+  the inevitable; and that me ssage was the last. There was no more
+  response than if he were clay, than if his muscles were the
+  muscles of another man. In that instant, without the voicing of a
+  word, the deed was done. That instant came the black chaotic
+  abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence, his
+  arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now,
+  so near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace
+  himself, tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming,
+  which he read on the page of that other face. But he was too
+  late. Watching, almost doubting their own eyes, the six saw the
+  end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden clench, shoot out like a
+  brown light. They heard an impact, and a second later the thud of
+  a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter lift,
+  stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
+  for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck
+  true. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence,
+  inaction. Then for the first time the victor turned, facing the
+  spectators. Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an
+  instant almost curiously,&mdash;but he did not smile. Twelve arms,
+  that had forgotten to lower, were still in the air&mdash;but he did
+  not smile. Instead he sought out the stranger in knickerbockers
+  and blouse.</p>
+
+  <p>"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to
+  the B.B. ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this
+  he?"</p><a name="VI"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+  <p>THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE</p>
+
+  <p>Well out upon the prairie, clear of the limits of the tiny
+  town, two men were headed due west, into the night, apparently
+  into the infinite. There was no moon, but here, with nothing to
+  cast a shadow, it was not dark. The month was late October, and a
+  suggestion of frost was in the air: on the grass blades of the
+  low places, was actually present. As was all but usual at that
+  day, the direction they were going bore no trace of a road; but
+  the man astride the vicious-looking roan cayuse who led the way,
+  the same copper-brown man with the corduroys of Bob Manning's
+  store, showed no hesitation. Like a hound, he seemed to discern
+  landmarks where none were visible to the eye. He rode without
+  saddle or blanket, or spur, or quirt; yet, though he had not
+  spoken a word from the moment they had started, the roan with the
+  tiny ears had not broken its steady, swinging, seemingly
+  interminable lope, had scarcely appeared conscious of his
+  presence. Almost as unit seemed this beast and human. It was as
+  though the man were born in his place, as though, like a sailor
+  on a tiny boat, accustomed through a lifetime to a rolling,
+  uncertain equilibrium, the adjustment thereto had become
+  involuntary as a heart beat, instinctive as breathing. A splendid
+  picture he made there in the starlight and the solitude; but of
+  it the man who followed was oblivious. Of one thing alone he was
+  conscious, and that was that he was very tired; weary from the
+  effect of an unusual exercise, doubly exhausted in the reaction
+  from excitement passed. With an effort he urged his own horse
+  alongside the leader, drew rein meaningly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let's hold up a bit," he protested. "I've come twenty-five
+  miles to-day already, and I'm about beat." He slapped the breast
+  pocket of his coat a bit obviously, and as his companion slowed
+  to a walk, produced a silver-mounted, seal-covered flask and
+  proffered it at arm's length. "The cork unscrews to the left," he
+  explained suggestively.</p>
+
+  <p>The dark figure of the guide made no motion of acceptance, did
+  not even glance around.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thanks, but I never drink," he declined.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not even to be sociable,"&mdash;the hand was still extended,&mdash;"not
+  when I ask you as&mdash;a friend?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I am a Sioux," simply. "I have found that liquor is not good
+  for an Indian."</p>
+
+  <p>For a second the white man hesitated; then with something akin
+  to a flush on his face, he returned the flask to his pocket
+  untasted.</p>
+
+  <p>Again, without turning, the other observed the motion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pardon me, but I did not mean to prevent you."</p>
+
+  <p>He spoke stiffly, almost diffidently, as on unused to speech
+  with strangers, unused to speech at all; but without a trace of
+  embarrassment or of affectation.</p>
+
+  <p>"I do not judge others. I merely know my people&mdash;and
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the stranger hesitated, and again his face betrayed him.
+  He had scratched an aborigine, and to his surprise was finding
+  indications of a man.</p>
+
+  <p>"I guess I can get along without it," shortly. "I&mdash;" he caught
+  himself just in time from framing a self-extenuation. "I didn't
+  have time&mdash;back there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for
+  what you did. I wish to do so now." He was looking at the other
+  squarely, as the smart civilian observes the derelict who has
+  saved his life in a runaway. Already, there under the stars, it
+  was difficult to credit to the full that fantastic scene of an
+  hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real man, of
+  condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a nasty
+  mess, and I appreciate it."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer. No polite lie, no derogation of self or of what had
+  been done. Just silence, attentive, but yet silence.</p>
+
+  <p>For the third time the white man hesitated, and for the third
+  time his face shaded red; consciously and against his will. Even
+  the starlight could not alter the obtrusive fact that he had cut
+  a sorry figure in the late drama, and his pride was sore.
+  Extenuation, dissimulation even, would have been a distinct
+  solace. Looking at the matter now, the excitement past,
+  palliation for what he had done was easy, almost logical. He had
+  not alone conformed. He had but done, without consideration, as
+  the others with him had done. But even if it were not so, back in
+  the land from which he had come, a spade was not always so
+  called. His colour went normal at the recollection. The habitual,
+  the condescending pressed anew to the fore.</p>
+
+  <p>He inspected the silent figure at his side ingenuously, almost
+  quizzically; as in his schoolboy days he had inspected his
+  plodding master of physics before propounding a query no mortal
+  could answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"I know I waved the white flag back there as hard as any of
+  them," he proffered easily. "I'm not trying to clear myself; but
+  between you and me, don't you think that Pete was merely
+  bluffing, there at the end when you came?" The speaker shifted
+  sideways on the saddle, until his weight rested on one leg, until
+  he faced the other fair. "The fellow was drunk, irresponsibly
+  drunk, at first, when the little chap stirred him up; but
+  afterwards, when he was sober.... On the square, what do you
+  think he would have done if&mdash;if you hadn't happened in?" For so
+  long that Craig fancied he had not given attention to the
+  question, the guide did not respond, did not stir in his seat;
+  then slowly, deliberately, he turned half about, turned and for
+  the first time in the journey met the other's eyes. Even then he
+  did not speak; but so long as he lived, times uncounted in his
+  after life, Clayton Craig remembered that look; remembered it and
+  was silent, remembered it with a tingling of hot blood and a
+  mental imprecation&mdash;for as indelibly as a red-hot iron seals a
+  brand on a maverick, that look left its impress. No voice could
+  have spoken as that simple action spoke, no tongue thrust could
+  have been so pointed. With no intent of discourtesy, no
+  premeditated malice was it given; and therein lay the fine sting,
+  the venom. It was unconscious as a breath, unconscious as
+  nature's joy in springtime; yet in the light of after events, it
+  stood out like a signal fire against the blackness of night, as
+  the beginning of an enmity more deadly than death itself, that
+  lasted into the grave and beyond. For that silent, unwavering
+  look set them each, the red man and the white, in their niche;
+  placed them with an assurance that was final. It was a
+  questioning, analytic look, yet, unconcealed, it bore the
+  tolerance of a strong man for a weak. Had that look been a voice,
+  it would have spoken one word, and that word was "cad."</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the two men sat so, unconscious of time,
+  unconscious of place; then of a sudden, to both alike, the
+  present returned&mdash;and again that return was typical. As
+  deliberately as he had moved previously, the Indian faced back.
+  His left arm, free at his side, hung loose as before. His right,
+  that held the reins, lay motionless on the pony's mane. In no
+  detail did he alter, nor in a muscle. By his side, the white man
+  stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit,
+  until his horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation,
+  sent the rowels of his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank,
+  with a curse held the frightened beast down to a walk. That was
+  all, a secondary lapse, a burst of flowing, irresponsible passion
+  like a puff of burning gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was
+  enough. In that second was told the tale of a human life. In that
+  and in the surreptitious sidelong glance following, that searched
+  for an expression in the boyishly soft face of his companion. But
+  the Indian was looking straight before him, looking as one who
+  has seen nothing, heard nothing; and, silent as before the
+  interruption, they journeyed on.</p>
+
+  <p>A half hour slipped by, a period wherein the horses walked and
+  galloped, and walked again, ere the white man forgot, ere the
+  instinct of companionship, the necessity of conversation,
+  urban-fostered, gained mastery. Then as before, he looked at the
+  other surreptitiously, through unconsciously narrowed lids.</p>
+
+  <p>"I haven't yet asked your name?" he formalised baldly,
+  curtly.</p>
+
+  <p>The guide showed no surprise, no consciousness of the long
+  silence preceding.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Sioux call me Ma-wa-cha-sa: the ranchers, How
+  Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig dropped the reins over his saddle and fumbled in his
+  pockets.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Indian word has a meaning, I presume?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Translated into English, it would be 'the lost
+  pappoose.'"</p>
+
+  <p>The eyebrows of the Easterner lifted; but he made no
+  comment.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have been with my uncle, with Mr. Landor, I mean,
+  long?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Since I can remember&mdash;almost."</p>
+
+  <p>The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor
+  produced a pipe and lit it. It took three matches.</p>
+
+  <p>"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting
+  a girl. Bess he called her, was it not?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in
+  getting it alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking
+  out of doors.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you like this country, this&mdash;desert?" he digressed
+  suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"It is the only one I know."</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean know well, doubtless?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I have never been outside the State."</p>
+
+  <p>Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was
+  habitual.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere
+  that it were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern
+  cemetery than to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning
+  to believe it."</p>
+
+  <p>No comment.</p>
+
+  <p>"I suppose you will leave though, some time," pressed the
+  visitor. "You certainly don't intend to vegetate here
+  always?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I never expect to leave. I was born here. I shall die
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>Once more the shoulders of the Easterner lifted in mute
+  thanksgiving of fundamental difference. Of a sudden, for some
+  indefinite reason, he felt more at ease in his companion's
+  presence. For the time being the sense of antagonism became
+  passive. What use, after all, was mere physical courage, if one
+  were to bury it in a houseless, treeless waste such as this? The
+  sense of aloofness, of tranquil superiority, returned. He even
+  felt a certain pleasure in questioning the other; as one is
+  interested in questioning a child. Bob Manning's store and Pete
+  Sweeney were temporarily in abeyance.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pardon me, if I seem inquisitive," he prefaced, "but I'll
+  probably be here a month or so, and we'll likely see a good deal
+  of each other. Are you married?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>"You will be, though." It was the ultimatum of one
+  unaccustomed to contradiction. "No man could live here alone.
+  He'd go insane."</p>
+
+  <p>"I eat at the ranch house sometimes, but I live alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't do so, though, always." Again it was the voice of
+  finality.</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian looked straight ahead into the indefinite distance
+  where the earth and sky met.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I shall not do so always," he corroborated.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought so." It was the tolerant approval of the prophet
+  verified. "I'd be doing the same thing myself if I lived here
+  long. Conformity's in the air. I felt it the moment I left the
+  railroad and struck this&mdash;wilderness." Once again the unconscious
+  shoulder shrug. "It's an atavism, this life. I've reverted a
+  generation already. It's only a question of time till one would
+  be back among the cave-dwellers. The thing's in the air, I
+  say."</p>
+
+  <p>Again no comment. Again for any indication he gave, the Indian
+  might not have heard.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig straightened, as one conscious that he was talking over
+  his companion's head.</p>
+
+  <p>"When, if I may ask, is it to be, your marriage, I mean?" he
+  returned. "While I am here?"</p>
+
+  <p>For an instant the other's eyes dropped until they were hid
+  beneath the long lashes, then they returned to the distance as
+  before.</p>
+
+  <p>"It will be soon. Three weeks from to-day."</p>
+
+  <p>"And at the ranch, I presume? My uncle will see to that, of
+  course."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, it will be at the ranch."</p>
+
+  <p>"Good! I was wondering if anything would be doing here while I
+  was here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and
+  adjusted the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do
+  you&mdash;your people&mdash;celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a
+  bit ignorant on the point."</p>
+
+  <p>"Celebrate? I don't think I understand." The Easterner glanced
+  at his companion suspiciously but the other man was still looking
+  straight ahead into the distance.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have a dance, or a barbecue or&mdash;or something of that
+  sort, don't you? It's to be an Indian wedding, is it not?"</p>
+
+  <p>Pat, pat went the horses' feet on the prairie sod. While one
+  could count ten slowly there was no other sound.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, there will be no dance or barbecue or anything out of the
+  ordinary, so far as I know," said a low voice then. "It will not
+  be an Indian wedding."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig hesitated. An instinct told him he had gone far enough.
+  Lurking indefinite in the depths of that last low-voiced answer
+  was a warning, a challenge to a trespasser; but something else, a
+  thing which a lifetime of indulgence had made almost an instinct,
+  prevented his heeding. He was not accustomed to being denied,
+  this man; and there was no contesting the obvious fact that now a
+  confidence was being withheld. The latent antagonism aroused with
+  a bound at the thought. Something more than mere curiosity was at
+  stake, something which he magnified until it obscured his
+  horizon, warped hopelessly his vision of right or wrong. He was
+  of the conquering Anglo-Saxon race, and this other who refused
+  him was an Indian. Racial supremacy itself hung in the balance:
+  the old, old issue of the white man and the red. Back into the
+  stirrup went the leg that hung over the saddle. Involuntarily as
+  before he stiffened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, is it not to be an Indian wedding?" he queried directly.
+  "You seemed a bit ago rather proud of your pedigree." A trace of
+  sarcasm crept into his voice at the thinly veiled allusion. "Have
+  you forsaken entirely the customs of your people?"</p>
+
+  <p>Pat, pat again sounded the horses' feet. The high places as
+  well as the low bore their frost blanket now, and the dead turf
+  cracked softly with every step.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I have not forsaken the customs of my people."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why then in this instance?" insistently. "At least be
+  consistent, man. Why in this single particular and no other?"</p>
+
+  <p>The hand on the neck of the cayuse tightened, tightened until
+  the tiny ears of the wicked little beast went flat to its head;
+  then of a sudden the grip loosened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why? The answer is simple. The lady who is to be my wife is
+  not an Indian."</p>
+
+  <p>For an instant Craig was silent, for an instant the full
+  meaning of that confession failed in its appeal; then of a sudden
+  it came over him in a flood of comprehension. Very, very far away
+  now, banished into remotest oblivion, was Pete Sweeney. Into the
+  same grave went any remnants of gratitude to the other man that
+  chanced to remain. Paramount, beckoning him on, one thought, one
+  memory alone possessed his brain: the recollection of that look
+  the other had given him, that look he could never forget nor
+  forgive. "Since you have told me so much," he challenged "you
+  will probably have no objection to telling me the lady's name.
+  Who is it to be?"</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell upon them. Far in the distance, so far that had
+  the white man seen he would have thought it a star, a light had
+  come into being. Many a time before the little roan had made this
+  journey. Many a time he had seen that light emerge from the
+  surface of earth. To him it meant all that was good in life:
+  warmth, food, rest. The tiny head shook impatiently, shifted
+  sideways with an almost human question to his rider at the
+  slowness of the pace, the delay.</p>
+
+  <p>"That light you see there straight ahead is in the ranch
+  house," digressed the Indian. "It is four miles away."</p>
+
+  <p>Again it was the warning, not a suggestion, but positive this
+  time; and again it passed unheeded.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have forgotten to answer my question," recalled
+  Craig.</p>
+
+  <p>Swift as thought the Indian shifted in his seat, shifted half
+  about; then as suddenly he remembered.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I have not forgotten," he refuted. "You tell me you have
+  already heard of Bess Landor. It is she I am to marry."</p>
+
+  <p>At last he had spoken, had given his confidence to this
+  hostile stranger man; not vauntingly or challengingly, but simply
+  as he had spoken his name. Against his will he had done this
+  thing, despite a reticence no one who did not understand Indian
+  nature could appreciate. Then at least it would not have taken a
+  wise man to hold aloof. Then at least common courtesy would have
+  called a halt. But Clayton Craig was neither wise nor courteous
+  this night. He was a great, weary, passionate child, whose pride
+  had been stung, who but awaited an opportunity to retaliate. And
+  that opportunity had been vouchsafed. Moreover, irony of fate, it
+  came sugar coated. Until this night he had been unconscious as a
+  babe of racial prejudice. Now of a sudden, it seemed a burning
+  issue, and he its chosen champion. His blood tingled at the
+  thought; tingled to the tips of his well-manicured fingers. His
+  clean-shaven chin lifted in air until his lashes all but met.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you mean to tell me,"&mdash;his voice was a bit higher than
+  normal and unnaturally tense,&mdash;"do you mean to tell me that you,
+  an Indian, are to marry a white girl&mdash;and she my cousin by
+  adoption? Is this what you mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>Seconds passed.</p>
+
+  <p>"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss
+  the matter further."</p>
+
+  <p>"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the
+  family it is my right, and I demand an answer."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would
+  not be long until they were home now.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," answered the Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again
+  the silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a
+  red flood, that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I
+  live, and if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is
+  white, you'll not marry her. If it's the last act of my life,
+  I'll prevent you!"</p>
+
+  <p>The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not.
+  Beat, beat, beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until
+  the hot blood fairly roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not
+  until the challenge was spoken did he realise to the full what he
+  had done, that inevitable as time there would be a reckoning. Now
+  in a perfect inundation, the knowledge came over him, and
+  unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move. Yet for long,
+  eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
+  reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's
+  store, the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding
+  thereto, recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished,
+  returned now irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might
+  against the feeling, a terror of this motionless human at his
+  side grew upon him; a blind, unreasoning, primitive terror. But
+  one impulse possessed him: to be away, to escape the outburst he
+  instinctively knew was but delayed. In an abandon he leaned far
+  forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur dug viciously into
+  his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan from the
+  surprised beast, a forward leap&mdash;then a sudden jarring halt. As
+  by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do
+  that. It will only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the
+  same hand, stopped there on the prairie. The riders were face to
+  face. "I have tried to prevent this, for the sake of the future,
+  I have tried; but you have made an understanding between us
+  inevitable, and therefore it may as well be now." The voice
+  halted and the speaker looked at his companion fixedly, minutely,
+  almost unbelievingly. "I know I am not as you white men," went on
+  the voice. "I have been raised with you, lived my life so far
+  with you; yet I am different. No Indian would have done as you
+  have done. I cannot understand it. Not three hours ago I saved
+  your life. It was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and
+  yet already you have forgotten, have done&mdash;what you have done."
+  So far he had spoken slowly, haltingly; with the effort of one to
+  whom words were difficult. Now the effort passed. "I say I cannot
+  understand it," he repeated swiftly. "Mr. Landor has been very
+  good to me. For his sake I would like to forgive what you have
+  done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it; but I
+  cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your
+  people have conquered my people, have penned them up in
+  reservations to die; but that is neither your doing nor mine. We
+  are here as man to man. As man to man you have offered me
+  insult&mdash;and without reason." For the first time a trace of
+  passion came into the voice, into the soft brown face. "I ask you
+  to take back what you have just said. I do not warn you. If you
+  do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to take
+  it back."</p>
+
+  <p>He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips
+  were twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
+  perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's
+  mane.</p>
+
+  <p>"Will you not take it back?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"No?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>That was all&mdash;and it was not all. For an instant after the
+  Easterner had spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they
+  were, face to face; then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a
+  very different scene: one as old and as new as the history of
+  man. Just what happened in that moment that intervened neither
+  the white man nor the red could have told. It was a lapse, an
+  oblivion; a period of primitive physical dominance, of primitive
+  human hate. When they awoke&mdash;when the red man awoke&mdash;they were
+  flat on earth, the dust of the prairie in their nostrils, the
+  short catch of their breath in each other's ears, out one, the
+  dark-skinned, was above. One, again the dark-skinned, had his
+  fingers locked tight on the other's throat. This they knew when
+  they awoke.</p>
+
+  <p>A second thereafter they lay so, flaming eyes staring into
+  their doubles; then suddenly the uppermost man broke free, arose.
+  In his ears was the diminishing patter of their horses' hoofs.
+  They were alone there on the prairie, under the smiling satiric
+  stars. One more moment he stood so; he did not turn; he did not
+  assist the other to rise; then he spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"I do not ask your pardon for this," he said. "You have
+  brought it upon yourself. Neither do I ask a promise. Do as you
+  please. Try what you have suggested if you wish. I am not afraid.
+  Follow me," and, long-strided, impassive as though nothing had
+  happened, he moved ahead into the distance where in the window of
+  the Buffalo Butte ranch house glowed a light.</p><a name=
+  "VII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+  <p>A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN</p>
+
+  <p>It was very late, so late that the sun entering at the south
+  windows of the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of
+  his bed when Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long
+  been over, but throughout the unplastered ranch house the
+  suggestion of coffee and the tang of bacon still lingered. At
+  home those odours would have aroused slight sensations of
+  pleasure in the man, even at this time of day; but now and here
+  they were distinctly welcome, distinctly inviting. With the aid
+  of a tin pail of water and a cracked queensware bowl, he made a
+  hasty toilet, soliloquised an opinion of a dressing-room without
+  a mirror, and descended the creaking stairs to the level
+  below.</p>
+
+  <p>The main floor of the ranch house contained but three rooms.
+  Of these, it was the living-room which he entered. No one was
+  about. The pipe which he had smoked with his uncle before
+  retiring the night before remained exactly as he had put it down.
+  His cap and gloves were still beside it. Obviously there was no
+  possibility of breakfast here, and he moved toward the adjoining
+  room. On his way he passed a hook where upon arrival he had hung
+  his riding blouse. Telltale with its litter of dust and grass
+  stems, it hung there now; and unconsciously he scowled at the
+  recollection it suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>Opening the door, he was face to face with a little
+  fast-ticking cheaply ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven,
+  and the man grimaced tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human
+  was present, but here the indications for material sustenance
+  were more hopeful. It was the dining-room, and, although in the
+  main the table had been cleared, at one end a clean plate,
+  flanked by a bone-handled knife and fork and an old-fashioned
+  castor, still remained. Moreover, from the third room, the
+  kitchen, he could now hear sounds of life. The fire in a
+  cook-stove was crackling cheerily. Above it, distinct through the
+  thin partition, came the sound of a girlish voice singing. There
+  was no apparent effort at time or at tune; it was uncultivated as
+  the grass land all about; yet in its freshness and
+  unconsciousness it was withal distinctly pleasing. It was a happy
+  voice, a contented voice. Instinctively it bore a suggestion of
+  home and of quiet and of peace; like a kitten with drowsy eyes
+  purring to itself in the sunshine. A moment the visitor stood
+  silent, listening; then, his heavy shoes clumping on the
+  uncarpeted floor, he moved toward it. Instantly the song ceased,
+  but he kept on, pushed open the door gently, stepped inside.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-morning!" he began, and then halted in an uncertainty he
+  seldom felt among women folk. He had met no one but his uncle the
+  previous night. Inevitably the preceding incident with his guide
+  had produced a mental picture. It was with the expectation of
+  having this conception personified that he had entered, to it he
+  had spoken; then had come the revelation, the halt.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-morning!" answered a voice, one neither abnormally high
+  nor repressedly low, the kind of voice the man seldom heard in
+  the society to which he was accustomed&mdash;one natural, unaffected,
+  frankly interested. The owner thereof came forward, held out her
+  hand. Two friendly brown eyes smiled up at him from the level of
+  his shoulder. "I know without your introducing yourself that
+  you're Mr. Craig," she welcomed. "Uncle Landor told me before he
+  left what to expect. He and Aunt Mary had to go to town this
+  morning. Meanwhile I'm the cook, and at your service," and she
+  smiled again.</p>
+
+  <p>For far longer than civility actually required, to the extreme
+  limit of courtesy and a shade beyond, in, fact, until it
+  unmistakably sought to be free, Clayton Craig retained that
+  proffered hand. Against all the canons of good breeding he
+  stared. Answering, a trace of colour, appearing at the brown
+  throat, mounted higher and higher, reached the soft oval cheeks,
+  journeyed on.</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon," apologised the man. He met the accusing
+  eyes fairly, with a return of his old confidence. "You had the
+  advantage of me, you know. I was not forewarned what to
+  expect."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the breaking of the ice, and they laughed together. The
+  girl had been working with arms bare to the elbow, and as now of
+  a sudden she rolled the sleeves down Craig laughed again; and in
+  unconscious echo a second later she joined. Almost before they
+  knew it, there alone in the little whitewashed kitchen with the
+  crackling cook-stove and the sunshine streaming in through the
+  tiny-paned windows, they were friends. All the while the girl
+  went about the task of preparing a belated breakfast they laughed
+  and chatted&mdash;and drew nearer and nearer. Again while Craig ate
+  and at his command the girl sat opposite to entertain him, they
+  laughed and chatted. Still later, the slowly eaten meal finished,
+  while Elizabeth Landor washed the dishes and put everything tidy
+  and Craig from his seat on the bottom of an inverted basket
+  reversed the position of entertainer, they laughed and chatted.
+  And through it all, openly when possible, surreptitiously when it
+  were wise, the man gave his companion inspection. And therein he
+  at first but followed an instinct. Very, very human was Clayton
+  Craig of Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and very, very
+  good to look upon was brown-eyed, brown-skinned, brown-haired
+  Elizabeth Landor. Neither had thought of evil, had other thought
+  than the innocent pleasure of the moment that first morning while
+  the tiny clock on the wall measured off the swift-moving minutes.
+  Good it is to be alive in sun-blessed South Dakota on a frosty
+  warm October day, doubly good when one is young; and these two,
+  the man and the girl, were both young. Months it takes, years
+  sometimes, in civilisation, with barriers of out on the prairie,
+  alone, with the pulse of nature throbbing, throbbing, insistently
+  all about, the process is very swift, so swift that an hour can
+  suffice. No, not that first hour wherein unconsciously they
+  became friends, did the angel with the big book record evil
+  opposite the name of Clayton Craig; not until later, not until he
+  had had time to think, not until&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>But again we anticipate.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm so glad you've come," the girl had ejaculated, "now when
+  you have." At last the work was over, and in unconscious
+  comradery they sat side by side on the broad south doorstep; the
+  sun shining down full upon their uncovered heads&mdash;smiling an
+  unconscious blessing more potent than formula of clergy. She was
+  looking out as she spoke, out over the level earth dazzling with
+  its dancing heat waves, mysterious in its suggestion of
+  unfathomable silence, of limitless distance. "It's such a little
+  time now before I am going away, and Uncle Landor has talked of
+  you so much, particularly of late." A pause, a hesitating pause.
+  "I suppose you'll laugh at me, but I hope you'll stay here, for a
+  time, anyway, after I'm gone."</p>
+
+  <p>Clayton Craig, the listener, was not gazing out over the
+  prairie. The object at which he was looking was very near; so
+  near that he had leaned a trifle back the better to see, to
+  watch. He shifted now until his weight rested on his elbow, his
+  face on his hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are going away, you say?" he echoed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I supposed you knew&mdash;that Uncle had told you." Despite
+  an effort, the tiny ears were reddening. She was very human also,
+  was Elizabeth Landor. "I am to be married soon."</p>
+
+  <p>"Married?" A long pause. "And to whom, please?" The voice was
+  very low.</p>
+
+  <p>Redder than before burned the tiny ears. No more than she
+  could keep from breathing could she prevent telling her secret,
+  her happiness, this prairie girl; no more than she could prevent
+  that accompanying telltale scarlet flood.</p>
+
+  <p>"You didn't know it, but you've met him already," she
+  confided. "You met him last night." To her at this time there was
+  no need of antecedent. There was but one to whom the pronoun
+  might refer. "It was he who showed you here&mdash;How Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long time&mdash;for he was thinking now, was Clayton Craig,
+  and did not answer&mdash;there was silence. Likewise the girl, her
+  confession voiced, said no more; but her colour came and went
+  expectantly, tantalisingly, and the eyes that still looked into
+  the distance were unconscious of what they saw. From his place
+  the man watched the transparent pantomime, read its meaning,
+  stored the picture in his memory; but he did not speak. A minute
+  had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was thinking
+  of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had
+  received&mdash;and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl,
+  but it was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big
+  shaggy-haired collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his
+  aimless wandering about the place to thrust a friendly muzzle
+  into the stranger's hand; but even then he did not respond. For
+  almost the first time in his irresolute life a definite purpose
+  was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig, and little things
+  passed him by. A third minute passed. The colour had ceased
+  playing on the face he watched now. The silence had performed its
+  mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was
+  prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the
+  volume and made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"I met him last, night, you say?" It was the hesitating voice
+  of one whose memory is treacherous, "I have been trying to
+  recall&mdash;Certainly you must be mistaken. I saw no one last night
+  except Uncle Landor and an Indian cow-puncher with a comic opera
+  name." He met the brown eyes that were of a sudden turned upon
+  him, frankly, innocently. "You must be mistaken," he
+  repeated.</p>
+
+  <p>Searchingly, at first suspiciously, then hesitatingly, with a
+  return of the colour that came as easily as a prairie wind stirs
+  the down of a milk-weed plant, Elizabeth Landor returned his
+  look. It was an instinct that at last caused her eyes to
+  drop.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I was not mistaken," she voiced. "How Landor is an
+  Indian. It is he I meant."</p>
+
+  <p>For a carefully timed pause, the space in which one recovers
+  from hearing the unbelievable, Craig was silent; then swiftly,
+  contritely he</p>
+
+  <p>roused. "I beg a thousand pardons," he apologised. "I meant no
+  disrespect. I never dreamed&mdash;Forgive me." He had drawn very near.
+  "I wouldn't hurt you for the world. I&mdash;Please forgive me." He was
+  silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"There's nothing to forgive." The girl's colour was normal
+  again and she met his eyes frankly, gravely.</p>
+
+  <p>"But there is," protested the man humbly. "Because he happened
+  to be minus a collar and had a red skin&mdash;I was an ass; an
+  egregious, blundering ass."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't talk that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know
+  him, was all. If you had been acquainted all your life as I
+  have&mdash;" Against her will she was lapsing into a defence, and she
+  halted abruptly. "You were not at fault."</p>
+
+  <p>Again for a carefully timed pause the man was silent. Then
+  abruptly, obviously, he changed the subject.</p>
+
+  <p>"You said you were going away," he recalled. "Is it to be a
+  wedding journey?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," tensely.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me of it, please; I wish to hear."</p>
+
+  <p>"You would not be interested."</p>
+
+  <p>"Elizabeth&mdash;" syllabalised, reproachfully. "Am I not your
+  cousin?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Haven't you forgiven me yet?" The voice was very low. Its
+  owner was again very near.</p>
+
+  <p>"You'd laugh at me if I told you," repressedly. "You wouldn't
+  understand."</p>
+
+  <p>Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away&mdash;resumed the former
+  position; the place from which, unobserved, he could himself
+  watch.</p>
+
+  <p>"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly,
+  reluctantly. Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right.
+  "Just the two of us are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse
+  and a tent and How's camp kit and stay out there alone until
+  winter comes." Against her will she was warming to the subject,
+  was unconsciously painting a picture to please the solitary
+  listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and plenty to
+  read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never
+  carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game
+  whenever we want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when
+  we please." Again unconsciously she glanced at the listener to
+  see the effect of her art. "We'll be together, How and I, and
+  free&mdash;free as sunshine. There'll be nothing but winter, and
+  that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's what I've always
+  wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes away every
+  year, and he's promised this once to take me along." Suddenly,
+  almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her companion.
+  "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of
+  listlessness in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want
+  anything at any time you can go to the nearest ranch house. One
+  always does forget something you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly.
+  "That's the best of it all. The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch
+  that way, to the west, until you get to the Hills. We probably
+  won't see another human being while we're gone. We'll be as much
+  alone as though we were the only two people in the world."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I
+  was thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for
+  breakfast. And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly
+  if I were changing my residence so frequently." He lifted from
+  his elbow. "Pardon me again, though," he added contritely. "I
+  always do see the prosaic side of things." The smile vanished,
+  and for the first time he looked away, absently, dreamily. As he
+  looked his face altered, softened almost unbelievably. "It would
+  be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be alone,
+  absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for
+  most, the single person who always had the same likes and
+  dislikes, the same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of
+  such a thing before; it would be wonderful, wonderful!"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face
+  and her eyes were bright.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig.
+  Warmer and warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was
+  silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always
+  envy other people the things we haven't ourselves; and I&mdash;" He
+  checked himself abruptly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."</p>
+
+  <p>"But it's true."</p>
+
+  <p>Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate,
+  sympathetic, unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land.
+  Just this she was; and another, this man with her, her cousin by
+  courtesy, was sad. Inevitably she responded, as a flower responds
+  to the light, as a parent bird responds to the call of a
+  fledgling in distress.</p>
+
+  <p>"Maybe it's true now&mdash;you think it is," she halted; "but
+  there'll be a time&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed
+  shortly, unmusically. "It's merely my lot."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly
+  for her as though the brightness of the day had faded under a
+  real shadow, it altered now under the cloud of another's
+  unhappiness. But one suggestion presented itself; and innocently,
+  Instinctively as a mother comforts her child, she drew nearer to
+  the other in mute human sympathy.</p>
+
+  <p>The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.</p>
+
+  <p>"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought
+  differently,</p>
+
+  <p>when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl
+  I understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter
+  how well I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch,
+  never become necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm
+  the only one of my kind, that I must go through life
+  so&mdash;alone."</p>
+
+  <p>Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as
+  one child presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her
+  companion's hands lay listless on his knee, and instinctively,
+  compellingly, she placed her own upon it, pressed it softly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my
+  own love, my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply
+  couldn't help it, it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so
+  sorry."</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at
+  her. When he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his
+  voice; but that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't
+  know how lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a
+  bit ago, shows me the other side of life, the happy side; and I
+  wish I were dead." A mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The
+  future looks so blank, so hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to
+  me. Anything else would be preferable, anything. It's so to-day,
+  now." He halted and of a sudden turned away so that his face was
+  concealed. "God forgive me, but I wish it were over with, that I
+  were dead!"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful
+  entirely, the girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could
+  not prevent were in the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so
+  good to be alive. You can't mean it. You can't."</p>
+
+  <p>"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up.
+  "What's the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else
+  cares, ever will care. What's the use&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all
+  of us here care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear
+  to hear you." She halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose
+  hinderingly in her throat. "I feel somehow as though I was to
+  blame, as though if you should mean what you said,
+  should&mdash;should&mdash;" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes
+  glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her
+  fingers locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless;
+  then of a sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had
+  suggested came over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve.
+  Not the faintest suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his
+  honesty, occurred to her, not the remotest doubt. In all her life
+  no one had ever lied to her; she had never consciously lied to
+  another. The world of subterfuge was an unread book. This man had
+  intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant it. He would
+  do it, unless&mdash;unless&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still
+  lying idle on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it,
+  held it prisoner between her own. It was not a suggestion she was
+  combating now. It was a certainty. "Promise me you won't do this
+  thing." She shook the hand insistently; at first gently, then, as
+  there was no response, almost roughly. "Tell me you won't do it.
+  Promise me; please, please!"</p>
+
+  <p>"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless
+  absolutely; I never realised before how useless. You didn't
+  intend to do it, but you've made me see it all to-day. I don't
+  blame you, but I can't promise. I can't."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a
+  mountain, as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the
+  prairie. For seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out,
+  distorted seconds; then, interrupting, something happened. There
+  was not a cloud in the sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun
+  still shone bright as before; yet distinctly, undeniably, the man
+  felt a great wet spattering drop fall from above upon his
+  hand&mdash;and a moment later another. He glanced up, hesitated;
+  sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of the
+  little woman already standing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe
+  it." He took her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's
+  length; and the angel who watched halted with pen in air,
+  indecisive. "We've known each other such a ludicrously short
+  time&mdash;but a few hours. Can it be possible that you really meant
+  that, that at least to someone it does really matter?" It was his
+  turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no answer came.
+  "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess, tell
+  me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained
+  its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively
+  sought that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his
+  ancestors, had done to similar chins in their day, lifted it
+  until their eyes met. Had he been facing his Maker that moment
+  and the confession his last, Clayton Craig could not have told
+  whether it were passion or art, that action. "Tell me, Bess girl,
+  is it mere pity, or do you really care?"</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers,
+  meeting by chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's
+  mind in the glitter of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so
+  fantastic, so unexpected that for a moment the girl did not
+  realise, did not understand. For an instant she stood so,
+  perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and wider, opening
+  wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what she
+  feared&mdash;and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking,
+  ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength
+  of a captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second
+  longer she stood there, not her chin alone, but her whole body
+  trembling; then without a word she turned, mounted the single
+  step, fumbled at the knob of the door. "Bess," said the man
+  softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not glance back nor speak,
+  and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard her slowly
+  climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close
+  behind her.</p><a name="VIII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+  <p>THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET</p>
+
+  <p>Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social
+  inclination attain the age of five and fifty without contracting
+  superfluous avoirdupois and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel
+  William Landor was no exception to the first rule was proven by
+  the wheezing effort with which he made his descent from the
+  two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob Manning's store,
+  and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the free ends
+  of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held true
+  was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
+  soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag
+  tacked above the knob of the door before him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like
+  a strip of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the
+  entrance, found it locked, and in lieu of entering tested the
+  badge of sorrow between thumb and finger. "Pant stuff, sure
+  enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob himself, or they'd
+  have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now what in
+  thunder, I wonder&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house.
+  Like the general store, the door was closed, and just above the
+  catch, flapping languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the
+  mate to the black rag dangling at his back. The spectator's
+  shaggy eyebrows tightened in genuine surprise, and with
+  near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts of the short row of
+  other buildings along the street.</p>
+
+  <p>"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
+  evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse
+  with carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted,
+  indecisive, and for the first time became conscious that not a
+  human being was in sight. In the street before him a pair of
+  half-grown cockerels with ludicrously long legs and abbreviated
+  tails were scratching a precarious living from amid the litter.
+  On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's meat market
+  a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
+  physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one
+  end of the single street to the other not a human being was in
+  sight; save the present spectator, not a single disturber of the
+  all-pervading quiet. Landor had seen the spot where the town now
+  stood when it was virgin prairie, had watched every building it
+  boasted rise from the earth, had hitherto observed it through the
+  gamut of its every mood from nocturnal recklessness to
+  profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the sun
+  nearing the meridian, deserted, dead&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though
+  another were listening. "There must have been a general cleanup
+  this time. I fear that the report of my respected nephew&mdash;" He
+  checked himself suddenly, a bit guiltily. Even though no one was
+  listening, he was loath to voice an inevitable conclusion.
+  Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at last, and,
+  leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud citizens
+  denominated the residence quarter&mdash;a handful of unpainted
+  weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
+  surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now,
+  and as he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious
+  satisfaction at the relief. At the second domicile, a residence
+  as nearly like the first as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he
+  turned in at the lane leading to the house unhesitatingly, and
+  without form of knocking opened the door and stepped inside.</p>
+
+  <p>The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its
+  uncarpeted cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished,
+  smoke-tinted walls. In it, to the casual observer, there were
+  visible but four objects: an old-fashioned walnut desk that had
+  once borne a top, but which did so no longer; two cane-bottomed
+  chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one thereof, a man. The
+  latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing an unshaven
+  chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of which the
+  lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie, and
+  scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair
+  was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though
+  he looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the
+  scrutiny, there was no salutation, not even when, without form of
+  invitation, the rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and
+  tossed his broad felt hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk.
+  A moment they sat so, while with an effort the newcomer recovered
+  his breath.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated
+  eventually. "I've noticed that the last place to look for a
+  doctor is in the proximity of a funeral." He fumbled in his
+  pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that in the other's mouth.
+  "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather from the
+  appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than
+  ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face
+  was concealed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Rather," laconically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze
+  had cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion
+  appreciatively. "I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I
+  think she can be trusted to attend to such little matters."</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes
+  were observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two
+  men known each other these five years.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family,"
+  commented Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper,
+  any time." Again the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't
+  decided yet to prove the fact for yourself, have you?"</p>
+
+  <p>Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that
+  had brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent.
+  Only too well he knew the signs&mdash;the good-natured satire that ill
+  concealed a tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of
+  trivialities that cleared the way later of non-essentials. In
+  silence he waited; and, as he had known the moment that big
+  figure appeared in the doorway, it came.</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as
+  deliberately flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his
+  side, inspected the burning tuck critically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow&mdash;an old fellow
+  like myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his
+  business as an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with
+  canvas curtains such as you've seen me drive sometimes." The
+  speaker paused a second to clear his throat. "Supposing this old
+  fellow was just riding through the country easy, taking his time
+  and with nothing particular on his mind, and all of a sudden he
+  should feel as though someone had sneaked up and stuck him from
+  behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should happen,
+  and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go
+  black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much
+  later, and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig
+  and the team stock still out in the middle of the prairie."
+  Deliberately as it had left, the cigar returned to the speaker's
+  lips, was puffed hard until it glowed furiously; and was again
+  critically examined. "Supposing such a fat old fellow as myself
+  should tell you this. As a doc and a specialist, would you think
+  there was something worth while the matter with him?"</p>
+
+  <p>Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his
+  fingers sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a
+  goodly collection of its mates, and the drooping eyelid
+  tightened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the
+  second time, and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking,
+  should be spilled out and have to foot it home three miles. What
+  would you think then?"</p>
+
+  <p>One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash
+  off his vest absently.</p>
+
+  <p>"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my
+  nephew when the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I
+  sent How over instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy
+  to come a couple of weeks ago&mdash;that's when it caught me
+  first."</p>
+
+  <p>"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"</p>
+
+  <p>Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the
+  ranch. Mary'd have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out
+  to shoot at a coyote, and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at
+  the other explanatorily, deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's
+  son and the only real relative I have, you know. I just asked him
+  to come on general principles."</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he
+  fumbled amid a litter of articles useful and useless, and,
+  extracting a battered stethoscope, shifted his chair forward
+  until it was close to the other and stuck the tiny tubes to his
+  ears. Still without comment he opened the rancher's shirt,
+  applied the instrument, listened, shifted it, listened, shifted
+  and listened the third time&mdash;slid his chair back to the former
+  position.</p>
+
+  <p>"What else do you know?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father
+  went that way when he was younger than I am, and his father the
+  same." The stogie had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a
+  fresh one steadily. "I've been expecting it to catch up with me
+  for years."</p>
+
+  <p>"Your father died of it, you say?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position,
+  and in sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was
+  waiting, I remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner
+  with a stuffed sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks
+  in the air. Mother and Frances&mdash;that's my sister&mdash;were waiting,
+  and they sent me running to call father. He was a lawyer, and a
+  great hand to shut himself up and work. I was starved hungry, and
+  I remember I hot-footed it proper upstairs to his den and threw
+  open the door." Puff! puff! went the big stogie. "An Irish
+  plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I recollect," he
+  completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that day to
+  this."</p>
+
+  <p>"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing
+  the opening anthem at the time."</p>
+
+  <p>The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared
+  impassively out the single window. It faced the main street of
+  the town.</p>
+
+  <p>"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed
+  evenly. "I see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's
+  place."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor did not look around.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he
+  recalled in mock sarcasm. "What I want to know is your
+  opinion."</p>
+
+  <p>"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal
+  agony.</p>
+
+  <p>"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be
+  before&mdash;" he halted and jerked his thumb over his
+  shoulder&mdash;"before Bob and the rest will be doing that to me?"</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes
+  beneath the other's drooping lids.</p>
+
+  <p>"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws
+  closed tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned
+  the other's gaze.</p>
+
+  <p>"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed.
+  "Tell me, and let's have it over with."</p>
+
+  <p>For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black
+  eyes bored the other through and through, at first impersonally,
+  as, scalpel in hand, he would have studied a patient before the
+  first incision in a major operation; then, as against the other's
+  will, a great drop of sweat gathered on the broad forehead,
+  personally, intimately.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated
+  evenly. He did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was
+  about to say, did not qualify in advance by intimating that his
+  prognosis might be wrong. "I think the next attack will be the
+  last. Moreover, I believe it will come soon, very soon."
+  Impassively as he had spoken, he produced a book of rice paper
+  from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long fingers
+  were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a machine.
+  Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame
+  was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly
+  smoke separated him from the other.</p>
+
+  <p>With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, passed his
+  sleeve across his forehead clumsily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I
+  said, I expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For
+  the second time his cigar was dead, but he did not light it
+  again. There was no need of subterfuge now. "I want you to do me
+  a favour." He looked at the other steadily through the
+  diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," said Chantry.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"No!" he interrogated.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said so."</p>
+
+  <p>A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as,
+  with an effort, he got to his feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly.
+  "I was labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."</p>
+
+  <p>The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long
+  fingers had locked over his knee. He did not move.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am
+  your friend that I will not promise."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm
+  dense."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one
+  thing I can't promise you."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.</p>
+
+  <p>"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of
+  your affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. But how in the world&mdash;" "Don't ask it then, please,"
+  swiftly. He ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else,
+  someone you've known for a long time."</p>
+
+  <p>"I've known you for a long time&mdash;five years."</p>
+
+  <p>"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry
+  scouted the obvious. "If there should be need she could get a
+  lawyer from the city&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to
+  avoid. Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of
+  taking care of themselves as they have of speaking Chinese.
+  They'd be on the county inside a year, with no one interested to
+  look out for them."</p>
+
+  <p>"But How&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"He's as bad. He can ride a broncho, or stalk a sandhill crane
+  where there isn't cover to hide your hat, or manage cattle, or
+  stretch out in the sun and: dream; but business&mdash;He wouldn't know
+  a bank cheque if he saw one; and, what's worse, he doesn't want
+  to know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Craig, then, your nephew&mdash;" It was not natural for Chantry to
+  be perfunctory, and he halted.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the big rancher was silent. In his lap his
+  fingers met unconsciously, tip to tip, in the instinctive habit
+  of age.</p>
+
+  <p>"I anticipated that," he said wearily. "I realise it's the
+  obvious thing to do. I never adopted How as I did the girl&mdash;I was
+  willing to, but he didn't see the use&mdash;and so Craig's the only
+  man kin I have." The life and magnetism, usually so noticeable in
+  Landor's great figure, had vanished. It was merely an old man
+  facing the end who settled listlessly into his seat. "I had big
+  hopes of the boy. I hadn't seen him since he was a youngster, and
+  Frances, while she lived, was always bragging about his doings.
+  That's why I sent for him." Pat, pat went the big fingers in his
+  lap against each other. "I've always felt that if worst came to
+  worst the women folks would have someone practical to rely on;
+  but somehow, when I saw him last night, from what he said and
+  what he didn't say, from the way he acted and the way he
+  explained&mdash;what happened here last evening&mdash;" The speaker caught
+  himself. A trace of the old shrewdness crept into the grey eyes
+  as he inspected his companion steadily. "I know How pretty well,
+  and when someone intimates to me that he is a grand-stand player,
+  or goes out of his way to pick a quarrel, or meddles with someone
+  else's affairs&mdash;" Again the big man caught himself. The scrutiny
+  became almost a petition. "I cut you off short about what went on
+  here yesterday," he digressed. "I didn't want to hear. I guess I
+  was afraid to hear. It's been foolish, I know, but I've depended
+  a good deal upon the boy, and I'm afraid he's going to be
+  a&mdash;disappointment."</p>
+
+  <p>With the old machine-like precision Chantry rolled another
+  cigarette, lit it, sent a great cloud of smoke tumbling up toward
+  the ceiling. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>"You see for yourself how it is," said the rancher. "I
+  wouldn't ask you again if there was anyone else I could go to;
+  but there isn't. Maybe I'm only borrowing trouble, maybe there
+  won't be anything for you or anyone to do; but it would be a big
+  load off my mind to know that if anything should happen.&mdash;" He
+  halted abruptly. It was not easy for this man to discuss his
+  trouble, even to a friend. "It isn't such a big thing I'm
+  asking," he hurried. "I'm sure if positions were reversed and you
+  were to request me&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I&mdash;" Of a
+  sudden, interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin,
+  ungainly figure in shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the
+  point of caricature. Unconsciously he started pacing back and
+  forth across the room, restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the
+  years he had previously known the man had Landor seen him so,
+  seen him other than the impassive, almost forbidding practitioner
+  of a minute ago. For the time being his own trouble was forgotten
+  in surprise, and he stared at the transformation almost
+  unbelievingly. Back and forth, back and forth went the thin,
+  ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved, paused
+  at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a
+  silhouette looking out over the desolate town. Watching, Landor
+  shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Once he cleared his throat as
+  if to speak. An instinct told him he should say something; but he
+  was in the dark absolutely, and words would not come. Reaching
+  over to the desk he took up his broad felt hat and sat twirling
+  it in his fingers, waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his
+  seat. His face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid
+  drooped even more than normally.</p>
+
+  <p>"I feel I owe you an apology," he said swiftly. "In a way
+  we've been friends, and as you say, it's not a big thing you ask
+  of me; but nevertheless I can't grant it. Please don't ask
+  me."</p>
+
+  <p>The hat in Landor's hands became still, significantly
+  still.</p>
+
+  <p>"I admit I don't understand," he accepted, "but of course if
+  you feel that way, I shall not ask you again." Unconsciously a
+  trace of the former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose
+  heavily. "I think I'd better be going." His mouth twitched in an
+  effort at pleasantry. "Mary'll be dying to give me the
+  details."</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume
+  his seat. Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest
+  squarely.</p>
+
+  <p>"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said
+  repressedly. "Would you like to hear?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes&mdash;if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to,
+  however&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I'd rather you&mdash;understood than to go that way." The
+  doctor cleared his throat in the manner of one who smokes
+  overmuch. "We all have our skeleton hid away somewhere, I
+  suppose. At least I have mine, and it keeps bobbing out at times
+  like this when I most wish&mdash;" He caught himself, met his
+  companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you wondered why I
+  ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried suddenly.
+  "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
+  don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there
+  was something peculiar about it all?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving
+  again. He had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it
+  tolerantly, with a vague sense of commiseration&mdash;an attitude very
+  similar to that with which the uninitiated observe a player at
+  golf; but that there might be another, a sinister meaning&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem
+  peculiar, now that you consider it?" The question came swiftly,
+  tensely, with a significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell
+  me, please."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, perhaps; but&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but
+  see." The speaker started anew the restless, aimless pace. "The
+  country is full of us; all new countries are." He was still
+  speaking hurriedly, tensely, as we tell of a murder or a ghastly
+  tragedy; something which in duty we must confide, but which we
+  hasten to have over. "It's easier to get here than to Mexico or
+  to Canada, and until the country is settled, until people begin
+  to suspect&mdash;" He halted suddenly opposite the other, his face
+  deathly pale, deathly tortured. "In God's name, don't you
+  understand now?" he questioned passionately. "Must I tell you in
+  so many words why I refused, why I don't dare do anything else
+  but refuse?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, you don't need to tell me." Absently, unconsciously, the
+  rancher produced a red bandana handkerchief and wiped his face;
+  then thrust it back into his pocket. "I think I understand at
+  last." His eyes had dropped and he did not raise them again to
+  his companion. "I'm sorry, very sorry, that I asked you; sorry
+  most of all that&mdash;" He halted diffidently, his great hands
+  hanging loose at his side, his broad shoulders drooping wearily.
+  He was not glib of speech, at best, and this second blow was hard
+  to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant, searching for
+  words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the door.
+  "I really must be going," he concluded.</p>
+
+  <p>Chantry did not ask him to stay, made no motion to prevent his
+  going. Tense, motionless, he stood where he had last paused,
+  waited in silence until the visitor's hand was upon the knob.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye Landor," he said then simply.</p>
+
+  <p>Not the words themselves, but something in the tone caused the
+  rancher to halt, to look back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-day, you mean, rather," he corrected.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, good-bye. You will not see me again."</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I'm too much of a coward for that, or I should have done
+  so long ago. I merely mean I'll move on to-morrow."</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face the two men stood staring at each other. Seconds
+  drifted by. It was the doctor who spoke at last.</p>
+
+  <p>"God knows that if I could, I'd change with you even now,
+  Landor," he said repressedly. "I'd change with you gladly." A
+  moment he stood so, tense as a wire drawn to the point of
+  breaking, ghastly tense; then of a sudden he went lax.
+  Instinctively his fingers sought his pockets, and there where he
+  stood he started swiftly to roll a cigarette.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go, please," he requested. "Good-bye."</p><a name="IX"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+  <p>THE VOICE OF THE WILD</p>
+
+  <p>Eight miles out on the prairie, out of sight of the Buffalo
+  Butte ranch house&mdash;save for a scattering herd of grazing cattle
+  in the distance, and a hobbled mouse-coloured broncho feeding
+  near at hand, out of sight of every living thing&mdash;a man lay
+  stretched full length upon the ground. It was the time of day
+  that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's store, and the
+  broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to keep the
+  glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket; an
+  Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a
+  blot of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his
+  moccasined feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would
+  have thought him asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes
+  that looked forth motionless from beneath the hat brim, that
+  apparently never for an instant left that scattering blot where,
+  distorted, fantastic from distance and through the curling heat
+  waves the herd grazed, were very wide awake indeed. They were not
+  even drowsy or off guard. They were merely passive, absolutely
+  passive. The whole body was passive, motionless, relaxed in every
+  muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the marvel&mdash;to all save
+  the thousandth human in this restless age, the impossibility. To
+  be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely nothing, not even
+  sleep&mdash;seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one of the most
+  difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need is
+  sufficient; but man, modern man&mdash;Here and there one retains the
+  faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth;
+  but here and there only. Yet it was such an one that lay alone
+  out there on the Dakota prairie that October day; one who, as
+  Craig had said, hinted unfortunately of comic opera, but who
+  never, even in remotest conception, fancied that comic opera
+  existed, a dreamer and yet, notwithstanding, a doer, an Indian,
+  and still not an Indian; Ma-wa-cha-sa by name.</p>
+
+  <p>With the approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now,
+  wandering northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane
+  and tail, set each individual hair of the little beast vibrating
+  in unjustified ferocity; and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the
+  brittle grass stalks at the man's feet with the muffled crackling
+  of a far-distant prairie fire. The herd, a great machine cutting
+  clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in its path, moved on and
+  on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling country, and passed
+  slowly from view; then, still moving forward, took shape on the
+  summit of the next rise, more distinct than before.</p>
+
+  <p>Time passed as the man lay there, time that to another would
+  have been interminable, that to him was apparently unnoted.
+  Gradually, as the full heat of the day approached, the breeze
+  became stronger, set the heat waves dancing to swifter measure,
+  sang audibly in the listener's ears its siren song of prairie and
+  of peace. The broncho, its appetite temporarily satisfied, lay
+  down fair in its tracks, groaned lazily in the action, and shut
+  its eyes. It was the rest time of the wild, and the same instinct
+  appealed to the leader of the distant herd. Down it went where it
+  stood as the pony had done, disappeared absolutely from view. A
+  moment later another followed, and another, and another. It was
+  almost uncanny, there in the fantastic glimmer, that
+  disappearance. In the space of minutes, look where one would, the
+  horizon was blank. Where the herd had been there was nothing, not
+  even a blot. It was as the desert, and the vanished herd a
+  mirage. It was like the far northland tight in the grip of
+  winter, like the ocean at night. It was the Dakota frontier at
+  midday.</p>
+
+  <p>Again time passed and, motionless as at first, wide eyed, the
+  man lay looking out. The pony was sound asleep now. Its nostrils
+  widened and narrowed rhythmically and it snored at intervals.
+  Save for this and the soft crackle of the grass and the aeolian
+  song of the wind the earth was still; still as death; so still
+  that, indescribably soft as it was immeasurably distant, the man
+  detected of a sudden against it a new sound. But he did not stir.
+  The black eyes looked out motionless as at first. He merely
+  waited a minute, two&mdash;and it came again; a bit louder this time,
+  more distinct, unmistakable.</p>
+
+  <p>This time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the
+  gaudy blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it
+  completely with his body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed
+  under his head, and, leaning back, the hat brim still shading his
+  eyes, he lay gazing up into the sky, motionless as a prairie
+  boulder.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley,
+  a chorus. It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance;
+  but nearer than before and approaching closer second by second.
+  Not from the earth did it come, but from the air. Not by any
+  stretch of the imagination was it an earthly sound, but
+  a&euml;rial. It was an alien note and still it was not alien.
+  There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
+  distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote
+  was the keynote of the time and place, its message was their
+  message, the thrill it bore to the listener the thrill of the
+  whole. It was not a musical call, that steadily approaching
+  sound. No human being has ever been able to locate it in pitch or
+  metre; yet to such as the listening man upon the ground, to those
+  who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless the sweetest,
+  most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note which
+  will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
+  the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
+  impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the
+  man heard drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was
+  the swelling, diminishing note of the migrant on its way south,
+  of the grey Canada honker en route from the Arctic circle to the
+  Gulf of Mexico.</p>
+
+  <p>"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within
+  a half mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the
+  intent of its makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many
+  throats, in many keys, louder and louder, confused as children's
+  voices at play; then in turn diminishing, retreating. Very
+  mystifying to one who did not understand would have been that
+  augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting human boulder it
+  was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he knew every
+  movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
+  broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
+  sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To
+  all wild things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile
+  high in the air as inevitably as to the beast on earth instinct
+  had said "halt." They were still going southward, still drawing
+  nearer and nearer; but it would not be for long. Already they
+  were circling, descending, searching here and there for a place
+  to alight, to rest. Suspicious even here, they were taking their
+  time; but distinct now amid the confusion was the sound of their
+  great wings against the denser air, and the "Honk! honk! honk!"
+  was a continuous chatter.</p>
+
+  <p>Circle after circle made the flock. Once their noise all but
+  ceased, and the listener fancied for an instant they were down,
+  but in a moment it was resumed louder than before, and he knew
+  they were still a-wing. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!"
+  They were very near indeed, so near that the sleeping pony was
+  aroused at the clamour and, lifting its head, looked about
+  curiously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Honk! honk! honk! Flap! flap! Swish!" Between the sun and the
+  watcher there fell a moving shadow and another&mdash;then a multitude.
+  The clamour was all-surrounding, the flap of great wings a
+  continuous beating, the whistle of air like that in a room with a
+  myriad buzzing electric fans. Temporarily the prairie breeze was
+  lost; swallowed up in the greater movement. Surprised, for the
+  moment frightened, the broncho sprang to his feet&mdash;paused
+  irresolute. For an instant the sky was hid. Overhead, to right,
+  to left, all-obscuring, was nothing but a blot of great grey
+  bodies, of wide wings lighter on the under surface, of long,
+  curious necks, of dangling feet; then, swiftly as it had come it
+  passed; the sun shone anew; the cloud and the shadow thereof,
+  going straight in the face of the wind, wandered on. "Honk! honk!
+  honk! honk! honk! honk!" they repeated; but it was the voice of
+  departure. The thing was done. There on the level earth, fair in
+  view, they had passed overhead within twenty feet of their
+  arch-enemy, man; and had not known. Now less than a quarter of a
+  mile away they were circling for the last time. One big gander
+  was already down and stretching his long neck from side to side.
+  Another, with a great flapping of wings, was beside him; and
+  another, and another. The prairie wind carried along the sound of
+  their chatter; but it was subdued now, entirely different from
+  the clamour of a bit ago. Against the blue of the sky where they
+  had been a blot only, the curling, dancing heat waves arose. One
+  and all had answered the siesta call.</p>
+
+  <p>Up to this time the man who watched had not stirred. As they
+  had gone over, the wide-open eyes had stared up at them; but not
+  in the twitching of a muscle had the long body betrayed him. Not
+  even now that it was over did he move. Instead, low at first,
+  then louder, a whistle sounded. The pony, wide awake now, was
+  grazing contentedly; but he paused. The whistle sounded for the
+  third time, and reluctantly he drew near, halted obediently. Then
+  at last there was action. With one motion the Indian was on his
+  feet. Swiftly as it was spread the blanket was rolled and
+  replaced in the waterproof pouch with the remnants of the lunch
+  and a book of odds and ends which he carried always with him. The
+  whole was strapped to the pony's bare back. As swiftly the hobble
+  was removed and, not a minute from the time the last bird was
+  down, the man and the beast, the latter only visible from the
+  direction in which they were going, were moving on a zigzag,
+  circuitous trail toward the resting yet ever-watchful flock
+  before them.</p>
+
+  <p>On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his
+  body even with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through
+  the wind-tossed mane. First to the right, then to the left they
+  tacked, halting at intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will
+  halt now and then to feed; but never losing the general
+  direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer and nearer. A half
+  hour passed by and in it they covered forty rods&mdash;half the
+  distance. Thirty minutes more elapsed and they had crossed an
+  equal portion of the remaining space. Then it was they halted and
+  a peculiar thing happened.</p>
+
+  <p>The wind had gradually risen during the day, and now, the
+  middle of the afternoon, was blowing steadily. Light objects
+  unattached move easily across the level prairie at this time of
+  year, and here and there under its touch one after another of a
+  particular kind were already in motion. Fluffy, unsubstantial
+  objects they were, as large as a bushel measure and rudely
+  circular. Looking out over the level earth often a half dozen at
+  a time were visible, rolling and halting and rolling again on an
+  endless journey from nowhere to nowhere. They were the well-named
+  tumble weeds of the prairie; as distinctive as the resting flock
+  of late autumn, of approaching winter. One of these it was now
+  that came tumbling in lazily from the south and, barely missing
+  the indifferent birds themselves, dawdled languidly on toward the
+  pony beyond. On it came, would have passed to the right; but,
+  under an impulse he in no way understood, the broncho moved to
+  intercept it. Fair in its path, the little beast would still have
+  shifted to give it right of way, for the weed is very prickly;
+  but again the authority he did not question held him in his
+  place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came
+  together. Then it was the <i>finale</i> began, the real test, the
+  matching of human cunning and animal watchfulness.</p>
+
+  <p>Left alone there upon the prairie, the indifferent broncho
+  resumed its feeding. Away from it, foot by foot, so slowly that a
+  careful observer could barely have seen it stir, moved the great
+  weed. No animal on the face of earth save man himself would have
+  been suspicious of that natural blind; even he would have
+  overlooked it had he not by chance noted that while every other
+  of its kind was moving with the wind, it slowly but surely was
+  advancing against it. The scene where the drama was taking place
+  was level as a floor, the grazed grass that covered it scarcely
+  higher than a man's hand; yet from in front not an inch of the
+  Indian's long body was visible, not a sound marked its advance.
+  In comparison with its movement time passed swiftly; a third half
+  hour while it was advancing ten rods. Already the short autumn
+  afternoon was drawing to a close. The sun was no longer
+  uncomfortably hot. The heat waves had ceased dancing. In sympathy
+  the prairie breeze, torn of the sun, was becoming appreciably
+  milder. As certainly as it had come, the brief rest period was
+  drawing to a close.</p>
+
+  <p>But the long figure that gave the blind motion showed no
+  haste. Inch by inch it advanced, never still, yet never hurrying.
+  The great unsuspicious birds were very near now, so near that a
+  white hunter would have lost his equanimity in anticipation.
+  Through the meshwork of the blind the stalker counted them.
+  Twenty-seven there were together, and near to him another, a
+  sentinel. He was within half the distance of a city block of the
+  latter, so close that he could see the beady, watchful eyes, the
+  pencillings of the plumage, the billowing of feathers as the long
+  neck shifted from side to side. Verily it was a moment to make a
+  sportsman's blood leap&mdash;to make him forget; but not even then did
+  the Indian show a sign of excitement, not for a minute did the
+  lithe body cease in its soundless serpentine motion. It was
+  splendid, that patient, stealthy approach, splendid in its
+  mastery of the still hunt; but beyond this it was more, it was
+  fearful. Had an observer been where no observer was, it would
+  inevitably have carried with it another suggestion&mdash;the
+  possibilities of such a man were a real object, one vital to his
+  life, and not a mere pastime, at stake. What would this patient,
+  tireless, splendid animal do then? What if another man, his
+  enemy, were the object, the quarry?</p>
+
+  <p>The rest time at last was over. Insidiously into the air had
+  crept a suggestion of coolness, of approaching night. In the
+  background the pony ceased feeding, stood patiently awaiting the
+  return of its rider. Far in the distance, the herd, a darker blot
+  against the brown earth, were once more upon their feet. The
+  flock, that heretofore like a group of barnyard fowls in the dust
+  and the sun had remained indolently resting and preening their
+  plumage, grew alert. One after the other they began wandering
+  here and there aimlessly, restlessly. The subdued chatter became
+  positive. Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a
+  challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings
+  tentatively, and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The
+  cycle was all but</p>
+
+  <p>complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them
+  south, that had for this brief time sent them to earth, was
+  calling again. In sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went
+  still. Another minute, another second even, perhaps, and they
+  would be gone. Through the filmy screen the stalker saw it all,
+  read the meaning. He had ere this drawn unbelievably near. Barely
+  the width of a narrow street separated him from the main
+  flock&mdash;less than the breadth of a goodly sized room the
+  motionless sentinel. It was the moment for action.</p>
+
+  <p>And action followed. Like a mighty spring the slim muscular
+  body contracted in its length. Toes and fingers dug into the
+  earth like a sprinter awaiting the starting pistol. He drew a
+  long breath. Then of a sudden, straight over the now useless
+  blind, unexpected, startling as a thunderclap out of a cloudless
+  sky, directly toward the nearest bird bounded a tall brown
+  figure, silent as a phantom. For a second the entire flock stared
+  in dumb paralytic surprise; then following there came a note of
+  terror from eight and twenty throats that rose as one voice, that
+  over the now silent prairie could have been heard for miles. It
+  was the signal for action, for escape, and, terror-mad, they
+  broke into motion. But a flock of great Canada geese cannot, like
+  quail, spring directly a-wing. They must first gather momentum.
+  This they attempted to gain&mdash;in its accomplishment all but one
+  succeeded. That one, the leader, the sentinel, was too near.
+  Almost before that first note of terror had left his throat the
+  man was upon him. Ere he could rise two relentless hands had
+  fastened upon his beating wings and held him prisoner. Hissing,
+  struggling, he put up the best fight he could; but it was
+  useless. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" shrilled the flock
+  now safe in the air. "Honk! honk! honk!" as with wings and feet
+  they climbed into the sky. "Honk! honk! honk!" softer and softer.
+  "Honk! honk! honk!" for the last time, faint as an echo; and they
+  were gone. Behind them the human and the wild thing his prisoner
+  stood staring at each other alone.</p>
+
+  <p>For a long, long time neither moved. Its first desperate
+  effort to escape past, the bird ceased to struggle, stood passive
+  in its place; passive as the man himself had remained there on
+  the ground a few hours before. Its long neck swayed here and
+  there continuously, restlessly, and its throat was a-throb; but
+  no muscle of the body stirred. It had made its fight&mdash;and lost.
+  For the time being resistance was fatuous, and it accepted the
+  inevitable. Silent as its captor, it awaited the move of the
+  conqueror. It would resist again when the move came, resist to
+  the last ounce of its strength; but until then in instinctive
+  wisdom it would husband its energy.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet that move was very slow in coming. It was the time of day
+  when ordinarily the herder collected his drove and returned
+  toward the home corral; still he showed no intention of haste.
+  The broncho was shaking his head at intervals restlessly; too
+  well trained to leave, yet impatient as a hungry child for the
+  return&mdash;and was ignored. For the time being the man seemed to
+  have forgotten all external considerations. Not savagely nor
+  cruelly, but with a sort of fascination he stood gazing at this
+  wild thing in his power. For a long, long time he did nothing
+  more, merely looked at it; looked admiringly, intimately. No
+  trace of blood hunger was in his face, no lust to kill; but pure
+  appreciation&mdash;and something more; something that made the two
+  almost kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike.
+  Each was graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of
+  its kind physical perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of
+  the wild; of solitude, of magnificent distances. Each was a part
+  of its setting; as much so as the all-surrounding silence. Last
+  of all, each stood for one quality dominant, one desire
+  overtowering all others; and that was freedom, unqualified,
+  absolute.</p>
+
+  <p>Long as it was they stood there so, the bird was true to its
+  instinct of passive inaction. It was the human that made the
+  first move. Gently, slowly, one hand freed itself, stroked the
+  silky soft plumage; stroked it intimately, almost lovingly&mdash;as an
+  animal mother caresses its young. The man did not speak, made no
+  sound, merely repeated the motion again and again. Under the
+  touch the restless head became still, the watchful black eyes
+  more watchful. That was all. Slowly as it had moved before, the
+  man's hand shifted anew, passed down, down, the glossy throat to
+  the breast&mdash;paused over the heart of the wild thing. There it
+  remained, and for the first time a definite expression came into
+  the mask-like face; a look of pity, of genuine contrition. A
+  moment the hand lay there; then, childish as it may seem, absurd,
+  if you please, the man spoke aloud.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're afraid of me, deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he
+  queried softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a
+  cannibal, I'm going to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into
+  the black eyes&mdash;deep, mysterious as the wild itself. "You think
+  this, and still you don't grovel, don't make a sound. You're
+  brave, birdie, braver than most men." He paused, and one by one
+  his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of you; so proud that
+  I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his full height.
+  Unconsciously his arms folded across his chest. "Go, birdie;
+  you're free."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer there was inaction. Unbelieving, still a
+  captive, the great bird stood there motionless as before; then of
+  a sudden it understood; it was free. By some chance, some
+  Providence, this great animal, its captor, had lost the mastery,
+  and it was free. Simultaneously with the knowledge the pent-up
+  energy of the last minutes went active, fairly explosive. With a
+  mighty rush it was away; feet and wings beating the earth, the
+  air. Swifter and swifter it went, gaining momentum with each
+  second. It barely touched the frost-brown prairie; it cleared it
+  entirely, it rose, rose, with mighty sweeps of mighty wings. Oh,
+  it was free! free! free! "Honk! honk!" Free! free! "Honk! honk!
+  honk!"</p>
+
+  <p>Like a statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the
+  dark spot on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at
+  last into the all-surrounding brown.</p><a name="X"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER X</h3>
+
+  <p>THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED</p>
+
+  <p>It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor
+  returned that evening. The herd safely corralled for the night,
+  he rode slowly toward the ranch house, and, without leaving the
+  pony's back, opened and closed the gate of the barb wire fence
+  surrounding the yard and approached the house. There was a bright
+  light in the living-room, and, still without dismounting, he
+  paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs. Landor,
+  looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her
+  hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his
+  feet on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking
+  a cigarette, and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the
+  room looked blue. Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not
+  finding conversation easy, and the former appeared distinctly
+  bored. Neither Landor himself nor the girl was anywhere visible,
+  and, after a moment, the spectator moved on around the corner.
+  The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the kitchen, and
+  the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing at last
+  under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It
+  was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim
+  light was burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the
+  barebacked broncho hesitated, looking up; then rolling his
+  wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder he moved very close to the
+  weather-boarded wall. The building was low, and, by stretching a
+  bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the second story. He
+  tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.</p>
+
+  <p>Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.</p>
+
+  <p>Still no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit
+  frosty, the pony stamped impatiently.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me
+  good-night?"</p>
+
+  <p>This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash
+  was opened; a face appeared, very white against the black
+  background.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.</p>
+
+  <p>The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was
+  unrolled.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not
+  sick?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired,
+  is all."</p>
+
+  <p>For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his
+  black head bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed
+  human that he was, there seemed to him nothing now to say,
+  nothing adequate. Meanwhile the pony was growing more and more
+  impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the</p>
+
+  <p>half-frozen ground rhythmically.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit
+  there in the window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade
+  closed as before.</p>
+
+  <p>For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of
+  head, motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a
+  sound, and at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own
+  quarters.</p>
+
+  <p>The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the
+  Buffalo Butte ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room
+  shack, grudgingly built according to government requirements to
+  prove up on a homestead, it had recently been enlarged by the
+  addition of a second larger room, and as a whole the place
+  further improved by the building of a sod and weather-board barn.
+  The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted with the
+  tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had
+  remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor
+  himself could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for
+  years, and in all that time, even in the coldest weather, the
+  voluntary exile had never lived under a roof. Primitive or
+  evolved as it might be, as youth and as man, the Indian was a
+  tent-dweller. Just now the little house was being fitted up for
+  occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of the day and at
+  evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under eight by
+  ten feet of canvas near at hand.</p>
+
+  <p>A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against
+  a dark horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house
+  yard the man on the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that
+  he had company; yet, characteristic in his every action, he did
+  not hurry. Methodically he put up the pony in the new barn, fed
+  and bedded him for the night. From the adjoining stall, out of
+  the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish whine and the protest
+  of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an observer would
+  have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a pair of
+  sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two
+  gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible.
+  It was to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps
+  from his lunch remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the
+  pony, he made a bed; then&mdash;though the little beast was only a
+  grey prairie wolf, it was a baby and lonely&mdash;he knelt down and
+  for a moment laid his own face against the other's softly shaggy
+  face.</p>
+
+  <p>When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there
+  was a moist spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had
+  inscribed its affection.</p>
+
+  <p>On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man
+  with his back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap
+  and stepped inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the
+  manner of one whose thoughts had been far away.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're late to-night," he commented.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or
+  expected, and the subject dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in
+  silence the Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging
+  opposite was burning low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the
+  tin reflector so that the light would play on the scene of
+  operations. Leaving the tent for a moment, he returned with a
+  young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put it in a skillet to
+  fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he produced a
+  couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the opposite
+  side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be
+  dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that
+  supper was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey
+  red cloth was set, the odour of coffee&mdash;cheap coffee, yet
+  surprisingly fragrant&mdash;was in the air, and the bird and potatoes
+  were temptingly brown. It was almost uncanny the way this man
+  accomplished things. Landor himself never ceased to marvel. How
+  always seemed unconscious of what he was doing, seemed always
+  thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a motion, and
+  when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was so
+  in small things. It was identical in large.</p>
+
+  <p>Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a
+  word had been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted
+  hospitably.</p>
+
+  <p>"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an
+  early supper. I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his
+  seat wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not
+  press his invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's
+  admission. Either would have been superfluous. Instead he ate
+  with the hearty appetite of a healthy human, and thereafter,
+  swiftly and methodically as he had prepared the meal, cleared the
+  table and put all in order. Then at last, the fire replenished
+  and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown within the
+  radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the
+  perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and
+  awaited the something he knew had brought the other to him at
+  this unusual hour. "There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of
+  the little table at your right," he assisted.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor roused with a trace of surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the
+  superfluous, the obvious explanation.</p>
+
+  <p>Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and
+  pressed the brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match
+  he lit crackled explosively, and he started at the unexpected
+  sound as one whose nerves were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still
+  sat for a moment puffing hard.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a
+  favour. Will you promise me?"</p>
+
+  <p>The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my
+  power, yes, sir," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the
+  relation of the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the
+  younger, the trace of almost patriarchal respect that never left
+  his manner when, addressing the elder. "If in my power, yes,
+  sir."</p>
+
+  <p>"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly.
+  "It's simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of
+  waiting until the day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though
+  the speaker were uncertain whether or no to say more. "I have a
+  particular reason for wishing it," he completed inadequately.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question
+  was voiced; there was no probing of the confidence the other
+  preferred not to give.</p>
+
+  <p>"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already
+  glowing bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had
+  done.</p>
+
+  <p>"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong
+  now, but nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day
+  while I was in</p>
+
+  <p>town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form,
+  but I feel better to have things settled." With forced matter of
+  factness he knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the
+  grate and filled the bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any
+  responsibility, so I left practically everything to Bess. I know
+  that if anything should happen to me you'd take care of her
+  mother."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very
+  different from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher
+  to-night, very obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear
+  natural. "I know you'll make her happy, my boy."</p>
+
+  <p>Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted
+  uncomfortably. As well as he knew his own name he knew that his
+  secret was secret no longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild
+  thing that hides itself to die alone he avoided direct mention of
+  the fact, direct wording of the inevitable. But something in the
+  attitude of the motionless figure before him prevented further
+  dissimulation. Some influence urged him to hasten the
+  <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> which he knew was but postponed. With an
+  effort he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the
+  other's black eyes steadily.</p>
+
+  <p>"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned
+  directly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is
+  that I'm sorry you did as you did."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sorry, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, sir. Very sorry."</p>
+
+  <p>"And why?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon
+  the Indian's face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the
+  corner by the stove was in shadow. "I will tell you why." He
+  returned to his place and stretched himself as before, his hands
+  locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr. Landor, and
+  Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you will
+  compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have
+  seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."</p>
+
+  <p>For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with
+  a fragment of coal from the grate.</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't see why, How," he refuted.</p>
+
+  <p>"You do, though, sir."</p>
+
+  <p>"No. Tell me."</p>
+
+  <p>There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other
+  would not answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black
+  eyes fixed upon him unshiftingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As
+  we are now I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because&mdash;I
+  love her." He paused, and into the tent there came the
+  long-drawn-out wail of the baby prisoner. Silence returned. "As
+  surely as that little wolf is lonely, Bess will know the trouble
+  money brings if you do as you intend. Not myself, but other men
+  will teach her."</p>
+
+  <p>Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his
+  fingers.</p>
+
+  <p>"Once more I ask why, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.</p>
+
+  <p>"Because she is white and they are white, and I&mdash;am an
+  Indian."</p>
+
+  <p>At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had
+  hitherto succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man
+  could ignore it no longer. It was true, as true as human nature;
+  and he knew it was true. Other men, brothers of his own race,
+  would do this thing&mdash;as they would do anything for money; and he,
+  Landor, he who had raised her from a child, who had adopted her
+  as his own daughter, he it was who would make it possible!</p>
+
+  <p>Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt
+  to move about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought
+  himself inch by inch; battled against the knowledge of the
+  inevitable that had been dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A
+  long time he stood so, his great hands locked, his face toward
+  the blank tent wall opposite; then at last he turned.</p>
+
+  <p>"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and
+  understand the way you feel. God knows I wish it were different,
+  wish I did not believe what you say true; but things are as the
+  are. What we have to do now is the best thing possible under the
+  circumstances." He sat down in the chair again heavily, his hands
+  still locked in his lap. "If wrong has been done I am to blame, I
+  myself, in raising you and Bess together. I might have known that
+  it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for each other; but
+  I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Landor&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The big man halted. For the first time he realised the
+  admission of what he had been saying, the inevitable
+  implication&mdash;and he was silent. For seconds likewise the Indian
+  was still; but in them he was looking at the other steadily, in a
+  way he had never looked at him before, with an intensity that was
+  haunting.</p>
+
+  <p>"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There
+  was no anger in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes,
+  pathos&mdash;terrible, gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else
+  felt so&mdash;everyone except Bess herself; but you&mdash;you&mdash;I did not
+  know that before, Mr. Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the
+  bottom of his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in
+  self-defence; but he could not. There was nothing to say.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the
+  repressed voice, "not even when at first you were slow to give
+  your consent to our marriage. I fancied it was merely because you
+  thought me impractical, because I cared nothing for a life that
+  was different, was not my own. Nor again, even a bit ago when you
+  asked me to promise&mdash;what I did promise&mdash;I did not suspicion such
+  a thing. I thought it a compliment, the sincerest compliment I
+  had ever received in my life: the fact that you should trust me
+  so, with all that was dear to you in the world." Just perceptibly
+  he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's face. "But
+  I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You are
+  like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that
+  we've lived together for half a generation makes no difference.
+  You're square, square to the end. You even like me in a way.
+  You've given your word and won't go back on it; but nevertheless
+  you're sorry. Even while you urge us to marry, to have the thing
+  over, to have a responsibility off your mind, you feel you are
+  sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a second, and
+  even at this time Landor was conscious that it was infinitely the
+  longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't blame
+  you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
+  race; but nevertheless, nevertheless&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes
+  were of a sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at
+  the roof of the tent. No power on earth could have made him
+  complete that sentence, made him admit the deadly hurt it
+  suggested. From the unusual confidence of a bit ago he merely
+  lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive self. Yet as
+  plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the difference,
+  realised as well that while outwardly there would be no change,
+  from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
+  the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to
+  exist. He had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the
+  knowledge for the first time in the years they two had lived
+  together he realised how much after all he had grown to depend
+  upon this laconic human, how much he had lost. It was the last
+  drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing straw. His great
+  ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in his
+  hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
+  marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with
+  his deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them,
+  silence that by word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from
+  the stable there sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a
+  moment later, muffled, echo-like from the distance, the answering
+  call of one of its own kind free upon the infinite prairie; but
+  apparently neither man noticed, neither man cared&mdash;and the
+  silence returned. Long minutes passed. The fire in the stove
+  burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a suggestion of the
+  coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without a word he
+  put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were
+  unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a
+  moment he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of
+  attempting an explanation where none was possible; but he
+  realised it would but make matters worse, and desisted. The
+  Indian, too, had arisen, and repressedly co urteous, stood ready
+  to open the flap of the tent for the other to pass. For a moment,
+  the last moment they were ever to see each other alive, they
+  stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each knowing that
+  the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly, Landor took
+  a step forward.</p>
+
+  <p>The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he
+  passed; then closed again, shutting him out.</p>
+
+  <p>For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man
+  remained as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an
+  inanimate thing. The kerosene lamp was burning low now and
+  sputtered dismally; but he did not notice, did not hear. For the
+  third time, tremulous against the background of night and of
+  silence, came the wail of the lonely little captive. It was a
+  kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the figure
+  responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute
+  later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey,
+  bright-eyed something, happy as a puppy at release and
+  companionship. Methodically the man banked the coal fire and put
+  out the lantern. He did not make a bed, did not undress. Instead,
+  weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid the buffalo robes, lay
+  still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed, inquiring nose in the
+  darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no response, and
+  becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the silent
+  being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly&mdash;and likewise
+  became still.</p><a name="XI"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+
+  <p>THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</p>
+
+  <p>The darkness that precedes morning had the prairie country in
+  its grip when Howard, the gaunt foreman of the B.B. ranch, drew
+  rein before the silent tent, and with the butt end of his quirt
+  tapped on the heavy canvas.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wake up," he called laconically. "You're wanted at the ranch
+  house."</p>
+
+  <p>Echo-like, startling in its suddenness, an inverted V opened
+  in the white wall and in it, fully dressed, vigilant, appeared
+  the figure of its owner.</p>
+
+  <p>"What is it?" asked a voice insistently.</p>
+
+  <p>The Texan stared in unconcealed surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"In Heaven's name, man, don't you ever sleep?" he drawled.
+  "The boss is dead," he added baldly at second thought.</p>
+
+  <p>The black V closed again, and distinct in outline against the
+  white background appeared the silhouette of the listener. His
+  arms were folded across his chest in a way that was
+  characteristic, and his moccasined feet were set close together.
+  He spoke no word of surprise, asked no question; merely stood
+  there in the silence and the semi-darkness waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>The foreman was by no means a responsive soul, yet, watching,
+  there instinctively crept over him a feeling akin to awe of this
+  other silent human. There was the mystery of death itself in that
+  motionless, listening shadow.</p>
+
+  <p>"It was just before I came over to tell you that Mrs. Landor
+  raised the house," he explained. "She woke up in the night and
+  found the boss so&mdash;and cold already." Unconsciously his voice had
+  lowered. "She screamed like a mad woman, and ran down-stairs in
+  her nightdress, chattering so we could hardly understand her." He
+  slapped at his baggy chaperajos with his quirt absently. "That's
+  all I know, except there's no particular use to hurry. It's all
+  over now, and he never knew what took him."</p>
+
+  <p>Silently as before the aperture in the tent opened and closed
+  and the listener disappeared; to reappear a moment later with a
+  curled-up woolly bundle in his arms. Without a word of
+  explanation he strode toward the barn, leaving Howard staring
+  after him uncertainly. Listening, the latter heard a suppressed
+  little puppyish protest, as though its maker were very sleepy, a
+  moment later the soft, recognising whinny of a broncho, and then,
+  startlingly sudden as the figure had first emerged from the tent,
+  it appeared again, mounted, by his side.</p>
+
+  <p>For half the distance to the ranch house not a word was said;
+  then of a sudden Howard drew his horse to a walk meaningly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I suppose it's none of my business," he commented without
+  preface, "but unless I'm badly mistaken there'll be hell to pay
+  around the Buffalo Butte now."</p>
+
+  <p>Again, as at the tent door, his companion made no answer;
+  merely waited for the something he knew was on the other's mind.
+  The east was beginning to lighten now, and against the reddening
+  sky his dark face appeared almost pale.</p>
+
+  <p>Howard shifted in his saddle seat and inspected the ground at
+  his right as intently as though there might be jewels scattered
+  about.</p>
+
+  <p>"The boss's relative&mdash;Craig," he added, "has taken possession
+  there as completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead
+  of been a visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the
+  man's face an unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted
+  characteristically. "I like you, How, or I wouldn't stick my bill
+  into your affairs. That boy is going to make you trouble, take my
+  word for it."</p>
+
+  <p>Even then there was no response; but the overseer did not seem
+  surprised or offended. Instead, the load he had to impart off his
+  mind, his manner indicated distinct relief. But one thing more
+  was necessary to his material comfort&mdash;and that solace was at
+  hand. Taking a great bite of plug tobacco, a chew that swelled
+  one of his thin cheeks like a wen, he lapsed into his normal
+  attitude of disinterested reverie.</p>
+
+  <p>The ranch house was lighted from top to bottom, abnormally
+  brilliant, and as the Indian entered the odour of kerosene was
+  strong in his nostrils. In the kitchen as he passed through were
+  the other two herders. They sat side by side in uncomfortable
+  inaction, their big sombreros in their hands; and with the
+  suppression of those unused to death nodded him silent
+  recognition. The dining-room was empty, likewise the living-room;
+  but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled catch of
+  a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative, the
+  voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
+  even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of
+  the three who were already present knew that he was there.</p>
+
+  <p>Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one
+  corner of the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She
+  did not look up as he entered, apparently did not see him, did
+  not see anything. The first wild passion of grief past, she had
+  lapsed into a sort of passive lethargy. Her fingers kept picking
+  at the edge of the loose dressing sack she had put on, and now
+  and then her thin lips trembled; but that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to
+  the bed; shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done
+  when Howard first broke the news, his feet came close together
+  and his arms folded across his chest in characteristic,
+  all-observing attention. Not a muscle moved, he scarcely seemed
+  to breathe. He merely watched.</p>
+
+  <p>And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at
+  first beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised
+  until the face was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as
+  she had thrown herself down, her head all but buried from view,
+  was the girl Bess. She was sobbing as though her heart would
+  break: sobbing as though unconscious of another human being in
+  the world. Above her, leaning over her, was the form of a man:
+  Craig. His uncle had brought his belongings from the tiny town
+  the day before, and even at this time his linen and cravat were
+  immaculate. He was looking down at the little woman before him,
+  looking and hesitating as one choosing between good and evil.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he was saying, "you must not. You'll make yourself
+  sick. Besides, it's nearly morning and people will be coming.
+  Don't do so; please!"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, no indication that he had been heard; only the
+  muffled, racking, piteous sobs.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," insistently, "Bess! Listen to me. I can't have you do
+  so. Uncle Landor wouldn't like it, I know he wouldn't. He'd be
+  sorry if he knew. Be brave, girlie. You're not alone yet."</p>
+
+  <p>Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty,
+  curved shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.</p>
+
+  <p>The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face
+  went very close.</p>
+
+  <p>"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't
+  let you cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl;
+  infinitely too much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly,
+  hurts me more than I can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated,
+  and like an inexperienced gambler his face went tense and white.
+  "You must listen to me, Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are
+  others who will take care of you. I myself will take care of you,
+  girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's something I must tell you,
+  something you make me tell you now." Swiftly, unhesitatingly, he
+  leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed about her and
+  he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle, could not
+  prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you two
+  days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is
+  why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love
+  you!"</p>
+
+  <p>This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the
+  roof, came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living
+  actors remained for a second while the first light of day sifted
+  in through the tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious
+  of the drama enacting before her eyes, unconscious of anything,
+  her thin fingers still picking at the edge of her sack; the
+  motionless watcher rigid as a casting in bronze: the passionate
+  gambling stranger man holding the girl to him tightly, so tightly
+  she could not but remain so, passive; then came the climax. Of a
+  sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself into a
+  man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the
+  close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a
+  sound, one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate&mdash;and again
+  the first. Unexpected as death itself would have been at that
+  instant, Craig felt two mighty irresistible hands close on his
+  shoulders; close with a grip that all but paralysed. Irresistibly
+  again he felt himself turned about, put upon his feet; realised
+  of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly even to admit of a
+  cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot distant, he was
+  staring into the face of the one being on earth from whom he had
+  most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully intervening,
+  a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came between.
+  The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he
+  didn't. Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive
+  him&mdash;for my sake."</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test
+  kerosene still hung about the closed living-room where the same
+  four people sat in council. No effort had as yet been made to put
+  the place to rights, and in consequence it was stuffy and
+  disordered and proportionately depressing. The mound of cigarette
+  stumps which Craig had builded the night before lay unsightly and
+  evil of odour on the table. The faded rag carpet was littered
+  with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding blouse and
+  cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat, which
+  he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a
+  chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences
+  of his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two
+  days' residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete
+  possession. Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority
+  in the past, concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That
+  voice was speaking now.</p>
+
+  <p>"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is
+  buried in Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's
+  father." The voice halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his
+  other sister, who died years and years ago, are both there."
+  Obviously, too obviously, he turned away until his face was hid.
+  Into the voice there crept a throb that was almost convincing.
+  "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure, even though he wouldn't
+  have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned it the first night
+  I came, but of course I didn't realise&mdash;then&mdash;" The voice was
+  silent.</p>
+
+  <p>As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no
+  emotion, did not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain
+  awakened, had she grasped the full meaning of the thing which had
+  happened to her. Later, indefinitely later, the knowledge would
+  come, and with it the hour of reckoning; but for the present she
+  was a mere puppet in the play. Craig, the dominant, had told her
+  to dress, and she had dressed. He had summoned her to the
+  council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her now that he
+  had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had entered,
+  stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had
+  spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.</p>
+
+  <p>"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who
+  cares for him or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was
+  becoming unmanageable and the girl halted, winking hard. "It
+  seems cruel."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if he would have wished it, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"But if he hadn't wished it&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"I repeat I think he would." Craig shifted until his back was
+  toward the other man. "I think that his mentioning the
+  possibility at all, the first night I came, proves that he wished
+  it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps.... I don't know." ... A long pause; then of a sudden
+  the girl arose and walked to the window. But subterfuge was from
+  her a thing apart, and she merely leaned her face against the
+  casement. "I can't bear to think of it," she trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig moved half way toward her; then remembered, and
+  halted.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, let's decide, and not talk about it," he returned
+  swiftly. "You agree with me after all, don't you, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl did not look up.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't ask me. You and How and Aunt Mary decide." With an
+  effort she resumed her former place; but even yet she did not
+  glance at him. "Wherever you take him I shall go along, is
+  all."</p>
+
+  <p>Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think he would have liked that. I ... You agree with
+  me too, don't you, Aunt Mary?"</p>
+
+  <p>The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up
+  vacantly. "What?" she queried absently.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me," she returned
+  monotonously.</p>
+
+  <p>In sympathy, the girl's brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig
+  turned away almost impatiently. "Let's consider it settled then,"
+  he said.</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at
+  Craig that she looked. It was at that other figure in the
+  background, the figure that not once through it all had stirred
+  or made a sound. "What shall we do, How? what ought we to do?"
+  she asked.</p>
+
+  <p>For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig
+  recognise the other's presence by so much as a glance. Only the
+  look of exultation left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids
+  tightened perceptibly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't consider what I think, Bess," said a low voice at last.
+  "Do what you feel is right."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who
+  brought the decision to pass. How Landor, the Indian, it was who,
+  alone in the dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man
+  out decently, and for five dragging minutes thereafter, before
+  the others had come, stood like a statue gazing down at the
+  kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own</p>
+
+  <p>that no living human had ever seen or would ever see. How
+  Landor, the Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with
+  the closely drawn canvas curtains, drove all that day and half
+  the night to the nearest undertaker at the railroad terminus
+  beyond the river, seventy-five miles away. How Landor, the
+  Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses, but barely a
+  pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail, and ere
+  it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre,
+  knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of
+  Mary Landor he knew. How Landor it was once more who, before
+  twenty-four hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the
+  unwilling visitor by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch
+  yard. Last of all, How Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the
+  old surrey once more to the east, and with still another team
+  before him and a cold lunch in his pocket, sat waiting within the
+  hour to take the departing ones away.</p>
+
+  <p>Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was
+  superfluous. What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew.
+  That he had expected what had taken place in his absence, his
+  bringing Mrs. Burton proved. At last realisation had come, and
+  Mary Landor was paying the price of the brief lethargic respite;
+  paying it with usury, paying it with the helpless abandon of the
+  dependent. The dreary weather-coloured ranch house was not a
+  pleasant place to be in that day. Craig left it thankfully, with
+  a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting topcoat, as the
+  door closed behind him. The other passenger, the one who should
+  have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>How Landor it was again who, when minutes of waiting had
+  passed, minutes wherein Craig consumed cigarettes successively,
+  tied the team and disappeared within doors. What he said none
+  save the girl herself knew; but when he returned he was not
+  alone, and though the eyes of his companion were red, there was
+  in her manner no longer a trace of hesitation.</p>
+
+  <p>The two passengers comfortably muffled in the robes of the
+  rear seat, the driver buttoned the curtains tight about them
+  methodically. The day was very still, not a sound came to them
+  from over the prairie, and of a sudden, startlingly clear, from
+  the house itself there came an interruption: the piteous,
+  hopeless wail of a woman in a paroxysm of grief, and a moment
+  later the voice of another woman in unemotional, comforting
+  monotone.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," said a choking, answering voice, "I can't go after all,
+  I can't!"</p>
+
+  <p>Within the carriage, safe from observation, her companion took
+  her hand authoritatively, pressed it within his own.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you can, Bess," he said low. "Aunt Mary will have to
+  fight it out for herself. You couldn't help her any by
+  staying."</p>
+
+  <p>But already the Indian was gone. Within the house as before,
+  even keen-eared Mattie Burton failed to catch what he said. Had
+  she done so, she would have been no wiser, for apparently that
+  moment a miracle took place. Of a sudden, the hysterical voice
+  was silent. The man spoke again and&mdash;the watcher stared in pure
+  unbelief&mdash;her own hand in her companion's hand, Mary Landor
+  followed him obediently out to the surrey.</p>
+
+  <p>"We haven't any time to lose," he said evenly, as he drew back
+  the flap of the curtain. "You'd better say good-bye now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Mother!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Bessie, girl. Bessie!"</p>
+
+  <p>Again within the ranch house, Mary Landor sank into a seat
+  with the utter weariness of a somnambulist awakened. Fully a half
+  minute the Indian stood looking down at her. For one of the few
+  times in his life his manner indicated indecision. His long arms
+  hung loose from his shoulders. His wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes.
+  The watcher thought he looked very, very weary. Then of a sudden
+  he roused. Bending over&mdash;did he foresee what was to come, that
+  moment?&mdash;he did something he had never done before.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, mother," he said, and kissed her on the lips.</p>
+
+  <p>The door closed behind him noiselessly, and a half minute
+  later the loose-wheeled old surrey went rumbling past the door.
+  Mrs. Burton was feminine and curious, and she went to the window
+  to watch it from sight. The Indian, alone on the front seat, sat
+  looking straight ahead. The bronchos, fresh from the stall, and
+  but a few weeks before wild on the prairie, tugged at the bit
+  wickedly, tried to bolt; but the driver did not stir in his
+  place. The left hand, that held the reins, rose and fell with
+  their motion, as an angler takes up slack in his line; that was
+  all. The woman had lived long on the frontier. She was
+  appreciative and pressed her face against the pane the better to
+  see. They were through the gate now, well out on the prairie. The
+  clatter of the waggon had ceased, the figure of the driver was
+  concealed by the curtains; but the bronchos were still tugging at
+  the bit, still&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mary! In heaven's name!" The sound of a falling body had
+  caught her ear and she had turned. "Mary Landor!" The dishes in
+  the cupboard against the wall shook as something heavy met the
+  floor. "Mary!" A pause and a tongue-tied examination. "My God!
+  The woman is dead!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It was ten minutes before starting time. The old-fashioned
+  engine, contemptuously relegated to the frontier before going to
+  the junk heap, was puffing at the side of the low sanded station
+  platform. The rough cottonwood box was already in the baggage
+  car. How himself had assisted in putting it there, had previously
+  settled for its transportation. Likewise he had bought the girl's
+  ticket, and checked her scanty baggage. The usual crowd of
+  loafers was about the place, and his every action was observed
+  with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the spectators
+  followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels for
+  his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the
+  vanquished&mdash;and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing
+  upon the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop
+  sounded; and when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was
+  repeated intrepidly near at hand. They put themselves elaborately
+  in his way, to move at his approach with grunts of guttural
+  protestation. Already, even here on the frontier, the Sioux and
+  his kind were becoming a novelty. Verily they were rare
+  sportsmen, those mimicking loafers; and for Indians it was ever
+  the open season. All about sounded the popping of their
+  artillery; to be, when exhausted, as often reloaded and fired
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>But through it all, apparently unseeing, unconscious, the man
+  had gone about his business. Now as he left the ticket window and
+  approached the single coach, it was nearly starting time. The
+  girl had already entered and sat motionless in her seat watching
+  him through the dusty window glass. Craig, his feet wide apart,
+  stood on the platform smoking a last cigarette. He shrugged in
+  silence as the other passed him and mounted the steps.</p>
+
+  <p>Save for the girl, the coach was empty; but, destitute of
+  courtesy, the spectators without stared with redoubled interest.
+  Without a word the man handed over the ticket and checks. Still
+  in silence he slipped a roll of bills into her passive hand.
+  Until that moment the girl had not thought of money; but even now
+  as she accepted it, there never occurred the wonder from whence
+  it had come. Had she known how those few dollars had been stored
+  up, bit by bit, month by month&mdash;But she did not know.
+  Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless,
+  was Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on
+  the threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was
+  entering, she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was
+  merely passive, trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down
+  from the prairie milkweed plant, she was to be the sport of every
+  breath of wind that blew. And already that wind was blowing. She
+  had watched the scene on the platform, had understood the intent
+  of the mimicry, had seen the winks and nudges, had heard the
+  mocking war whoop. All this she had seen, all this had been
+  stored away in her consciousness to recur again and again in the
+  future. Even now her cheeks had burned at the knowledge, and at
+  last she had watched the man's coming with a feeling of
+  repression she had never known before, whose significance she did
+  not try to analyse, did not in the least understand. She did not
+  thank him for the money. To do so never occurred to her. It was
+  the moment for parting, but she did not throw her arms about his
+  neck in abandon, as she would have done a week before. Something,
+  she knew not what, prevented. She merely sat there, repressed,
+  passive, waiting. A moment, by her side, the Indian paused. He
+  did not speak, he did not move. He merely looked at her; and in
+  his dark eyes there was mirrored a reflection of the look there
+  had been in the eyes of the wild thing he had stalked and
+  captured that day alone on the prairie. But the girl was not
+  looking at him, did not se e. A moment he stood so, unconsciously
+  as so many, many times before, in pose; then deliberately,
+  gently, ignoring the row of curious observant eyes, he took her
+  hand and raised it to his lips.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, Bess," he said low. "Come back as soon as you can;
+  and don't worry. Everything will come right." Gently as he had
+  lifted the hand, he released it. A smile&mdash;who but he could have
+  smiled at that moment?&mdash;played for an instant over his face.
+  Then, almost before the girl realised the fact, before the
+  repressive something that held her in its grip gave release, he
+  was gone. As he left the coach, Craig, who was waiting, started
+  without a word or a hint of recognition to enter. His foot was
+  already on the step, when he felt a hand upon his arm; a hand
+  with a grip whose meaning there was no misinterpreting. Against
+  his will he drew back. Against his will he met the other, face to
+  face, eye to eye. For what seemed to him minutes, but which in
+  reality was only a second, they stood so. Not a word was spoken,
+  of warning or of commonplace. There was no polite farce for the
+  benefit of the spectators. The Indian merely looked at him; but
+  as once before, alone under the stars, that look was to remain
+  burned on the white man's memory until he went to his grave.</p>
+
+  <p>"A'board," bawled the conductor, and as though worked by the
+  same wire, the engineer's waiting head disappeared within the cab
+  window.</p>
+
+  <p>Side by side, Clayton Craig and Elizabeth Landor sat watching
+  the weather-stained station and the curious assembled group, as
+  apparently they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the
+  alien figure of an Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless
+  after them; and by his side, in baiting pantomime, one gawky
+  urchin engaged in the labour of scalping a mate. The last sound
+  that reached their ears was the ironic note of a war whoop
+  repeated again and again.</p><a name="XII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+
+  <p>WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY</p>
+
+  <p>It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the
+  girl had left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the
+  bare lot adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith,
+  the twelfth since How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny
+  railway terminus. The one train from the East was due at 8:10 of
+  the morning. It was now eight o'clock. Within the shambling,
+  ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior and its
+  wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and freshly
+  dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the
+  single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed
+  according to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey,
+  recently oiled and tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn
+  up conveniently to the door. In a tiny room, designated the
+  study, of the Methodist parsonage, on the straggling outskirts of
+  the town, the only minister the settlement boasted sat staring at
+  the unpapered wall opposite. He was a mild-featured young man of
+  the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from a school of
+  theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the
+  frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared
+  marriage licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time
+  to time he glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to
+  the tiny fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and
+  frowned unconsciously.</p>
+
+  <p>At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the
+  arrival or departure of a train were congregated. In some way
+  suggestions of the unusual had passed about, and this day their
+  number was greatly augmented. Just what they anticipated they did
+  not know; they did not care. Restless, athirst for excitement,
+  they had dumbly responded to the influence in the air and come.
+  In the foreground, where a solitary Indian stood motionless,
+  waiting, there was being repeated the same puerile pantomime and
+  horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals, from the rear,
+  sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as that
+  afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar
+  even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily
+  into the sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and
+  lighter, became denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy,
+  the humorists on the platform redoubled their efforts. The
+  instinct of anticipation, of Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that
+  had brought them there, urged them on. Not one throat but many
+  underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection. A half dozen voices
+  caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to throat.
+  Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing
+  became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before,
+  who had come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd
+  pressed closer and closer about the alien, the centre of
+  attraction. When he moved farther along the platform to avoid
+  them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the innate racial
+  hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air jostled
+  him&mdash;and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no
+  retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion
+  redoubled, drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators
+  in the rear began mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to
+  see. Within the station itself the shirt-sleeved agent
+  surreptitiously locked the door to the ticket-room and sprung the
+  combination of the safe. Beginning harmless ly, the incident was
+  taking on a sinister aspect, and he had lived too long in this
+  semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning to his place of
+  observation at the window, he was just in time to see a decayed
+  turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with
+  enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear.
+  Simultaneously, with a roar and a puff of displaced air, the
+  light train drew into the station, on time.</p>
+
+  <p>Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move
+  twice farther away along the platform, he had not stirred.
+  Unbelievable as it may seem, even when the missile had struck
+  him, though it had left a great red welt, he gave no sign of
+  feeling. For a space following the arrival of the train there was
+  a lull, and in it, as though nothing had happened, he approached
+  the single coach and stood waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>It was the last of the week and travel was very light.</p>
+
+  <p>A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip
+  descended first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared
+  with speed. A big rancher with great curling moustaches and a
+  vest open save at the bottom button followed. He likewise took
+  stock of the surroundings, and discreetly withdrew. Following him
+  there was a pause; then of a sudden onto the platform, fair into
+  view of the crowd, appeared one for whom apparently they had been
+  looking, one who on the instant caused the confusion, temporarily
+  stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a dainty brown girl
+  with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth Landor
+  returned alone!</p>
+
+  <p>"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the
+  refound voice of the expectant crowd.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had
+  introduced the jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her;
+  we don't mind."</p>
+
+  <p>A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far
+  up the single street, and that brought curious faces to a half
+  score of doors.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!"
+  Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had
+  appeared. Her great eyes opened wider than before, her face
+  shaded paler momentarily, the soft oval chin trembled. Another
+  minute, another second even.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll
+  take care of you."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure
+  curiosity the crowd went silent, listening&mdash;silent until he was
+  silent; then with the lack of originality ever manifest in a mob,
+  they caught up his words themselves.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't
+  keep him waiting."</p>
+
+  <p>But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that
+  moment, she could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the
+  chin had at first presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but
+  she was beyond the reach of tears now. The complete meaning of
+  the scene had come to her at last, the realisation of personal
+  menace; and a fear such as she had never before known, gripped
+  her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word; but her
+  muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old telescope
+  satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes,
+  wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now
+  rapidly accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't
+  stand there, come."</p>
+
+  <p>At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly,
+  with trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then
+  of a sudden she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted
+  defensively. But she was not quick enough, had seen too late; and
+  that instant came the <i>d&eacute;nouement.</i> A second turnip,
+  decayed like its predecessor, aimed likewise unerringly, caught
+  her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke into fragments that
+  fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain after a
+  thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down
+  her face.</p>
+
+  <p>Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still
+  prairie about them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had
+  themselves wittingly or unwittingly done. Save one, not a human
+  being stirred. That one, no need to tell whom, transformed
+  visibly; transformed as they had never seen a human being alter
+  before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself on the
+  platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from
+  sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically.
+  In the stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear
+  distinctly. For an instant after he had reached her the Indian
+  stood so, his left arm about her, his back toward them. He did
+  not say a word, he did not move. For the first time in his life
+  he dared not. He did not see red that moment, this man; he saw
+  black&mdash;black as prairie loam. Every savage instinct in his brain
+  was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his free hand was
+  clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind his
+  right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone,
+  it was nothing, he could forgive; but now&mdash;now&mdash;He stared away
+  from them, stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky;
+  but, listening, they, who almost with fascination watched, could
+  hear beneath the catch of the girl's sobs the sound of his
+  breathing.</p>
+
+  <p>Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second
+  or a minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell.
+  What they did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them.
+  All their lives they had seen passion, seen it in every phase,
+  seen it until it was commonplace. It was in the very air of the
+  frontier, to be expected, life of the life; but as this man
+  shifted they saw a kind of which they had never dreamed. For How
+  Landor was master of himself again, master, as well&mdash;they knew
+  it, every man and youth who saw,&mdash;of them. For another
+  indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them;
+  looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face
+  within the surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a
+  drunken cowman, had seen that identical look. Now not one but a
+  score saw it, felt a terrible ice-cold menace creep from his
+  brain into their brains. Even yet he did not speak, did not make
+  a sound; nor did they. Explain it as you will, he did this thing.
+  Another thing he did as well; and that was the end. Slowly,
+  deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out his hand.
+  Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes
+  were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but
+  she had grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully
+  calm&mdash;almost as much so as the man. Deliberately as he had
+  stepped down into the spectators' midst, the Indian took the old
+  telescope from the girl's hand and, she following by his side,
+  moved a step forward. He did not touch her again nor did she him.
+  They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up the
+  single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were
+  alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed;
+  through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by
+  magic closed behind them, until they were within a solid human
+  square. But of all the assembled spectators that day, an
+  aggregation irresponsible, unchivalrous as no other rabble on
+  earth&mdash;a mob of the frontier,&mdash;not on e spoke to challenge their
+  action, not one attempted to bar their way. The complete length
+  of the platform they went so, turned the corner by the
+  station&mdash;and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view,
+  hid by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl
+  weakened. Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it
+  fast.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this
+  with you and me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"</p>
+
+  <p>But the man said never a word.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire
+  crackled cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room
+  where the same two people sat alone. Already the world had taken
+  on a different aspect. Not that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten
+  that recent incident at the depot. She would never forget it. It
+  had merely passed into temporary abeyance, taken its proper place
+  in the eternal scheme of things. Another consideration,
+  paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded it from the
+  stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent far
+  longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that
+  at last prompted speech.</p>
+
+  <p>"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried
+  suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"How did <i>you</i> know I would be at the train to meet you?"
+  echoed a voice.</p>
+
+  <p>The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow
+  when you wrote as if I&mdash;I&mdash;" A swiftly gathered shower called a
+  halt. Tear drops, ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell
+  me," she completed.</p>
+
+  <p>The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic
+  life, so there was little to record of the death of Mary Landor.
+  "It was best that you were away," he ended. "It was best for her
+  that she went when she did."</p>
+
+  <p>"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious
+  query. "You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something
+  more.</p>
+
+  <p>"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would&mdash;go while I
+  was away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me
+  away on purpose."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, How. I want to know."</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought so, Bess," simply.</p>
+
+  <p>For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new
+  understanding of this solitary human stole over her, an
+  appreciation that drowned the sadness of a moment ago. "How you
+  must care for me," she voiced almost unconsciously. "How you must
+  care for me!"</p>
+
+  <p>She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again
+  a silence fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she
+  was thinking. Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were
+  passively waiting. At the parsonage the young minister still sat
+  scowling in his study. No time had been set for the visit he
+  expected. There was no apparent reason why he should not have
+  gone about his work; but for some reason he could not. Angry with
+  himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket and,
+  placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked
+  over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.</p>
+
+  <p>Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl
+  shifted, dropped to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged
+  slowly red.</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me
+  to-day that I would come alone?"</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian showed no surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, How?" The question was just audible.</p>
+
+  <p>"Because I trusted you, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes
+  glanced up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance
+  fell. A longer pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not
+  have spoken if she would. A great preventing lump was in her
+  throat, an obstacle that precluded speech. Many things had
+  happened in the short time since she had last been with this man,
+  some things of which she was not proud; and beside such a trust
+  as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition upon her
+  part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise
+  without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The
+  memory of that draught was with her now. Under its influence she
+  spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are better than I am, How," she said.</p>
+
+  <p>If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He
+  did not even look at her. Time was passing, time which should
+  have found them upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It
+  was his day, his moment, his by right; but no one looking at him
+  would have doubted that he himself would never first suggest the
+  fact. Conditions had changed very rapidly in the recent past,
+  altered until, from his view-point, it was impossible for him to
+  make the move toward the old relation, to even intimate its
+  desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In the
+  fulness of time he was rewarded.</p>
+
+  <p>"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed
+  voice, "will you do me a favour?"</p>
+
+  <p>"What is it, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the
+  recall had come, and for the first time he was looking at her
+  steadily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.</p>
+
+  <p>"I promise."</p>
+
+  <p>Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she
+  wished to say.</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't be&mdash;offended or angry, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me
+  angry."</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you
+  humour me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married
+  to-day you'll be dressed&mdash;well, not the way you usually dress."
+  Her colour came and went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed
+  like&mdash;You understand, How."</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he
+  checked himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the
+  immaterial, went, as ever, straight to fundamentals without
+  preface or delay. Scarce one human in a generation would have
+  held aloof at that moment. It was his, his by every right; but
+  even yet he would not take it, not until&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I
+  want you to answer me&mdash;as you would answer your mother were she
+  alive." Once again, unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms
+  across his breast, his great shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr.
+  Landor's will. He has left you nearly everything. You are rich,
+  Bess; I won't tell you how rich because you wouldn't understand.
+  You are young and can live any life you wish. You know what
+  marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You know what
+  others, people of your own race, think when you are with me. They
+  have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all
+  this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish
+  to come? Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer.
+  Don't do it, or we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as
+  you know I love you, whether you have thought of all this and
+  still wish to marry me. Tell me." He was silent. Once again it
+  was a climax, and once again came oblivion of passing time. For
+  minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide open eyes, the girl
+  made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision made, not as
+  before in ignorance of what that decision meant. Deliberately,
+  with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight of
+  future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I
+  wish to marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's
+  no one in the world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry
+  you to-day, How."</p>
+
+  <p>Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until
+  then, he accepted his reward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise.
+  "Bess!" That was all.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled
+  with portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was
+  gathered; only now it was not at the station, but at a place of
+  far more sinister import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope"
+  saloon. Again in personnel it was different, notably different
+  from that of the first occasion. The same irresponsibles were
+  there, as ever they are present at times of storm; but added to
+  the aggregation now, outnumbering them, were others ordinarily
+  responsible, men typical in every way of the time and place. A
+  second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
+  gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that
+  had brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last,
+  these dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously.
+  Rumour, inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as
+  the one-story buildings on the main street, had begun when How
+  Landor had commenced to haunt the station at the time of the
+  incoming train. The incident of the morning had familiarised the
+  rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had followed a report from the
+  hotel landlord, and gossip had become certainty. Then it was that
+  horse-play had ceased, and, save at the point of congregation, a
+  silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its place. So marked
+  was the change that when at last the Indian and the girl left the
+  hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street through
+  which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
+  prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but
+  the ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath
+  it, as yet well in the distance, he detected the warning of an
+  alien note. Not as on that other day out on the prairie when he
+  caught the first trumpet call of the Canada goose, did he
+  recognise the sound from previous familiarity. Never in his life
+  had he heard its like; yet now an instinct told him its meaning,
+  told him as well its menace. Not once did he look back, not one
+  word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his side; yet as
+  surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when he
+  catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How
+  Landor realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had
+  struck, that as surely as the wild thing must battle for life he
+  must do likewise&mdash;and that soon, very, very soon.</p>
+
+  <p>Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman
+  was ever garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all
+  but humorously grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that
+  were far from a fit and the first starched shirt and collar he
+  had ever worn. Laughable unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out
+  in the individuality-destroying dress of the white brother would
+  have been to an observer who had not the key to the situation;
+  but to one who knew the motive of the alteration it was far as
+  the ends of the earth from humorous. On they went, silent now,
+  each in widely separated anticipation; and after them, at first
+  silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and noisier,
+  followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope saloon.
+  As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
+  William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead
+  where the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human
+  being was in sight, unless one were suspicious and looked
+  closely, not a face; but to the Indian eyes were everywhere.
+  Every house they passed&mdash;for they were in the residence section
+  now&mdash;had its pair or multiple pairs peering out through the slats
+  of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a performance, at the
+  side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had spread; like
+  turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their shells; yet
+  everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to take
+  a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the
+  pedestrians were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding
+  across the lawn to pause at a safe distance and growl a menace;
+  and again the all-noting Indian had observed the cause of the
+  unwonted bravery, had heard the low voice from the kitchen that
+  had urged the beast on.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm
+  approached. Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the
+  girl not been living in the future instead of the present, she
+  would have recognised its coming. For the pursuers were gaining
+  rapidly now. They had crossed onto the same street, the principal
+  residence thoroughfare, and were coming as a crowd ever moves:
+  swiftly, those in the rear exerting themselves to get to the
+  fore, and so again. Far from silent by this time, the man ahead,
+  the man who never deigned a backward glance, could hear their
+  voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
+  interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
+  seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a
+  commander, a directing spirit&mdash;and as well as he knew his own
+  name he knew who that leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in
+  the ways of the world was this man; but in the reading of his
+  fellows he was a master.</p>
+
+  <p>Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had
+  congregated at the train, he had nevertheless observed them
+  individual by individual; and in his own consciousness had known
+  that the moment, his moment, had not come: for a leader, the
+  leader, was not there. Again when the train had pulled in he had
+  watched&mdash;and still the leader did not appear. But he was not
+  deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had trusted
+  in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that
+  one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been
+  right. For the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained
+  on them so rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in
+  those brief hours the Indian and the girl had been alone in the
+  tiny room at the hotel had vitalised the lukewarm racial
+  hostility into a thing of menace, was the same man whose life he
+  had once saved, the same man about whose throat ere the identical
+  night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig by name,
+  one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master
+  of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was
+  again looking out the single window. Time and time again he had
+  tried to work&mdash;and as often failed. At last he had conformed to
+  the inevitable and was merely waiting. The house was on the
+  outskirts of the town and the window faced the open prairie; bare
+  and rolling as far as the eye could reach. He was city bred, this
+  mild-faced servant of God, and as yet the prairie country was a
+  thing at which to marvel. He was looking out upon it now,
+  absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and its
+  silence&mdash;when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no
+  longer silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by
+  moment, penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an
+  indistinct roar; rising, lowering, yet ever constant: a sound
+  unlike any other on earth, distinctive as the silence preceding
+  had been typical&mdash;the clamour of angry, menacing human voices
+  <i>en masse.</i> Once, not long before, in a city street the
+  listener had heard that identical sound; and recognition was
+  instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike that had
+  been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden
+  appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate
+  figure of the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment
+  only, for life, in their midst. Swift as memory came that
+  picture; and swift upon its heels, blotting it out, the present
+  returned. Clifford Mitchell had not been among this people long;
+  yet already he had caught the spirit of the place, and as he
+  listened he knew full well what a similar gathering among them
+  would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor; not a
+  drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after
+  moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first
+  real terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind
+  was there a doubt as to the destination of that oncoming
+  multitude. Premonition had been too electric in the air that day
+  for him to question its meaning. They were coming to him, to him,
+  Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible menacing humans. It might
+  be another for whom they had gathered; but he as well would share
+  in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he was a party to
+  the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from the time
+  the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours of
+  trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
+  anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a
+  certainty. Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring
+  out on his forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm
+  of his hand. Following came a purely physical weakness; and
+  stumbling across the room he took the seat beside the desk.
+  Unconsciously nervous, restless, his fingers fumbled with the
+  pile of papers before him until they came to a certain one he had
+  buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to do so he
+  spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
+  waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
+  cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by
+  it alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He
+  could hear them down the street at the other end of the block
+  before the residence of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a
+  certainty because part of those who came were on the sidewalk,
+  and that was the only piece of cement in town. Again, by the same
+  token, he knew when they passed the only other house in the block
+  besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk there, and when
+  the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps went
+  suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in
+  a moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own
+  yard, the roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could
+  even distinguish what they were saying now, could catch names,
+  his own name.</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed
+  before his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously
+  faces, not a few but as many as could crowd into the space,
+  appeared outside the panes, staring curiously in. Involuntarily
+  he arose to draw the shade; and at that moment, interrupting,
+  startlingly loud, there came a knock at his front door.</p>
+
+  <p>Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood
+  irresolute; and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of
+  curious faces multiplied.</p>
+
+  <p>The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but
+  deliberately and with an insistence there was no
+  misunderstanding.</p>
+
+  <p>This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out
+  the faces of the curious. The licence he had been absently
+  holding was still in his hand; but he did not delay to put it
+  down. There was something compelling in that knock; something
+  that demanded instant obedience, and he obeyed. The living-room
+  through which he passed on his way had two windows and, identical
+  with that of his study, each was black with humanity; but he did
+  not even glance at them. His legs trembled involuntarily and his
+  throat was dry as though he had been speaking for hours; yet,
+  nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly he
+  turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto
+  the street, looked out.</p>
+
+  <p>While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the
+  uncounted throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that
+  October day, they remembered that moment, the moments that
+  followed. As real life is ever stranger than fiction, so off the
+  stage occur incidents more stirring than at the play. Standing
+  there in the narrow doorway, white-faced, hesitant, awaiting a
+  command, the minister himself exemplified the fact beyond
+  question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had
+  thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his
+  consciousness for but one impression; and that was for the drama
+  ready there before him. And small wonder, for, looking out, this
+  was what he saw:</p>
+
+  <p>An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of
+  dead grass and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of
+  seed scattered on fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story
+  houses. This the background. In the midst of it all, covering his
+  lawn, overflowing into the yards of his neighbours, dense,
+  crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was a solid zone of
+  motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and untrimmed
+  beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation and
+  passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously
+  aping their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments;
+  all ages and conditions of the human frontier male were
+  there&mdash;but in that zone not a single woman. Ranchers there were
+  in corduroys and denims, cowboys in buckskin and flannel,
+  gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of their kind,
+  business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in anything
+  and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the
+  surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to
+  bay.</p>
+
+  <p>In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple
+  of paces of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them,
+  a rather small brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of
+  ready-made clothes and a derby hat of the model of the year
+  before, were nearest; so near that the door, which swung outward,
+  all but touched them. The other, a well-built, smooth-faced
+  Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands, was opposite. His
+  dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat and patent
+  leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his linen
+  was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin.
+  Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to
+  prevent, as he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and
+  left. One look told his story. He had been drinking, drinking for
+  days; and, worst of all, he had been drinking this day, drinking
+  in anticipation of this very moment, swallowing courage against
+  the necessity of the now. All this the stage and its setting,
+  upon which the white-faced minister raised the curtain.
+  Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the real
+  play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used
+  front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not
+  a sound marked the opening of the drama.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could
+  feel; then of a sudden it was broken&mdash;not by words, but by
+  action. One step the white-skinned man took forward; a step
+  toward the girl. A second step he advanced, and halted; for,
+  preventing, the hand of the other man was upon his own.</p>
+
+  <p>"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for
+  congratulations yet. Stand back, please."</p>
+
+  <p>Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a
+  curse, a challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical
+  terrified little cry the girl shrank back into the doorway
+  itself. But none other, not even the minister, stirred.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in
+  the stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to
+  stand back. I don't warn you, I merely request&mdash;but I shall not
+  ask it again." Of a sudden the speaker's hand left the other's
+  arm, dropped by his own side. "Stand back, please."</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working,
+  passionate, menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky
+  overhead. A moment they remained so while the breathless
+  onlookers expected anything, while from the doorstep the
+  minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then slowly,
+  lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took
+  silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still
+  another, and was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first
+  time he found voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd
+  have let you go if you'd given up the girl; but now&mdash;now&mdash;May God
+  have mercy on your soul now, How Landor!"</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first
+  meeting on the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It
+  was the crisis, and as before an instinct which she did not
+  understand, which she merely obeyed, brought her to the Indian's
+  side; held her there motionless, passive, mysteriously unafraid.
+  Her usually brown face was very pale and her eyes were
+  unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably calm&mdash;calm as
+  a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that solid
+  zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or
+  no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that
+  motionless, dominant human by her side.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear
+  each other breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the
+  minister's lips became audible; then came the end. Incredible
+  after it was over was that <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>, inexplicable
+  to a legion of old men, then among the boys, who witnessed it, to
+  this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take place in this
+  world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate other men
+  it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first
+  challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken.
+  The only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life
+  found voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that
+  listening, expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion
+  his arms folded across his chest.</p>
+
+  <p>"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done
+  my best to avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything
+  at your hands, every insult which you could conceive, things
+  which no white man would have permitted for a second; and so far
+  without resentment. But I shall stand it no more. I'm one to a
+  hundred; but that makes no difference. Bess Landor and I are to
+  be married now and here; here before you all. I shall not talk to
+  you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace; but as
+  surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to
+  me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I
+  shall kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do
+  this thing." A moment longer he stood so, observing them
+  steadily, with folded arms; then, still facing, he moved back a
+  step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we are ready."</p>
+
+  <p>And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two
+  hundred curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of
+  prairie night itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were
+  married. The minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held
+  the book close before his face, it was memory alone that prompted
+  the form; for the pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet
+  it was done, and, save one alone, every spectator who had come
+  with a far different intent stayed and listened to the end. That
+  one, a tall, modish alien with a red, flushed face covered with a
+  two-days' growth of bread, was likewise watching when it began.
+  But when it was over he was not there; and not one of those who
+  had followed his lead had noticed his going.</p><a name=
+  "XIII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+
+  <p>THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE</p>
+
+  <p>Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the
+  smiling, sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were
+  driving: a white girl of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man
+  a few years older. Back of them, in the direction from which they
+  had come, was the outline of a straggling, desolate village.
+  Ahead, to either side, was the rolling brown earth; and at the
+  end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall, the blue of a
+  cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
+  mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless
+  after three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit
+  mightily. Though the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains
+  of the old surrey flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace
+  alone. The harness on the ponies shuffled and creaked with every
+  move. Though the bolts of the ancient vehicle had been carefully
+  tightened, it nevertheless groaned at intervals with the motion;
+  mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of the aged, apparently
+  without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried grass rattled
+  continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was no other
+  sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny town
+  there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
+  behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
+  followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly,
+  silently, he was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce
+  visible landmarks he alone distinguished was returning to his
+  own, to the wild that lay in the distance beyond.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went;
+  and back of them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built
+  terminus grew dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as
+  completely as though it had never been. Last of all to disappear,
+  already a mere black dot against the blue, was the water tank
+  beside the station. For three miles, four, it held its place;
+  then, as, with the old unconscious motion the girl turned to look
+  back, she searched for it in vain. Behind them as before,
+  unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue surrounding
+  wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there with no
+  observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
+  alone.</p>
+
+  <p>As the first man and the first woman were alone they were
+  alone. From horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork,
+  not a suggestion of human presence. They might live or die, or
+  laugh or weep, or love or hate&mdash;and none of their kind would be
+  the wiser. All her life that she could remember the girl had
+  lived so, all her life she had but to lift her eyes above her
+  feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of fate never
+  until this moment, the moment when of all she should have been
+  the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her
+  so, did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it
+  concealed touch her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never
+  until the whirl of the last fortnight had the future, her future,
+  appealed to her as something which she herself must shape or
+  alter. Heretofore it had been a thing taken for granted,
+  preordained as the alternate coming of light and of darkness. But
+  in that intervening time, short as it was, she had awakened. Rude
+  as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they had
+  nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
+  panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes.
+  Sensations, thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously
+  dreamed had been hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before
+  her gaze. More a nightmare on the whole than an awakening it had
+  all been; yet nevertheless the experience had been hers. Much of
+  its meaning had passed her by. Events had crowded too thickly for
+  her to grasp the whole; but <i>en masse</i> the effect had been
+  definite&mdash;startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may seem, for
+  the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
+  consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
+  metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from
+  an adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken
+  place. Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not
+  adjusted herself to the change, had barely become conscious
+  thereof, yet certain as existence it self, the transformation had
+  come to pass. Looking back there that afternoon, looking where
+  the town had been and now was not, mingling with the impressions
+  of a day full to overflowing, there came to the girl for the
+  first time a definite appreciation of this thing that she had
+  done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear again,
+  passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
+  taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth
+  Landor the woman.</p>
+
+  <p>Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long.
+  With the swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement
+  vanished, the personal menace gone, the impression it had made
+  passed promptly into abeyance. As when she and the man had sat
+  alone in the tiny room of the hotel, another consideration was
+  too insistent, too vital, to prevent dominating the moment. Any
+  other diversion, save absolute physical pain itself, would have
+  been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by minute, as
+  the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
+  impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead,
+  looming bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm
+  cloud until it blotted out every other thought, came realisation
+  of the thing she had done: came appreciation of its finality, its
+  immensity. Then it was that the infinite bigness of this
+  uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite loneliness, pressed
+  her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a child is
+  afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
+  intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the
+  future endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably
+  smiling, she fancied a time when it would not smile, when its
+  passive eventless monotony would be maddening. Swiftly,
+  cumulatively as with every intense nature impressions reproduce,
+  this one augmented. Again into the consideration intruded the
+  absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
+  distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory
+  recalled the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For
+  better or for worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us
+  part." No, there was no escape, no possible avenue that remained
+  unguarded. The knowledge overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague
+  possibilities, recently born, became realities. Closer and closer
+  gripped the solitude. For the first time in her existence the
+  dead surrounding silence became unbearable. Almost desperately
+  she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she sought the hand
+  of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her eyes,
+  until the very team itself was blotted out.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"</p>
+
+  <p>The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened
+  but not yet completely returned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."</p>
+
+  <p>"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the
+  team to a walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased
+  flapping, hung close. "I don't think I understand. Tell me why,
+  Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark.
+  The dark has never hurt it. It merely is."</p>
+
+  <p>At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her,
+  he did not move. In the time since they had come into his own a
+  wonderful change had come into the face of this Indian man; and
+  never was it so wonderful as at this moment. He still wore the
+  grotesque ready-made clothes. The high collar, galling to him as
+  a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made a red circle about his
+  throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious. Very, very young
+  he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a colour in his
+  beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The black
+  eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
+  of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a
+  period of exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which
+  serves as a standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of
+  How Landor the hour had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing,
+  he could scarcely credit the truth. His cup of happiness was
+  full, full to overflowing; yet he was almost afraid to put it to
+  his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it should prove a
+  myth.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
+  worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian
+  for his God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with
+  closed lips. Thus the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein
+  he should have been eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity
+  that would never be his again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist
+  looked on at her handiwork, watched to the end; and then,
+  observing that <i>finale</i>, laughed&mdash;and with the voice of
+  Elizabeth Landor.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
+  understand, and I can't tell you."</p>
+
+  <p>She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a
+  gesture she had never used before, that had come very lately:
+  come concomitantly with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth.
+  "Anyway, I think it will be all right. I at least am not afraid
+  of your eloping with someone else." She laughed again at the
+  thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap. "It's quite
+  impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
+  someone else; even though that property were a girl."</p>
+
+  <p>Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the
+  reins. On his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively
+  he realised that something was wrong; but how to set it right he
+  did not know, and, true to his instincts, waited. "You wouldn't
+  be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl, "even
+  though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
+  anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd
+  decided to do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would
+  never occur to you; not even as possibility."</p>
+
+  <p>Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but
+  no light came.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It
+  would never occur to me to do so."</p>
+
+  <p>More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the
+  voice of Elizabeth Landor.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you
+  haven't the vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again
+  involuntarily. "I hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was
+  even more deficient than you; but now&mdash;now&mdash;" Once again the
+  tense-strung laugh, while in her lap the crossed hands locked and
+  grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a sudden I seem to see
+  humour in everything!"</p>
+
+  <p>More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very
+  inability to fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team
+  to a walk, fumbled with the reins impotently.</p>
+
+  <p>"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying
+  you. Tell me what it is, won't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly.
+  "Wrong?" Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly
+  nothing is wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so
+  much in common as you and I, who touch at so many places, are
+  just married and alone? Wrong: the preposterous idea!"</p>
+
+  <p>She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness
+  seemed to be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood
+  and was looking at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an
+  expression that was terrible in its haunting suggestion of
+  unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He did not say a word; he
+  merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the seconds passed
+  there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace of the
+  glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
+  the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the
+  mortal stab she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation
+  in a gust and contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a
+  thunderclap her mood changed, her own face, hysterically tense,
+  relaxed in a flood of tears. In an abandon of remorse her arms
+  were about him, her face was pressed close to his face.</p>
+
+  <p>"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you.
+  I'm nervous and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me;
+  please!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by
+  the map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey
+  from nowhere to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted
+  for the night.</p>
+
+  <p>Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save
+  once when, far to the south, they had detected the blot of a
+  grazing herd, they had seen no sign of human presence. They saw
+  no indication now. The short fall day was drawing to a close. The
+  sun, red as maple leaf in autumn, was level with the earth when
+  How Landor pulled up beside the low sloping bank, and, the girl
+  watching from her observation seat in the old surrey, unharnessed
+  and watered the team and hobbled them amid the tall frost-cured
+  grass to feed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness
+  have it face north, south, east, or west?"</p>
+
+  <p>"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes
+  up in the morning."</p>
+
+  <p>With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work
+  the man set about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of
+  the waggon box. The furnishings, likewise his own, were close
+  packed beside. More quickly than the watcher fancied it possible
+  the whole began to take shape. Long before the glory had left the
+  western sky the tent itself was in place. Before the chill, which
+  followed so inevitably and swiftly, was in the air the diminutive
+  soft coal heater was installed and in service. Following,
+  produced from the same receptacle as by legerdemain, vanishing
+  mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed the blanket bed,
+  the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the frontier
+  "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task was
+  complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
+  and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy
+  that light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the
+  ridge pole. Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing
+  over the soundless earth, the man approached the lone spectator
+  and held out his arms for her to descend.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man
+  at such a time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do
+  everything; cook supper and all. Come, girlie."</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when
+  Colonel William Landor had called, the two people within the tent
+  occupied the same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the
+  girl, the light from the single lantern playing upon her brown
+  head and soft oval face. In the partial darkness of the corner,
+  stretched among the buffalo robes, lay the man. His arms were
+  locked behind his head. His face was toward her. His eyes&mdash;eyes
+  unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature man&mdash;were upon her.
+  As he had said, this was his night, and he was living in it to
+  the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was at this
+  time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
+  made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
+  worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as
+  a devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother.
+  Since they had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than
+  a single sentence at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of
+  himself. Then he had apologised for the meagreness of the meal.
+  "To-morrow," he had said, "we will have game, the country is full
+  of it; but to-day&mdash;" he had looked down as he had spoken&mdash;"to-day
+  I felt somehow as though I could not kill anything. Life is too
+  good to destroy, to-day."</p>
+
+  <p>Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of
+  passing time; and now and then in her place the girl's eyes
+  lifted, found him gazing at her&mdash;and each time looked away. For
+  some reason she could not return that look. For some reason as
+  each time she caught it, read its meaning, her brown face grew
+  darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was afraid of
+  the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
+  gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the
+  depths of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love,
+  such confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it&mdash;and
+  still she did not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his,
+  oblivion of all save the passing minute; and it was not hers.
+  Prescience, without a reason therefor which she would admit,
+  prevented forgetfulness. She tried to shake the impression off;
+  but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively, almost under compulsion,
+  she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the way.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last
+  forcedly. "It makes me afraid of myself&mdash;afraid of dropping.
+  Supposing I should fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am!
+  No one, not even you, could ever put the pieces together."</p>
+
+  <p>"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you
+  did, I'd be there to catch you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far
+  above earth, you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all
+  there is in the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to
+  be annihilated, too, then."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that
+  afternoon, very carefully.</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think
+  I'm perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very&mdash;bad
+  at times."</p>
+
+  <p>The other smiled; that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even
+  fancy I don't like you and run away."</p>
+
+  <p>"If you did you'd return very soon."</p>
+
+  <p>"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know so."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Because you care for me."</p>
+
+  <p>"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go,
+  you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"You'd find your mistake and come back."</p>
+
+  <p>The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.</p>
+
+  <p>"And when I did&mdash;come back&mdash;you'd forgive me, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>"There'd be nothing to forgive."</p>
+
+  <p>"It wouldn't be wrong&mdash;to leave you that way?"</p>
+
+  <p>"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if I did anything, if I&mdash;ran away with another man?"</p>
+
+  <p>The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very
+  boyish.</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me
+  back, no matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"</p>
+
+  <p>For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his
+  face the man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the
+  first time since they had been speaking his eyes dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to
+  have everything go on as before&mdash;I am human. I could not."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their
+  feet; then of a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed,
+  unmusically, hysterically.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled
+  you to say it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A
+  god shouldn't marry a mortal, you know."</p>
+
+  <p>The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed
+  on the girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say,
+  forgive me anything; but how about the other man, the one who had
+  induced me to run away? Would you forgive him, too?"</p>
+
+  <p>Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not
+  drop.</p>
+
+  <p>"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and
+  I won't give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the
+  other man, too?"</p>
+
+  <p>Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the
+  Indian lifted in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted
+  until his face stood out clear in the light like the carving of a
+  master.</p>
+
+  <p>"Forgive <i>him</i>, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a
+  god?"</p>
+
+  <p>That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human
+  being looking at the speaker that moment would have pressed the
+  query farther, no human being could have misread the answer. With
+  the same little hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in
+  her seat. The tense hands went lax.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married
+  every day, you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a
+  lot of things lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves.
+  I never supposed before that I possessed them."</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty,
+  the man arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very
+  gently lifted the girl to her feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you,
+  something you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough
+  to tell me now, girlie?"</p>
+
+  <p>Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did
+  not look up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her
+  back, her long lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly
+  as the passing shadow of an April cloud, the mood changed, she
+  glanced up.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I
+  have." She smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how
+  much you cared for me, was all. I've found out. There's
+  absolutely nothing to tell, How, man; absolutely nothing."</p>
+
+  <p>For another half minute the man looked at her deeply,
+  silently; but, still smiling, she answered him back, and with a
+  last lingering grip that was a caress his hands dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy
+  to feel that you are unhappy, is all."</p>
+
+  <p>"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that
+  came so easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his
+  sleeve. "I'm very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this
+  once again, won't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Forgive you!&mdash;Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to
+  his breast, the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating
+  him, bearing him as the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God,
+  girl, if you could only realise how I love you. I can't tell you;
+  I can't say things; but if you could only realise!"</p>
+
+  <p>Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown
+  eyes, sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips
+  parted.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again.
+  Tell me that you love me. Tell me! tell me!"</p><a name=
+  "XIV"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+
+  <p>FATE, THE SATIRIST</p>
+
+  <p>Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had
+  been read and executed. According to its provisions the home
+  ranch with one-tenth of the herd, divided impartially as they
+  filed past the executor, were left to Mary Landor; in event of
+  her death to descend to "an only nephew, Clayton Craig by name."
+  A second fraction of the great herd, a tenth of the remainder,
+  selected in the same manner, reverted at once "unqualifiedly and
+  with full title to hold or to sell to the aforementioned sole
+  blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate not previously
+  mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had builded,
+  various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city bank,
+  and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
+  could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly
+  to "my adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A
+  single sheet of greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic
+  antiquated phrases, penned laboriously with the scrawling hand of
+  one unused to writing; but incontrovertible in its laconic
+  directness. Save these three no other names were mentioned. So
+  far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called How Landor, was
+  concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred words the
+  labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet was
+  covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
+  who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river:
+  William Landor of the Buffalo Butte.</p>
+
+  <p>Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the
+  execution. Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue
+  and an isolated manner was present to conserve his interests;
+  and, satisfied on that score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a
+  beautifully embossed leather case was exhausted, in fact, to
+  quote his own words, "as quickly as a kind Providence would
+  permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence he came.
+  Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
+  Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately
+  took possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene
+  the Buffalo Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known;
+  and in its place upon the flank of every live thing controlled,
+  stared forth a C locked to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new
+  master, Clayton Craig.</p>
+
+  <p>Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and
+  become a memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made
+  man and wife&mdash;and no one was present at the departure to bid them
+  adieu. Back from the land of nothingness they came&mdash;and again no
+  one was at hand to welcome their return. In but one respect did
+  the accomplishment of that plan alter from the prearranged; and
+  that one item was the consideration of time. They did not stay
+  away until winter, as the girl had announced. Starting in
+  November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay for
+  more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
+  Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on."
+  Battle against it as she might, she was powerless under its
+  dominance. She knew not from whence had come the change, nor why;
+  but that in the last weeks she had altered fundamentally,
+  unbelievably, she could not question. The very first night out,
+  ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of change on the
+  morrow. The next day it was the same&mdash;and the next. When they
+  were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
+  time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in
+  sympathy her companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would
+  come a pause; and the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would
+  close upon her anew. Thus day by day passed until a week had gone
+  by. Then one morning when camp was struck, instead of advancing
+  farther, the man had faced back the way they had come. He made no
+  comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days that followed did
+  he once allude to the reason that had caused the change of plan.
+  When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she lapsed
+  listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
+  precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for
+  acting it was, even the girl could not but realise at that time,
+  was masterly. What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no
+  human being could ever know; for he never gave the semblance of a
+  hint. Probably not sinc e man and woman began under the sanction
+  of law and of clergy to mate, had there been such a honeymoon.
+  Probably never will there be such another. That the whole
+  expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could have
+  doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
+  which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could
+  have questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home,
+  had passed. The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in
+  its frost-brown sun-blessed perfection as though spread
+  luxuriously within the tropics. Adam was there, Adam prepared to
+  accept it as normally content as the first man; but Eve was not
+  satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had shown his face and
+  tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit the fact
+  even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this newborn
+  discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the prairie
+  itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
+  returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously
+  by.</p>
+
+  <p>One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament;
+  and that was the opening of the new house. This was to be a
+  surprise, a climax boyishly reserved by its builder for their
+  return. The man had intentionally so arranged that the start
+  should be from the old ranch, and in consequence the girl had
+  never seen either the new or its furnishings, until the November
+  day when the overloaded surrey drew up in the dooryard, and the
+  journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable, in the light of
+  the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that frontier nest
+  represented, the moment must have been to the man when he led the
+  way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he threw
+  open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
+  her.</p>
+
+  <p>"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he
+  said, and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as
+  everything was, and cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that
+  was overwhelming. Never before, not even that first night they
+  had been alone, had the girl realised as at this moment what she
+  meant to this solitary, impassive human. Never before until these
+  mute things he had fashioned with his own hands stood before her
+  eyes did she realise fully his love. With the knowledge now came
+  a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms flew about
+  his neck. Her wet face was hid.</p>
+
+  <p>"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an
+  awakening the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came
+  the reaction. The man took up his duties where he had laid them
+  down: the supervision of a herd scattered of necessity to the
+  winds, the personal inspection of a range that stretched away for
+  miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch for the day packed in the
+  pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left astride the
+  mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark or
+  later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming,
+  ever considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the
+  house dark and the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this
+  and the girl stretched listless on the bed against the wall,
+  staring wide-eyed into the darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently,
+  and gone about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not
+  deceived, and that moment, if not before, he recognised the
+  inevitable.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest
+  detail his manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was
+  How Landor. With a blindness that was masterly, that was all but
+  fatuous, he ignored the obvious. His equanimity and patience were
+  invulnerable. Silent by nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an
+  effort to be companionable. Probably no white man alive would
+  have done as he did, would have borne what he did; perhaps it
+  would have been better had he done differently;</p>
+
+  <p>but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling
+  starched linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to
+  the distant town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day
+  after day he polished his boots and struggled with his cravat.
+  Puerile unqualifiedly an observer would have characterised this
+  repeated farce; but to one who knew the tale in its entirety, it
+  would have seemed very far from humorous. All but sacrilege, it
+  is to tell of this starved human's doing at this time. The
+  sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in this life and
+  jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How Landor's
+  chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it all
+  he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost
+  of a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment
+  he entered his house until the moment he daily disappeared,
+  astride the vixenish undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone,
+  when there were no human eyes to observe, to pity perchance,
+  then&mdash;But let it pass what he did then. It is another tale and
+  extraneous.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the
+  days grew shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened
+  shade by shade. No human being came their way, nor wild thing,
+  save roving murderers on pillage bent. Even the cowmen he
+  employed, the old hands he and Bess had both known for years,
+  avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the execution of the
+  will he had built them another ranch house at a distance on the
+  range, and there they congregated and clung. They accepted his
+  money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further than
+  that&mdash;they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
+  whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted
+  on&mdash;whither no one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one
+  other cowboy, the old Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally,
+  there neither was nor had been any outward manifestation of
+  hostility, nor even gossip. But the olden times when the
+  hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor was the meeting
+  point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were gone. They
+  did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did a
+  subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face,
+  when by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging.
+  His reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise;
+  but, again, they were white and he was red&mdash;and between them the
+  chasm yawned.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its
+  sway. It was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land
+  the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of
+  the unfit. Here and there upon the range, dark against the now
+  background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a
+  weakling. Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves
+  howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, and
+  the spot where it had been would merge once more into the
+  universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
+  migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at
+  daylight or at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing
+  wings, or the booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any
+  season, this impression of the wild was even more pronounced now.
+  The thought of God is synonymous with immensity; and so being,
+  Deity was here eternally manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind
+  could not conceive a more infinite bigness than this gleaming
+  frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon beneath the blazing
+  winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of words to
+  describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the girl,
+  Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
+  at a time did not glance without.</p>
+
+  <p>Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring.
+  Long before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read
+  incontestably its advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured
+  cayuse bore him over the range, was there the mellow crunch of
+  snow underfoot. Instead the sound was crisp and sharp: the
+  crackling of ice where the snow had melted and frozen again.
+  Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page appeared
+  another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and <i>en
+  masse</i>, wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown
+  blots the size of an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak
+  under the influence of prolonged winter, and lay down frequently
+  to rest, their warm bodies branding the evidence with melted
+  snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on the ranges, that sprang
+  daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were changing their
+  winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though soiled by
+  a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
+  white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day
+  by day, as though they were a pestilence, they expanded,
+  augmented until they, and not the white, became the dominant
+  tone. The sun was high in the sky now. At noontime the man's
+  shadow was short, scarcely extended back of his pony's feet.
+  Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed through, there
+  was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles. After
+  that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
+  in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became
+  creeks; flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the
+  day long. Not only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost
+  their white blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown.
+  Migratory life, long absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites
+  soared far overhead on motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest
+  of heralds, practised their five-toned lay. Here and there, to
+  the north of prairie boulders, appeared tufts of green; tufts
+  that, like the preceding brown, grew and gr ew and grew until
+  they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last, the climax, the
+  <i>finale</i> of the play, came life, animal and vegetable, with
+  a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
+  whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
+  following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth
+  in their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes
+  swarmed with their new-come denizens. Last of all, final
+  assurance of a new season's advent, by day and by night,
+  swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical as distant chiming
+  bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie and of
+  spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
+  that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway
+  distinctive, alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!"
+  sounded and echoed and re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened
+  land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it repeated; and listening humans
+  smiled and commented unnecessarily each to the other: "Spring is
+  not coming. It is here."</p><a name="XV"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XV</h3>
+
+  <p>THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE</p>
+
+  <p>A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full
+  grown, swung slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house
+  and the barn as the stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not
+  glance behind, he made no sound. With almost human dignity he
+  vacated the premises to the newcomer. Not until he reached his
+  destination, the ill-lighted stable, did curiosity get the better
+  of prudence; then, safe within the doorway, he wheeled about, and
+  with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his long, sensitive
+  nose taking minutest testimony.</p>
+
+  <p>The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in
+  approved riding togs, halted likewise and returned the look;
+  equally minutely, equally suspiciously. The horse he rode was one
+  of a kind seldom seen on the ranges: a thoroughbred with slender
+  legs and sensitive ears. The rider sat his saddle well;
+  remarkably well for one obviously from another life. Both the
+  horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance they made
+  a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective
+  "smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the
+  looseness of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with
+  his general youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle
+  here and there, have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so,
+  taking in every detail of the commonplace surroundings. Then,
+  apparently satisfied, he dismounted and, tying the animal to the
+  wheel of an old surrey drawn up in the yard, he approached the
+  single entrance of the house and rapped.</p>
+
+  <p>To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to
+  the elbow, a frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a
+  plain gingham gown. A moment they looked at each other; then the
+  man's riding cap came off with a sweep and he held out his
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was
+  all. Then he looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see
+  your husband," he exclaimed. "Is he at home?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that
+  you had returned."</p>
+
+  <p>A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his
+  hand dropped; but his eyes held their place. "Yes. I only came
+  yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to talk over
+  with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man.
+  "Aren't we to be even neighbourly?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be
+  otherwise."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming
+  positive now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."</p>
+
+  <p>"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately.
+  "Answer?" She undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by
+  courtesy, that after I've lived the last four months I'm still
+  such a child as that? Do you really wish me to answer, Neighbour
+  Craig,"</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins
+  in his trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously.
+  Then again he looked up.</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave
+  an hour ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It
+  was you I came to see. May I stay?"</p>
+
+  <p>Again the girl ignored the question.</p>
+
+  <p>"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you
+  wouldn't have come, that nothing you know of could have made you
+  come? Let's understand each other in the beginning. You admit
+  this?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"</p>
+
+  <p>The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the
+  eyes; silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could
+  not fathom, could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as
+  deliberately she released him, looked away.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."</p>
+
+  <p>"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an
+  obvious effort he checked himself "Thank you," he completed
+  repressedly.</p>
+
+  <p>This time the girl did not smile. "Don't you realise yet that
+  sort of thing is useless?" she queried unemotionally.</p>
+
+  <p>It was the man this time who was silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so;
+  but for once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us
+  good, we're both living a lie; but at least we understand each
+  other. Let's not waste energy in pretending&mdash;when there's no one
+  to be deceived."</p>
+
+  <p>Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too
+  much a part of his life to shake off instantly. Then he
+  laughed.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway
+  be it so. And now, that I'm to stay&mdash;" A meaning glance through
+  the open door. "You were working, weren't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch.
+  You remember another morning once before, don't you&mdash;a morning
+  before you grew up&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Perfectly."</p>
+
+  <p>"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."</p>
+
+  <p>"I am quite deficient in imagination."</p>
+
+  <p>"At least, though, dishes must be washed."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not necessarily&mdash;this moment at least. They have waited
+  before."</p>
+
+  <p>"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or
+  interfere."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and
+  enjoy the sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated?
+  They're clean, I know. I scrubbed them this very morning
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>The man hesitated. Then he sat down.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm
+  going to return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit&mdash;the
+  way you are now. You've changed terribly."</p>
+
+  <p>"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely
+  as I am this moment for&mdash;a lifetime."</p>
+
+  <p>"For&mdash;how long, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>"A lifetime, I think."</p>
+
+  <p>"For four months, you mean."</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps&mdash;it's all the same."</p>
+
+  <p>"Since you did a foolish thing?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I have done many such."</p>
+
+  <p>"Since the last, I mean."</p>
+
+  <p>"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened.
+  "The last was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in
+  the smallest possible manner since then."</p>
+
+  <p>The man inspected his boots.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at
+  length.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took
+  a place beside him. "I had forgotten."</p>
+
+  <p>They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real
+  perplexity.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."</p>
+
+  <p>"I have not denied it," evenly.</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for
+  anything; but he was finding his mistake.</p>
+
+  <p>"This life you've&mdash;selected, is wearing on you," he added.
+  "Frankly, I hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and
+  happy."</p>
+
+  <p>"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin
+  mine. You're dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the
+  signs."</p>
+
+  <p>The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank
+  criticism than to receive it.</p>
+
+  <p>"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said
+  intimately, "nor attempt to deny it. There is a reason,
+  however."</p>
+
+  <p>"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually
+  is an explanation for everything we do in this life."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a
+  compliment."</p>
+
+  <p>"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back
+  against the lintel of the door. She looked very young that
+  moment&mdash;and very old.</p>
+
+  <p>"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my
+  explanation for being&mdash;as I am. What is yours?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I wish to know the reason."</p>
+
+  <p>"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you
+  have married?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life,
+  and&mdash;the man you have named."</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't believe I understand, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence
+  I possessed, for two weeks."</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.</p>
+
+  <p>"I repeat you have the compliment&mdash;if you consider it
+  such."</p>
+
+  <p>Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all
+  the time, the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them
+  now, steadily, immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without,
+  against the background of the dark interior his eyes shone as
+  though they were afire.</p>
+
+  <p>"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I
+  have made you unhappy."</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a
+  voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I merely understand you&mdash;now. You're not sorry, because
+  otherwise you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be
+  here&mdash;even though my husband were away."</p>
+
+  <p>Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly
+  a novelty in his life to be treated as he was being treated this
+  day. Ordinarily glib of speech, for some reason in the face of
+  this newfound emotionless characterisation, he had nothing to
+  say. It is difficult to appear what one is not in the blaze of
+  one's own fireside. It was impossible under the scrutiny of this
+  wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events gone by.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've
+  got other things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway."
+  He looked at her openly, significantly. "Your own self, for
+  instance."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm listening. Tell me everything."</p>
+
+  <p>"You really fancy I will after&mdash;the past?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"And why, please?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You've already told me why."</p>
+
+  <p>"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to
+  be ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm still listening."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your
+  husband? You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively,
+  impassively. Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an
+  untrained eye, a black dot stood out above the horizon line. Her
+  eyes paused upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked
+  suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>"You swear it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I swear."</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still
+  perjure yourself. To answer your question, I really don't
+  know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll
+  stand a lot from you, but there's a limit&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's
+  not a soul but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be
+  seated."</p>
+
+  <p>From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily,
+  resentfully&mdash;then with an expression wherein surprise and
+  unbelief were mingled. He sat down.</p>
+
+  <p>The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and
+  on.</p>
+
+  <p>"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my
+  soul, if I have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make
+  the exchange, no one who can give me light. Does that answer your
+  question?"</p>
+
+  <p>Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are
+  why."</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, only silence.</p>
+
+  <p>"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl.
+  "A little tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit?
+  You're not plural, but nevertheless you personified that pack.
+  You and the unknown things you represented were pressing me
+  close. I was confused and afraid. I was a babe four months ago. I
+  was not afraid of How, I had loved him&mdash;at least I thought I had,
+  I'm sure of nothing now&mdash;and, as I say, I was afraid of
+  you&mdash;then."</p>
+
+  <p>"And now&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she
+  looked away.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm not in the least afraid of you now&mdash;or of anything."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not even of your husband?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I
+  made a mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am
+  afraid of something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are
+  of death, of this infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip
+  deep, unconsciously. "I sometimes think the old fear of
+  everything were preferable, were the lesser of the two
+  evils."</p>
+
+  <p>Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose
+  skin under his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.</p>
+
+  <p>"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think
+  you've gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked
+  away; but unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the
+  landscape that spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you
+  realise what a mess you've made of your life."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I think I do," she said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a
+  brute after all in attempting to prevent your doing as you
+  did."</p>
+
+  <p>"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't
+  been a brute."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then,
+  Bess? Cared for me myself?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"And that I frightened you back here?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.</p>
+
+  <p>"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it
+  now?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl looked away in silence.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't tell you. I don't know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days&mdash;anything
+  except that I'm afraid."</p>
+
+  <p>"Of the future?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes&mdash;and of myself."</p>
+
+  <p>For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said
+  nothing. A long silence fell between them. It was the girl
+  herself who broke it.</p>
+
+  <p>"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and
+  the voice was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with
+  Uncle Landor."</p>
+
+  <p>"Was I to blame, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."</p>
+
+  <p>"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl said nothing.</p>
+
+  <p>"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can
+  restore the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making
+  you unhappy?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I admit it."</p>
+
+  <p>The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.</p>
+
+  <p>"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't.
+  You're too selfish."</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.</p>
+
+  <p>The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively
+  maddening!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be
+  ourselves to-day. I merely told you things as they are."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in
+  silence. One of his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay
+  in his lap. Against his will now and then a muscle contracted
+  nervously; and of a sudden he thrust the telltale member deep
+  into his trousers pocket.</p>
+
+  <p>"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't
+  go on this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+  <p>"Haven't you ever thought of it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else&mdash;for an age."</p>
+
+  <p>"And you've decided nothing?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Absolutely nothing."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his
+  voice trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By
+  what right should you be permitted to decide?"</p>
+
+  <p>The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His
+  eyes were steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that
+  he would win, that the moment was his moment.</p>
+
+  <p>"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said
+  simply.</p>
+
+  <p>"Love me, after what you have done?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I have been mad&mdash;and done mad things. But I've
+  discovered my fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you
+  so&mdash;and to make amends."</p>
+
+  <p>Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look;
+  but the man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure
+  that he voiced a challenge.</p>
+
+  <p>"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you
+  ran away, in spite of the fact that you are married, you love
+  me!"</p>
+
+  <p>Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her
+  lips parted, but she said no word.</p>
+
+  <p>"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't&mdash;because it
+  is true."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second
+  time that day Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise.
+  While yet he was master of the situation, while yet the time was
+  his, he arose.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He
+  looked at her deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say,
+  for I've told you that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember
+  this: If I've stolen your happiness, I'll give it all back. As
+  God is my witness, I'll give it all back with interest." Swiftly,
+  before she could answer, he turned away and strode toward the
+  impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he undid the tie strap
+  and mounted. Without another word, or a backward glance, he rode
+  away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the damp spring
+  earth.</p>
+
+  <p>Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not
+  move. She did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at
+  the C-C ranch house, until the buildings hid the owner from view,
+  did her eyes leave him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she
+  looked away over the prairie, away where the last time she had
+  glanced a tiny black dot stood out against the intense blue sky.
+  But look as she might she could not find it. It was there no
+  more. It had been for long; but now was not. Clean as though
+  drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the unbroken
+  horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes.
+  With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable
+  doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.</p><a name="XVI"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+
+  <p>THE RECKONING</p>
+
+  <p>It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening,
+  and as he came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled
+  his feet as one unconsciously will when very weary. He was
+  wearing his ready-made clothes and starched collar; but the
+  trousers were deplorably baggy at the knees from much riding, and
+  his linen and polished shoes were soiled with the dust of the
+  prairie.</p>
+
+  <p>Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully
+  prepared. Serving it was a young woman he had not seen for long,
+  a young woman minus the</p>
+
+  <p>slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at
+  belt and throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on
+  either cheek. A young woman, moreover, who anticipated his
+  slightest wish, who took his hat and fetched his moccasins, and
+  when the meal was over brought the buffalo robes and stretched
+  them carefully on the gently sloping terrace just outside the
+  ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly, continuously;
+  with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year before.
+  To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her
+  companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self,
+  returned, unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was
+  now and then a note that rang false, a hint of suppressed
+  excitement in the unwonted colour, an abnormal energy bordering
+  on the feverish in her every motion. Not in the least deceived
+  was this impassive, all-observing human, not in the least in
+  doubt as to the cause of the transformation: yet through it all
+  he gave no intimation of consciousness of the unusual, through it
+  all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never was there a
+  more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive,
+  sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not
+  remarkable. He had never done so except when she had not. When he
+  looked at her there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in
+  his gaze; but that also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery
+  in the depths of his steady black eyes. Never more himself, never
+  outwardly more unsuspicious was the man than on this occasion;
+  even when, the meal complete, the girl had led him hand in hand
+  out of doors, out into the soft spring night, out under the stars
+  where she had stretched the two robes intimately close.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft
+  south breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in
+  their ears; about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their
+  nostrils the subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth
+  and of growing things. But not even then could the girl be still.
+  Far too full of this day's revelation and of anticipation of
+  things to come was she to be silent. The mood of her merely
+  changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless, ceased. In its place
+  came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a definite
+  question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed
+  arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great
+  unknown, when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she
+  did not alter her position. "I wonder," she said, "whether if one
+  has made a mistake, it were better to go on without acknowledging
+  it, living a lie and dying so, or to admit it and make another,
+  who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay the penalty?" She
+  paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do you think,
+  How?"</p>
+
+  <p>In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the
+  lighter sky her face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a
+  silhouette.</p>
+
+  <p>"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he
+  answered.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from
+  suffering?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."</p>
+
+  <p>The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the
+  truth makes one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any
+  difference, How?"</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with
+  his steady eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he
+  said. "I think this is one of them."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted
+  unconsciously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she
+  objected.</p>
+
+  <p>"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're
+  honest with ourselves or not."</p>
+
+  <p>"You think that, really?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At
+  last, abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new
+  thought, a new query.</p>
+
+  <p>"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she
+  questioned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there
+  was no irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible
+  mute pain. "How should I know what is best in life, I, who have
+  never known life at all?"</p>
+
+  <p>Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath
+  the words themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled
+  inference.</p>
+
+  <p>"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."</p>
+
+  <p>This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth
+  glaring, where the running might read.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, I have an idea&mdash;and more," he said. "Happiness, your
+  happiness, has always been the first thing in my life."</p>
+
+  <p>Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before.
+  Step by step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey.
+  Step by step she was drawing away from her companion; yet though,
+  wide-eyed, he watched her every motion, felt the distance
+  separating grow wider and wider, he made no move to prevent,
+  threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately from his grip, from
+  beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was filching his one
+  ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke no word of
+  unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not but
+  have admired her child that night.</p>
+
+  <p>One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before
+  she had walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now
+  there was no hesitation. The move was deliberate; even
+  certain.</p>
+
+  <p>"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly,
+  "but I haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal
+  to me." She paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her
+  head. "I've been watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew
+  up; watched him become restless week by week. Last night,&mdash;you
+  didn't notice, but I did,&mdash;I heard another wolf call away out on
+  the prairie, and I got up to see what Shaggy would do. Somehow I
+  seemed to understand how he'd feel, and I came out here, out
+  where we are now, and looked down toward the barn. It was
+  moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost
+  as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting
+  up; but all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated
+  from somewhere away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't
+  stirred. He was standing there, where you had chained him, just
+  outside the door; but when that second call came, it was too
+  much. He started to go, did go as far as he could; then the
+  collar choked him and he realised where he was. He didn't make a
+  sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he couldn't
+  help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the
+  chain stretched across his back&mdash;" She halted abruptly, of a
+  sudden sat up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll
+  let him go," she pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to
+  him. Please promise me you'll let him go!"</p>
+
+  <p>Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.</p>
+
+  <p>"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save
+  Shaggy's life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out
+  of her den and shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when
+  I found him."</p>
+
+  <p>"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't
+  make any difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with
+  the argument.</p>
+
+  <p>"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't
+  live through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will
+  shoot him on sight."</p>
+
+  <p>"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the
+  girl. "We all have to take our chances in this life."</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.</p>
+
+  <p>"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill
+  the first animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of
+  that?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I
+  made him as he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to
+  be; and if he's bad, God alone is to blame." Her glance returned,
+  met the other fair. "I wish you'd let him go, How."</p>
+
+  <p>The man made no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"</p>
+
+  <p>"You really wish it, Bess?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, very much."</p>
+
+  <p>Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a
+  sudden he arose.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, Bess," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more,
+  followed his lead down the path to the stable. At the door the
+  Indian whistled. But there was no response, no shaggy grey
+  answering shadow. A lantern hung from a nail near at hand. In
+  silence the man lit it and again led the way within. The
+  mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep, but at
+  the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise
+  there was no move. Look where one would within the building,
+  there was no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the
+  Indian led the way outside, made the circuit of the stable,
+  paused at the south end where a chain hung loose from a peg
+  driven into the wall. A moment he stood there, holding the light
+  so the girl could see; then, impassive as before, he extinguished
+  the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.</p>
+
+  <p>They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke;
+  then, detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."</p>
+
+  <p>They walked on so.</p>
+
+  <p>"You wanted him to go?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time there was no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.</p>
+
+  <p>"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I
+  thought I&mdash;understood."</p>
+
+  <p>For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm,
+  but neither stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob,
+  the hand dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his
+  chest. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess."</p>
+
+  <p>A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.</p>
+
+  <p>"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Bess," repeated.</p>
+
+  <p>"But still you're not coming?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No."</p>
+
+  <p>Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.</p>
+
+  <p>"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She
+  scarcely recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with
+  me again?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that,
+  Bess." A second halt. "Not until things between us are different,
+  at least."</p>
+
+  <p>"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped
+  the casing of the door. "Oh, How! How!"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a
+  breath; just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl
+  stood it, hoping against hope, praying for a miracle; then she
+  could stand it no longer. Gropingly clutching at every object
+  within reach, she made her way into the dark interior; flung
+  herself full dressed onto the bed, her face buried desperately
+  among the covers.</p>
+
+  <p>All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth
+  in front of the ranch house door; back and forth like an
+  automaton, back and forth in a motion that seemed perpetual.
+  Within the tiny low-ceiled room, in the fulness of time, the girl
+  sobbed herself into a fitful sleep; but not once did the sentinel
+  pause to rest, not once in those dragging hours before day did he
+  relax. With the coming of the first trace of light he halted, and
+  on silent moccasined feet stole within. But again he only
+  remained for moments, and when he returned it was merely to
+  stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before
+  the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did
+  everything, he rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into
+  the darkness to the west.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague
+  sense of depression and of impending evil. The door was open and
+  the bright morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance
+  stretched the open prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny
+  brown island, her own dooryard, in the foreground. With dull
+  listlessness, the girl propped herself up in bed and sat looking
+  about her. Absently, aimlessly, her eyes passed from one familiar
+  object to another. Without any definite conception of why or of
+  where, she was conscious of an impression of change in the
+  material world about her, a change that corresponded to the
+  mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the
+  sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering
+  joy. Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message
+  passed her by. Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a
+  haunting memory of the past night and of what it had meant. As a
+  traveller lost in this fog, she lay staring about, indecisive
+  which way to move, idly waiting for light. Ordinarily action
+  itself would have offered a solution of the problem, would have
+  served at least as a diversion; but this morning she was
+  strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no
+  adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything
+  more than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow
+  higher and, lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her
+  palm and lay with wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.</p>
+
+  <p>Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The
+  doorway faced south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had
+  entered therein began moving to the left across the floor.
+  Unconsciously, for the lack of anything better to do, she watched
+  its advance. It fell upon a tiny shelf against the wall, littered
+  with a collection of papers and magazines; and the reflected
+  light from the white sheets glared in her eyes. It came to the
+  supper table of the night before, the table she had not cleared,
+  and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of her
+  own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on;
+  crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live
+  thing, began climbing the wall beyond.</p>
+
+  <p>Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched
+  its advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its
+  relentless stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny.
+  Like a hostile alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in
+  the tiny room for something definite, something it did not find.
+  Fatuous as it may seem, the impression grew upon her, augmented
+  until in its own turn it became a dominant influence. Her glance,
+  heretofore absent, perfunctory, became intense. The glare was
+  well above the floor by this time and climbing higher and higher.
+  Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat up free in
+  bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her
+  fairly.</p>
+
+  <p>The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light
+  was mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from
+  rough-fashioned wooden pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant
+  wardrobe. At first glance there seemed to the girl nothing
+  unusual revealed thereon, nothing significant; and, restlessly
+  observant, the inspection advanced. Then, ere the mental picture
+  could vanish, ere a new impression could take its place, in a
+  flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came realisation
+  complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute thereafter
+  she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and wider,
+  her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a
+  minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of
+  weariness and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place,
+  and covered her face from sight.</p><a name="XVII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XVII</h3>
+
+  <p>SACRIFICE</p>
+
+  <p>A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred
+  with the slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in
+  the barren dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover,
+  with each repetition the arrival had been earlier, the halt
+  longer. Though the weather was perfect, nevertheless the beast
+  had grown impatient under the long waits, and telltale, a glaring
+  black mound had come into being where he had pawed his
+  displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully concealed
+  the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
+  litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the
+  mound had grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared
+  to question the visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the
+  wolf was no longer present to stare his disapproval. Verily,
+  unchallenged, the king had come into his own in this realm of
+  one; and as a monarch absolute ever rules, Clayton Craig had
+  reigned, was reigning now.</p>
+
+  <p>For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never
+  been invited to enter, yet he had entered&mdash;and the girl had
+  spoken no word to prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding
+  stick hanging from a peg beside the few belongings of How Landor;
+  yet, likewise unchallenged, they were there. Not by the girl's
+  solicitation was he lounging intimately in the single rocker the
+  room boasted; yet once again the bald fact remained that though
+  it was not yet nine by the clock, he was present, his legs
+  comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids, whimsically
+  observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour of
+  putting the place to rights.</p>
+
+  <p>"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted
+  that unoffending table three times by actual count since I've
+  been watching. Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and
+  entertain your company?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl did not smile.</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you
+  were tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer&mdash;" She
+  drew another chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands
+  in her lap.</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by
+  shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal
+  proprietary look he had grown to assume in her presence took its
+  place.</p>
+
+  <p>"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop
+  sarcasm when you and I are together? I know I've been a most
+  reprehensible offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your
+  idea of punishment?"</p>
+
+  <p>The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably
+  in the past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the
+  colour showed plain.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways
+  you've held me at arm's length until I'm beginning to
+  despair."</p>
+
+  <p>"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so
+  dull that I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the
+  role that the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too
+  effective to abandon at once.</p>
+
+  <p>"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week,
+  Bess," he objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again;
+  but that is all. Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were
+  when I first returned."</p>
+
+  <p>"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost
+  refused to appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least
+  I've gotten immeasurably farther away from another."</p>
+
+  <p>"Your husband you mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."</p>
+
+  <p>The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too
+  much to each other not to know everything there is to know."</p>
+
+  <p>"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now.
+  The inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly&mdash;and she herself
+  had chosen. "He's merely given me up."</p>
+
+  <p>"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face,
+  something else as well, something akin to exultation.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."</p>
+
+  <p>"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"</p>
+
+  <p>Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old
+  defiance, the old pride, broke forth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have
+  known before this if he objected?" she flamed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess!"</p>
+
+  <p>"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the
+  blaze had died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that.
+  I didn't mean to."</p>
+
+  <p>The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a
+  miracle, the last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had
+  counted upon blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence;
+  but a passive, conscious conformity such as this&mdash;The thing was
+  unbelievable, providential, too unnaturally good to last. The
+  present was a strategic moment, the time for immediate,
+  irrevocable action, ere there came a change of heart. It had not
+  been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to permit a meeting between
+  himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he</p>
+
+  <p>had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary
+  precautions to avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity
+  passed, he did not alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the
+  red man. He had proven to himself by an incontrovertible process
+  of reasoning that such was not the case. It was merely to avoid
+  unpleasantness for himself and for the girl&mdash;particularly for the
+  latter. Moreover, no possible object could be gained by such a
+  meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He merely
+  decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
+  that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he
+  spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break,
+  I mean?"</p>
+
+  <p>"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."</p>
+
+  <p>"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this
+  way any longer. It's intolerable for both of us."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance
+  he had imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would
+  be easy. Now that the time had really arrived, he found it
+  strangely difficult. He hardly knew how to begin.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect,
+  very dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated,
+  "we've avoided the obvious long enough, too long. As I said,
+  you've succeeded in keeping me at arm's length all the last week;
+  but I won't be denied any longer. I'm willing to take all the
+  blame of the past, and all the responsibility of the future. I
+  love you, Bess. I've told you that before, but I repeat it now. I
+  want you to go away with me, away from this God-cursed land
+  that's driving us both mad&mdash;at least leave for a time. After a
+  while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we wish;
+  but for the present&mdash;I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
+  another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed
+  on; "but we can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and
+  forget it." He cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting
+  away that I've arranged for since I've been here. I've not been
+  entirely idle the last week, and every detail is complete. There
+  are three relays of horses waiting between here and the railroad.
+  One team is all ready at the ranch house the minute I give the
+  signal. They'll get us to town before morning. You've only to say
+  the word, and I'll give the sign." Again, nervously, shortly, he
+  repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say, not interfere;
+  but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been enough
+  tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
+  the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is
+  over at the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything
+  after we're gone. Things here are all in your name; you can do as
+  you please with them. There's no possible excuse for delay." He
+  bent over her, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes looking into
+  hers compellingly. "God knows you've been buried here long
+  enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to live, do you hear? We'll
+  be very happy together, you and I, Bess; happier than you ever
+  dreamed of being. Will you come?"</p>
+
+  <p>He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still;
+  still as the dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed,
+  motionless, the girl sat looking up at him. She did not speak;
+  she scarcely seemed to breathe. As she had chosen, so had it come
+  to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed. Deliverance from the
+  haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an evil dream was
+  beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden, within her
+  being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
+  instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a
+  woman than life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path.
+  Warning, pleading, distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice
+  sounded a negative in her ears. She tried to silence it, tried to
+  overwhelm it with her newborn philosophy; but it was useless.
+  Fear of the future, as she had said, she had none. Good or bad as
+  the man might be, she had chosen. With full knowledge of his
+  deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him so, without
+  sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
+  wife&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the
+  compelling face drew nearer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in
+  suspense. Will you go?"</p>
+
+  <p>With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew
+  back until she was free.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little
+  time to think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go
+  with you, yes; but to-day, now&mdash;I can't. We must see How first.
+  He must know, must consent&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he
+  digressed. "I can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between
+  How and myself you must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I
+  love you; but I'm not insane absolutely. I ask you again: will
+  you come?"</p>
+
+  <p>The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.</p>
+
+  <p>"I can't now, as things are."</p>
+
+  <p>"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for
+  me?"</p>
+
+  <p>For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.</p>
+
+  <p>The man came a step forward, and another.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I have told you," said a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as
+  a human being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the
+  girl could move or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must
+  go then," he commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her
+  again, hungrily, irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer.
+  You will go."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's
+  impotent effort to be free. "You must not, we must not&mdash;yet. I'm
+  bad, I know, but not wholly. Please let me go."</p>
+
+  <p>Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught
+  save the moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory,
+  in her effort to escape. Save that one casual glance long before,
+  he had not looked out of doors. Had he done so, had he
+  seen&mdash;.</p>
+
+  <p>But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four
+  walls. His back was toward the door. His own great shoulders
+  walled the girl in. Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure
+  that had drifted from out the prairie swiftly into the dooryard,
+  dreamed that that same all-knowing shadow, on soundless
+  moccasined feet, had advanced to the doorway, stood silent,
+  watching therein. As the first man and the first woman were
+  alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might have
+  exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just
+  gotten you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm
+  made of clay and not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and
+  closer, until she could no longer struggle, until she lay still
+  in his arms. "I'll never let you go again, girl, not if God
+  himself were to demand your release. You're mine, Bess, mine by
+  right of capture, mine&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an
+  unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening,
+  ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently
+  advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms.
+  Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly,
+  instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart.
+  Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent passions, the two guilty
+  humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder in breathless
+  expectation, breathless fascination.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated
+  the count, the three remained precisely as they were. While the
+  same mythical spectator could have counted ten more, the silence
+  held; but inaction had ceased. While time, the relentless,
+  checked off another measure, there was still no interruption;
+  then of a sudden, desperately tense, desperately challenging, a
+  voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened
+  his lips and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to
+  understand, I guess. What are you going to do about it?"</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first
+  moment when the two had sprang separate he had not even appeared
+  conscious of his presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize
+  plant, dressed once more in the flannels and corduroys of his
+  station, as tall and graceful, he merely stood there with folded
+  arms, looking down on the girl. More maddening than an
+  execration, than physical menace itself, was that passionless,
+  ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot blood
+  flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
+  his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his
+  neckband, tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took
+  a step forward menacingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last,
+  perhaps, not to dare me to take something of yours away from
+  you." Word by word his voice had risen until he fairly shouted.
+  "You've lost, fool; lost, lost! Are you blind that you can't see?
+  You've lost, I say!"</p>
+
+  <p>From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted;
+  and that instant the room became deathly still.</p>
+
+  <p>A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so;
+  then, white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two,
+  paused so, motionless:&mdash;for of a sudden a voice, an even,
+  passionless voice, was speaking.</p>
+
+  <p>"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided.
+  Just a step the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he
+  recognised the white man's presence. His eyes were steady and
+  level. His voice, unbelievably low in contrast to that of the
+  other, when he spoke was even as before.</p>
+
+  <p>"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he
+  said. "I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One
+  thing I expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt
+  again. You may listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a
+  word to say to you; but now there is nothing to be said." Just a
+  moment longer the look held, a moment wherein the other man felt
+  his tongue grow dumb; then with the old impassivity, the old
+  isolation, the black eyes shifted until they rested on the face
+  of the girl.</p>
+
+  <p>But for still another moment&mdash;he was as deliberate as nature
+  herself, this man&mdash;he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he
+  had grown more so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of
+  one weary unto death. His black eyes were bright, mysteriously
+  bright, and on his thin hands, folded across his chest, the veins
+  stood out full and prominent; but look where one would on the
+  lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath the close-fitting
+  clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now, very grave,
+  very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
+  expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness,
+  infinite in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible
+  tolerance throbbed in the low-pitched voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began,
+  "and a request to make&mdash;and that is all. I didn't come back so,
+  unexpectedly, to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you
+  wish to do. I came because I fancied you were going to do an
+  unwise thing: because I had reason to believe you were going to
+  run away." Unconsciously, one of the folded hands loosened,
+  passed absently over his forehead; then returned abruptly to its
+  place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon for the
+  suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to do
+  so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and
+  into it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that
+  lingered in the girl's recollection while memory lasted.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he
+  went on. "Things are as they are&mdash;and final. I don't judge you,
+  I&mdash;understand. Above everything else in life, I wish you to be
+  happy; and I realise now I can't make you so. Another perhaps
+  can; I hope so and trust so. At least I shall not stand in your
+  way any longer. It is that I came to tell you. It is I who shall
+  leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he stepped back and lifted
+  one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment, please," he
+  requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to say."
+  His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers
+  compellingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"I said I had a request to make. This is it&mdash;that you don't
+  leave until you are married again. You won't have to wait long if
+  I leave. I have inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks
+  at the longest, and you will be free. Meanwhile stay here.
+  Everything is yours. I never owned anything except the house, and
+  that is yours also." For the last time he halted; then even,
+  distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise me this,
+  Bess?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had
+  listened through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that
+  he was silent, and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so,
+  passive, waiting. Ever in times of stress his will had dominated
+  her will; and the present was no exception. There was an infinity
+  of things she might have said. A myriad which she should have
+  spoken, would occur to her when he was gone. But at the present,
+  when the opportunity was hers, there seemed nothing to offer;
+  nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was expected to
+  answer at all, that he had asked a question.</p>
+
+  <p>"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the
+  voice gently. "I've never made a request of you before, and I
+  probably never shall again."</p>
+
+  <p>At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that
+  her lips were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her
+  tongue.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its
+  finality; but the girl did not break it, said no more&mdash;and
+  forever the moment, her moment, vanished into the past,</p>
+
+  <p>"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly,
+  strangely different from his usual alert certainty, he moved
+  across the room. "There are just a few things here I'd like to
+  take with me," he explained apologetically. "They'd only be in
+  your way if I left them."</p>
+
+  <p>With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered
+  telescope satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He
+  moved about slowly here and there, his moccasined feet patting
+  dully on the bare floor. No one offered to assist him, no one
+  interrupted; and in dead silence, except for the sound he himself
+  made, he went about his work. Into the satchel went a few books
+  from the shelf on the wall: an old army greatcoat that had been
+  Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap which had been a
+  present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered in one of
+  his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
+  there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was
+  small, and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter
+  he stood beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put
+  on the cover and began tightening the straps. The leather was old
+  and the holes large, but he found difficulty even then in
+  fastening the buckles. At last, though, it was done, and he
+  straightened. Both the white man and the girl were watching him;
+  but no one spoke. For the second time, the last time, the Indian
+  stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from nook to nook,
+  taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
+  heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted
+  his burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and
+  held out his hand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes,
+  deep into her very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God
+  bless you, girl; but I don't, so I'll only say good-bye&mdash;and&mdash;I
+  wish you happiness." Just a moment longer he remained so; then at
+  something he saw, he dropped her hand and drew away swiftly,
+  preventingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it&mdash;as you cared for me
+  once. Don't make things any harder&mdash;make them impossible!"
+  Desperately, without another pause, ere she could disobey, he
+  started for the door. Beside the entrance&mdash;for he was not
+  watching these last minutes&mdash;stood the white man; and just for a
+  moment at his side the Indian halted. Despite the will of Clayton
+  Craig, their eyes met. For an instant, wherein time lapsed, they
+  stood face to face; then swiftly as he did everything, now the
+  Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those words and
+  the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
+  grave.</p>
+
+  <p>"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing
+  only to say. Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to
+  prevent your doing so, if you will. If you do not&mdash;" a pause of
+  horrible ice-cold menace&mdash;"if you do not," repeated, "suicide."
+  Just for the fraction of a second not a civilised man but a
+  savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall know if you
+  fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times better, if
+  you do as I say."</p>
+
+  <p>Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse;
+  then, similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense
+  silence there broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was
+  gone.</p><a name="XVIII"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XVIII</h3>
+
+  <p>REWARD</p>
+
+  <p>The month was late September. The time, evening. The place,
+  the ranch house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the
+  scene at the hour the supper table was spread appeared a
+  traveller in an open road waggon. The vehicle was covered with
+  dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained likewise, and in
+  addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
+  powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and
+  dried. Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality
+  of asking permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in
+  the barn. From a convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and
+  from a stack beside the eaves he brought them hay for the night.
+  This done, he started for the house. A minute later, again
+  without form of announcement or seeking permission, he opened the
+  ranch house door and stepped inside.</p>
+
+  <p>Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four
+  men were eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by
+  a stove in one corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door
+  opened.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the
+  proprietor, Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of
+  steel on heavy queensware proceeded.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched
+  along his chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up
+  and fall to, stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."</p>
+
+  <p>In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned
+  to his work.</p>
+
+  <p>Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was
+  complete was there further conversation. Then after, one by one,
+  the cowmen had filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob
+  pipes from a shelf on the wall and tendered one across the
+  littered table.</p>
+
+  <p>"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a
+  couple of cigars.</p>
+
+  <p>"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter&mdash;for cigars were a
+  rarity on the frontier&mdash;puffed half the length of the weed in
+  wordless content. The Mexican went impassively about his work,
+  cleared the table and washed the dishes methodically. The labour
+  complete, he rolled a cigarette swiftly and, followed by a
+  vanishing trail of blue, disappeared likewise out of doors. Then,
+  and not until then, the visitor introduced himself.</p>
+
+  <p>"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store
+  over at the Centre."</p>
+
+  <p>The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately,
+  reminiscently</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought there was something familiar about you," he
+  commented at last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I
+  remember you now. You're one of the bunch who was with Bill
+  Landor that time he picked up the two kids."</p>
+
+  <p>It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.</p>
+
+  <p>"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in
+  while you were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The
+  reminiscent look reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well
+  when we were on the other side of the river, before the country
+  settled up; but when we came over here we got too far apart and
+  lost track of each other."</p>
+
+  <p>The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At
+  last he glanced up.</p>
+
+  <p>"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and&mdash;"
+  Hawkins laughed peculiarly&mdash;"made a fizzle of it."</p>
+
+  <p>"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.</p>
+
+  <p>"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I
+  haven't even heard anything of them for six months now." He
+  twirled the cigar with his fingers in the self-consciousness of
+  unaccustomed gossip. "The girl went East with Landor's nephew,
+  Craig, afterward, I understood."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in
+  the cloud of smoke obscuring his companion's face.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised,
+  "but, knowing the circumstances, I've often wondered how the
+  affair ended. Did they hit it off well together?"</p>
+
+  <p>Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled
+  old hands fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.</p>
+
+  <p>"While the money lasted, yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another
+  cent."</p>
+
+  <p>"And then&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"It's the old story."</p>
+
+  <p>"They went to pieces?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Craig left her&mdash;for another woman." The clawlike hands closed
+  tighter and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He
+  couldn't. It seems he was supporting the other woman all the
+  time."</p>
+
+  <p>Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a
+  lean-to the cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening
+  wall came the mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.</p>
+
+  <p>"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bess came back."</p>
+
+  <p>"Alone?"</p>
+
+  <p>Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was
+  concealed by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy
+  brows his old eyes were blazing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, she was alone," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it
+  jerkily. The blaze of the match illumined a face that was not
+  pleasant to look upon.</p>
+
+  <p>"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"</p>
+
+  <p>"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town
+  yesterday, just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."</p>
+
+  <p>The rancher looked at the other meaningly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Back at the ranch&mdash;with the Indian?"</p>
+
+  <p>Equally directly Manning returned the look.</p>
+
+  <p>"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The
+  Indian is not there."</p>
+
+  <p>"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"</p>
+
+  <p>Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table
+  before him.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly.
+  "He came here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left
+  Bess. Do you mean to tell me you don't know where he is
+  gone?"</p>
+
+  <p>Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds
+  from the lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each
+  other breathing. For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by
+  bit on the rancher's face incredulity merged into belief, and
+  belief into understanding perfect.</p>
+
+  <p>"Know where he is? Of course I do&mdash;now." He leaned back in his
+  chair. "To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time
+  he was here, or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"</p>
+
+  <p>He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."</p>
+
+  <p>"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the
+  last week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He
+  worked for me until about a month ago. Then he left and started
+  away alone. We never got a word out of him while he was here, not
+  even his name." Of a sudden came realisation complete, and his
+  great bony fist crashed on the board. "I'm dull as a post, but I
+  begin to understand at last, and I'm with you absolutely. I'll
+  take you there to-night, it won't be a two-hour drive. I'll hitch
+  up right now if you're ready."</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed.
+  The hand on the chair arm loosened its grip.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I
+  don't think we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket
+  and produced two fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to
+  the other man and lit its mate carefully. "I don't think we'd
+  better both go anyway. In the morning you can fit me out with a
+  fresh team, if you will. I crowded things a bit on the way
+  up."</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
+  unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only
+  eighty miles, and there's plenty of time."</p>
+
+  <p>Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in
+  the old storekeeper's deep-set eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, there's plenty of time&mdash;after How Landor knows," he
+  said.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a
+  tiny dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through
+  a spot a shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man,
+  had builded a dam. In the fulness of time the accumulated water
+  had formed a fair-sized pond that glittered and shimmered in the
+  sunlight, until from a little altitude it could be seen for
+  miles. To this pond, for open water was very, very scarce on the
+  prairie in September, came water fowl from near and afar; from no
+  man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet, they came,
+  and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in flocks
+  that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
+  been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by
+  smoke, was pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An
+  evil-looking mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but
+  for them a broncho had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously
+  fashioned from weeds and grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet
+  again even of this they were unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long
+  intervals, something happened, something startlingly sudden,
+  bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror they would take wing and
+  vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this something never pursued
+  them, never repeated itself the same day, and invariably after a
+  time they came back, to take up anew, with the confidence of
+  children, the careless thread of their life where it had been
+  interrupted.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain
+  morning in late September. Though it was ten of the clock, they
+  were still there: sleepy brown mallards, glossy-winged teal,
+  long-necked shovellers, greyish speckled widgeon: these and
+  others less common, representatives of all the native tribe.
+  Happy as nature the common mother intended, as irresponsibly
+  idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while time
+  drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view
+  within the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.</p>
+
+  <p>Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been
+  there. On soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an
+  inanimate thing, he had remained. Not two rods away the flock
+  were feeding. More than once the water they carelessly spattered
+  had fallen upon him; but he did not stir. He had no gun or weapon
+  of any kind. Though they were within stone's throw, he had not
+  brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he
+  merely lay there observing them. With that object he had come;
+  for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he peered
+  through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
+  instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting
+  in its revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding
+  unbroken prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute
+  isolation. Lonely beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of
+  language, was that silent human in their midst this autumn
+  day.</p>
+
+  <p>How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no
+  one could have told; the man himself could not have told; for at
+  last, interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering,
+  with a great quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock
+  sprang a-wing; and almost before the shower of water drops they
+  scattered in their wake had ceased, a road waggon, with a
+  greybearded old man on the seat, drew up beside the tent.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and
+  stretched himself. Still in silence he came back to where the
+  newcomer was waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white
+  man sat eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed
+  to be enough around when I came."</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being
+  misunderstood.</p>
+
+  <p>"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."</p>
+
+  <p>A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an
+  effort he dismounted.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he
+  digressed abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so
+  I thought before I went back I'd look you up." The man was not
+  accustomed to dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely.
+  "If you don't mind I'll go inside and smoke a bit."</p>
+
+  <p>In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned
+  back the flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it
+  impassively.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.</p>
+
+  <p>Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and
+  thereafter drew on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl
+  were aglow. Even then, however, he did not speak. That which had
+  been on his mind trembled now at the tip of his tongue. The one
+  for whose ear the information was intended was waiting,
+  listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of a revelation,
+  in those last minutes, there had come to the old storekeeper an
+  appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The message
+  of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
+  begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the
+  tent, with a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged
+  with infinite care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony.
+  The sight of the man himself, standing erect in the doorway,
+  gazing immovably out over the sunlit earth, looking and waiting,
+  but asking no question, completed the impression. He had known
+  this repressed human long and, as he fancied, well; but now of a
+  sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him at all.
+  Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a measure
+  he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
+  that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
+  emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
+  inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of
+  the white he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the
+  play actor of an inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible,
+  unforgivable injustice, with this being one of the injured, had
+  been done in the white man's sight; and instinctively he had come
+  to him as the agent of Providence calculated to mete out
+  retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless savage lurked
+  beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken for
+  granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
+  realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of
+  divine punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human
+  being, an equal, with wh ose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling.
+  Whatever the motive that had inspired his coming, however
+  justifiable in itself, his interference, as a mere spectator, was
+  under the circumstances unjustified and an impertinence. This he
+  realised with startling suddenness; and swift in its wake came a
+  new point of view, a readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under
+  its influence the dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From
+  out of concealment he came fair into the open. What he knew he
+  would reveal&mdash;if the other wished; but it was for the Indian to
+  request, not him to proffer. With the decision he aroused. In the
+  interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit it afresh
+  suggestively.</p>
+
+  <p>"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was
+  not Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."</p>
+
+  <p>The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"I thought so," it said simply.</p>
+
+  <p>Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was
+  daylight, the glow lit up his face.</p>
+
+  <p>"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big
+  service&mdash;and I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you
+  wish."</p>
+
+  <p>Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the
+  careless, smiling infinite.</p>
+
+  <p>"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you
+  think I should know."</p>
+
+  <p>The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.</p>
+
+  <p>"I repeat, it is for you to choose."</p>
+
+  <p>Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning
+  felt his heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last
+  the Indian moved. Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally
+  deliberately he drew a robe opposite his visitor and, still very
+  erect, sat down on the ground&mdash;his long fingers locked across his
+  knees.</p>
+
+  <p>"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."</p>
+
+  <p>For the second time, because he needs must be doing something,
+  the white man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco
+  pouch shook a bit now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown
+  flakes fell scattering outside the bowl onto his knee.</p>
+
+  <p>"About a month ago"&mdash;the speaker cleared his throat
+  raspingly&mdash;"on August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a
+  funeral in town. It started from the C-C ranch house and ended in
+  the same lot with Mary Landor. It wasn't much of a funeral,
+  either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one was there." Again
+  the voice halted; and following there came the sharp crackling of
+  a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker. "It was
+  the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."</p>
+
+  <p>Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go on, please," requested a voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Early yesterday morning"&mdash;again the narrator halted perforce,
+  to clear his throat&mdash;"just before I left three men went through
+  town on their way to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a
+  lawyer, the third a man who wished to buy. They were in a hurry.
+  They only stopped to water their team and to visit Red Jennings's
+  place. They are at the ranch house closing the bargain now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."</p>
+
+  <p>The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the
+  very aged when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have
+  contracted physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within
+  himself. The nervousness and uncertainty of a moment ago had
+  passed now absolutely. The deep-set eyes of him were of a sudden
+  glowing ominously as they had done when telling the same tale to
+  Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was all. His voluntary
+  offering was given; more than this must come by request.</p>
+
+  <p>"I have nothing more to say&mdash;unless you wish," he repeated in
+  the old formula.</p>
+
+  <p>For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the
+  crackling of a match in the white man's hand. Following, as
+  though prompted by the sound, came a question.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why,"&mdash;the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted
+  until they looked immovably into those of his companion,&mdash;"why,
+  please, was not the mother of the child at least at the
+  funeral?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less
+  than two days old."</p>
+
+  <p>"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some
+  time?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. Several weeks."</p>
+
+  <p>"She returned alone?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"And to stay?"</p>
+
+  <p>Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no
+  muscle of the inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a
+  light new to the other man, ominous in its belated appearance,
+  was kindling.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," answered Manning.</p>
+
+  <p>"She, Bess, had left her husband?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, Craig had left her."</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but
+  neither man noticed the change.</p>
+
+  <p>"There was a reason?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."</p>
+
+  <p>The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing
+  white; white as the sunlight without.</p>
+
+  <p>"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her
+  ranch?"</p>
+
+  <p>"It is her ranch no more. It is his."</p>
+
+  <p>"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all
+  that he had done? You mean to tell me this?"</p>
+
+  <p>Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand,
+  the white man got to his feet, stood so silent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face
+  standing clear against the white background of the tent wall.
+  "Did Bess do this thing?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."</p>
+
+  <p>"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another
+  way!" for the third time; and then a halt. For that moment
+  realisation had come. "There could be but one other way!"</p>
+
+  <p>Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the
+  face opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared
+  for the moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch
+  longer. To do so was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man
+  had been a hunter of big game. Of a sudden now, horribly
+  distinct, he had a vision of the expression in the eyes of a
+  great moose, mortally wounded, when at the end he himself had
+  drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted, waiting,
+  postponing the inevitable.</p>
+
+  <p>"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
+  repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not
+  right?"</p>
+
+  <p>To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity,
+  the blow fell.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is
+        dead."</p><a name="XIX"></a>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIX</h3>
+
+  <p>IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE</p>
+
+  <p>An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to
+  the east whither he had taken his way not even a dot now
+  indicated his former presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon
+  the wheels of the old road waggon had temporarily blazed a trail
+  had returned normally erect. Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over
+  the parched earth, the storm had gathered and broken; and passed
+  on as though it had not been. All about smiled the sunshine;
+  sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing, heard nothing.
+  On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned, swam and
+  splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal breeze
+  of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
+  song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had
+  nature, the serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she
+  deviated from her customary course. Man alone it is who changes
+  to conform with the passing mood. Man alone it was amid this
+  primitive setting who had altered now.</p>
+
+  <p>For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming.
+  Instead, his every action was that of one with a definite
+  purpose. Yet even then he did not hurry. At first he seemed
+  merely to be going about the ordinary routine of his life.
+  Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself a generous
+  meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for the
+  first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
+  unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or
+  even touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward
+  the tent and disappeared inside.</p>
+
+  <p>For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to
+  place; and when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing
+  indeed. In his arms were several articles of clothing rolled into
+  a bulky bundle. Without a halt he made his way back to the place
+  where he had eaten. The fire which he had builded had burned low
+  ere this; and, standing there beside it, he scraped away the
+  ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until the glowing
+  embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had opened
+  with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which
+  it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a
+  battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A
+  moment the Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely;
+  then gently as though they were a lost child he was returning to
+  its mother's arms he laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool
+  is slow to catch ablaze and for the moment they lay there black
+  against the brown earth; then of a sudden, like the first lifting
+  of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column of blue went trailing
+  upward. Second by second it grew until with a muffled explosion
+  the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood watching;
+  now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned to
+  the tent.</p>
+
+  <p>This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with
+  an armful of books&mdash;and something more. The fire was crackling
+  merrily now, and volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for
+  the first time he hesitated. There was still something to
+  destroy, something which he had gathered in the old felt hat from
+  off his own head; yet he hesitated. Greedy as a hungry animal
+  deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept sending out spurts
+  of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he delayed. Like
+  the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into passive
+  waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
+  this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But
+  this time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head
+  glistening in the sunlight, he started away toward the now
+  expectant broncho; and back of him the pathetic little gathering
+  of useless trinkets, bearing indelibly the mark of a woman's
+  handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with the ashes of the things
+  which had gone before.</p>
+
+  <p>Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking
+  cayuse following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back;
+  waiting impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a
+  land where prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever
+  leaves fire alive when out of his sight; and to this instinct the
+  Indian was true. Minute after minute he waited; until the flame
+  vanished and in its stead there lay a mass of blazing coals. Then
+  with a practical hand he banked the whole with a layer of earth
+  until, look where one would, not a dot of red was visible. The
+  act was the last, the culmination of preparation. At its end,
+  with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his head
+  high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in anticipation.
+  Well he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was
+  there of a second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost
+  ere the taking of the single leap that put the rider in his seat
+  the little beast was away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing
+  deep of the prairie air, the patter of his tiny hoofs a
+  continuous song upon the close-cropped sod. As two human beings
+  living side by side grow to know each other, so this dumb menial
+  had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to the
+  dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He
+  did so now; and as time passed and the miles flowed monotonously
+  beneath his galloping feet the relentless determination of the
+  man himself was repeated in that undeviating pace.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the
+  dragging hours of the September afternoon it continued. Many a
+  time before the little beast had followed the trail from sun to
+  sun. As well as the rider knew his own endurance he knew the
+  possibilities of his mount, knew that now he would not fail. He
+  did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he check it. He
+  spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual drouth
+  of fall, and as time passed on the dust the pony raised collected
+  upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he
+  noticed it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the
+  broncho grew darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on
+  the diminutive beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was
+  unconscious. Silent as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his
+  place; his lithe body conforming involuntarily to the motion, to
+  the play of muscles beneath his legs; yet as unconsciously as one
+  breathes in sleep. Not until the sun was red in the west, until
+  of its own accord the broncho had drawn up at the first bit of
+  water they had met on the way&mdash;a shallow marshy pond&mdash;did he
+  move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the man
+  washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition,
+  shook the dust from his clothing.</p>
+
+  <p>For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by
+  side the man and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved
+  and ever southward. Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but
+  the sky was clear as it had been during the day, and the man
+  needed no guide but the stars to show him the way. As he moved
+  the hand of the Indian remained on the broncho's neck; and bit by
+  bit as the time passed he felt the moist hair grow stiff and dry.
+  Then, and not until then, came the final move, the beginning of
+  the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion,
+  apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and
+  again as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly,
+  that instant the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent
+  as before, a ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into
+  the night and the solitude.</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch
+  had changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer
+  had driven about the place. One by one the cowboys had given
+  testimony of the fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At
+  first resignedly complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had
+  grown cumulatively impatient at the inevitably dragging
+  inventory. Nothing but necessity absolute in the shape of an
+  imminent foreclosure had brought him back to this land at all.
+  Delay had followed delay until at last immediate action was
+  imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in a
+  fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since
+  they had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had
+  been upon him. The team that had brought them out could not move
+  fast enough. The preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had
+  been, nevertheless dragged interminably. Strive as he might to
+  combat the impression, to ignore it, this land had of a sudden
+  become to him a land of terror. Every object which met his eye
+  called forth a recollection. Every minute that passed whispered a
+  menace. In a measure it had been so a half year ago ere he had
+  tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had occurred in
+  that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented
+  immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a
+  minute since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had
+  he been without a revolver at hand. All the previous night,
+  despite the grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had
+  bunked, a lamp had burned beside the bed; yet even then he could
+  not sleep. Whether or no he felt contrition for the past, this
+  man, he could not have told, he never paused to consider. All he
+  knew was that he had a deathly fear of this silent waste and of a
+  certain human who dwelt somewhere therein. Repugnant as
+  consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing compared
+  with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual</p>
+
+  <p>experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of
+  money, badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence.
+  Now that he was here he must needs see the transaction through;
+  he could not well do otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a
+  close and the necessity of tarrying a second night became
+  assured, the premonition of retribution, that had before lowered
+  merely as a possibility, loomed into the proportions of
+  certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink; not at
+  stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but
+  continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged
+  glances of understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal
+  was complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with
+  tobacco smoke, by the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene
+  lamp Craig had accomplished a sprawling signature and received in
+  return a check on a Chicago bank. It was already late, and very
+  soon the new owner, with a significant</p>
+
+  <p>look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt
+  "Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a
+  thinly veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself,
+  and Craig and his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes
+  thereafter the two men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite
+  his muddled brain, the former realised that the big Irishman was
+  observing him with a concentration that was significant. Ever
+  short of temper, the man's nerves were stretched to the jangling
+  point this night, and the look irritated him. Responsive, he
+  scowled prodigiously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"</p>
+
+  <p>No answer; only, if possible, the look became more analytic
+  than before.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous
+  staring that way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't
+  you like my selling and putting you out of a job?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, it's not that," refuted the Hibernian. "There are plenty
+  of other places I can get. I could stay right here for that
+  matter if I wanted to&mdash;but I don't. I wouldn't live in this house
+  any longer if my pay were doubled." As he spoke he had looked
+  away. Now of a sudden his glance returned. "I meant to quit
+  anyway, whether you sold or not."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why so?" queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was
+  repeated. "You seemed glad enough to come."</p>
+
+  <p>"I was&mdash;then," shortly.</p>
+
+  <p>"And why not now? Talk up, if you've any grievance. Don't sit
+  there like a chimpanzee, hugging it."</p>
+
+  <p>"You know why well enough," ignored the other. He passed a
+  knotty hand through his shock of red whiskers absently. "I've
+  expected the devil or worse here every night these last
+  weeks."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.</p>
+
+  <p>"God," he satirised, "who'd ever imagined you were the
+  superstitious sort! Weren't you ever in a place where anyone died
+  before?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I never was where a woman and her child were murdered,"
+  deliberately.</p>
+
+  <p>Quick as thought Craig's red face whitened.</p>
+
+  <p>"Damn you, O'Reilly," he challenged, "you're free with your
+  tongue." He checked himself. "I don't wish to quarrel with you
+  to-night, though," he conciliated.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nor I with you," returned the other impassively. "I was
+  merely telling you the truth. Besides, it's none of my affair;
+  and even if it were, I'm thinking you'll pay for it dear enough
+  before you're through."</p>
+
+  <p>Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude
+  supercilious.</p>
+
+  <p>"What the deuce do you mean, O'Reilly? You keep suggesting
+  things, but that is all. Talk plain if you know anything."</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't know anything," impassively; "unless it is that I
+  wouldn't be in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you've
+  made out of this cursed business."</p>
+
+  <p>Bit by bit Craig's face whitened. If anything the air of
+  conciliation augmented.</p>
+
+  <p>"You think circumstances weren't to blame?" he queried. "That,
+  in other words, I've brought things about as they are
+  deliberately?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't think anything. I know what you've done&mdash;and what
+  you've got to answer for."</p>
+
+  <p>Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he
+  arose unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a
+  jerk.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're beastly hard on me," he commented, "but let that pass.
+  It's probably the last time we'll ever see each other, and we may
+  as well part friends." He was back in his place again with the
+  flask before him, and with a propitiatory motion he extended the
+  liquor toward the other man. "Come, let's forget it," he
+  insinuated. "Have a drink with me."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not a drop."</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if I requested it?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Not if you got down on your knees and begged."</p>
+
+  <p>"All right." The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little
+  laugh. "I'll have to spoil it all myself, then."</p>
+
+  <p>The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down
+  swallow after swallow. The hand of the drinker trembled
+  uncontrollably, and a tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven
+  chin to the starched linen beneath.</p>
+
+  <p>"If you'll take a word of advice," commented the spectator at
+  last, "you'll cut that&mdash;for the time being at least." He
+  hesitated; then went on reluctantly. "I've been in your pay and
+  I'll try to be square with you. If you've got an atom of
+  presentiment you'll realise that this is no place for you to get
+  into the shape you're getting." Again he halted, and again with
+  an effort he gave the warning direct. "If I were you I wouldn't
+  be at this ranch a second longer than it took me to leave; not as
+  long as I had a broncho or a leg or a crutch to go on."</p>
+
+  <p>Slowly and more slowly came the words. Then followed silence,
+  with the two men staring each other face to face. Breaking it,
+  the overseer arose.</p>
+
+  <p>"I've said more than I intended already," he added, "and now I
+  wash my hands of you. Do as you please. I'm going to bed."</p>
+
+  <p>Preventing, of a sudden sobered, Craig was likewise on his
+  feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"In common decency, even if you're no friend of mine, don't
+  go, O'Reilly," he pleaded. He had no thought of superiority now,
+  no thought of malice; only of companionship and of protection. "I
+  know what you mean. I'm no fool, and what you suggest is exactly
+  what's been driving me insane these last two days. I'm going in
+  the morning, as soon as it's daylight; the team is all ordered;
+  but to-night, now&mdash;" instinctively he glanced at the window where
+  recollection pictured the darkness without&mdash;"I haven't nerve to
+  face it now. I'd go plumb mad out there alone."</p>
+
+  <p>The Irishman shrugged in silence and attempted to pass.</p>
+
+  <p>"Please don't go," repeated Craig swiftly. "I know I'm acting
+  like a child, but this cursed country's to blame. Stay with me
+  this last night. I couldn't sleep, and it's madness to be alone.
+  See me through this and I swear you'll not regret it. I swear
+  it!"</p>
+
+  <p>Just for a second O'Reilly paused; then of a sudden his face
+  flamed red through his untrimmed beard.</p>
+
+  <p>"To hell with your money!" he blazed. "I wouldn't lift my
+  finger for you if How Landor were to come this second." He
+  checked himself and took a step forward meaningly. "Besides, I
+  couldn't help you any if I would. God himself couldn't protect
+  you now unless He performed a miracle. Out of my way. I tell you
+  I'm done with you." Craig had not stirred. He did not now; and of
+  a sudden the overseer turned to pass around. As he did so for the
+  first time he faced the single window that looked north toward
+  the second ranch house: the house which How Landor had builded to
+  receive his bride. The curtain was still down, but to the
+  Irishman's quick eye there rested upon it now a dull glow that
+  was not a reflection of the light within. A second after he
+  noticed the man halted, looking at it, speculating as to its
+  meaning. Then of a sudden he realised; and in two steps he was
+  across the room and simultaneously the obscuring shade shot up
+  with a crash. Instantly following, startlingly unexpected, the
+  red glow without sprang through the glass and filled the
+  room.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fire!" announced the observer involuntarily to the sleepers
+  above. "The other ranch house is afire!" Then, as they were slow
+  in awakening, the cry was repeated more loudly: "Fire! Fire!"</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>A conflagration is the universal contagion, the one excitement
+  that never palls. Forth into the night, forgetful of his
+  companion, forgetful of all save the interest of the moment,
+  rushed O'Reilly. Half dressed, hatless, working with buttons as
+  they went, Parker, the new owner, and Mead, the lawyer, descended
+  the rickety stairs like an avalanche and without pausing to more
+  than look followed running in his wake. The unused ranch house
+  was dry as cardboard and was burning fiercely. Though there was
+  still no moon and the overseer had several minutes the start,
+  against the light they could see his running figure distinctly.
+  Standing in the living-room as they rushed through, white faced,
+  hesitant, was Clayton Craig; but though he had spoken to
+  them&mdash;they both recalled that fact afterward&mdash;neither had paused
+  to listen or to answer. That he would not follow never occurred
+  to them until minutes thereafter. Not until, panting, struggling
+  for breath after the unusual effort, they had covered the
+  intervening mile, and the heat of the already diminishing fire
+  was on their faces, did they think of him at all. Even then it
+  was not the first thought which occurred; for the moment they
+  arrived O'Reilly, who was waiting, turned, facing them
+  excitedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Do you see that?" he queried, pointing to a black band that
+  surrounded the building in a complete circle.</p>
+
+  <p>Parker nodded understandingly; but Mead, who was city bred,
+  looked mystified. "What is it?" he returned.</p>
+
+  <p>"A firebreak," explained the Irishman. "Someone didn't want
+  the blaze to spread and scattered earth clear around the place,
+  with a spade." Leaning over he picked up a clod and thumbed it
+  significantly. "It hasn't been done a half hour. The dirt isn't
+  even dry."</p>
+
+  <p>Brief as the time had been, already the frail walls were
+  settling to embers. There was nothing to do; and standing there
+  the three men looked understandingly into each other's faces. The
+  same thought stood clear on all; for all alike knew every detail
+  of the story.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Indian, How Landor," suggested Mead adequately.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," corroborated Parker, "and I'm glad of it. I'm not
+  squeamish, but the Lord knows I'd never have used the place
+  myself."</p>
+
+  <p>Of a sudden, O'Reilly, who had turned and was staring into the
+  blaze, faced about. That second he had remembered.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Craig?" he queried swiftly, glancing back the way
+  they had come. "Didn't he follow?"</p>
+
+  <p>Until that moment none of the three had thought of the other
+  man. Now they realised that they were alone. But even then two of
+  the trio did not understand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Evidently he didn't start," said Mead. "He couldn't have
+  missed the light if he did."</p>
+
+  <p>"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left,"
+  added Parker.</p>
+
+  <p>"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly.
+  "As there's a Heaven and a Hell he's not standing there now, I'll
+  wager!"</p>
+
+  <p>Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of
+  that meaning black band, the three spectators there beneath the
+  stars stood staring at each other. It was O'Reilly again who
+  broke the silence.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's
+  happened?" he interrogated unbelievingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no
+  doubt about that," said Mead.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor,
+  and he's been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone
+  back there in the ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you
+  see now? At last the Indian has found out!"</p>
+
+  <p>For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home,
+  not a man stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and
+  started back into the night.</p>
+
+  <p>"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We
+  can't get there a second too quick."</p>
+
+  <p>"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We
+  couldn't get there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over
+  before this, take my word for it."</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back
+  they were too late. As O'Reilly had anticipated, the ranch house
+  was empty, deserted. Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the
+  adjoining tool shed. Though they searched every nook, until a
+  mouse could not have escaped detection, they found not a trace of
+  him for whom they looked, nor a clue to his disappearance. Though
+  they shouted his name until they were hoarse not an answer came
+  back from the surrounding darkness. Within the ranch house
+  itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a
+  struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it
+  had been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap
+  and topcoat were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the
+  stable every horse was within its own stall: every piece of
+  saddlery was intact. While the three men were looking, attracted
+  by the blaze, the distant cowboys one by one began drifting in;
+  and when they had heard the tale joined in the search. All
+  through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns, like giant
+  fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a radius
+  of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming
+  of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches
+  appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on
+  the prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was
+  assembled. Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of
+  riders scoured the country for miles and miles. And once more,
+  from all, the testimony was as before. There was not a clue to
+  the disappearance, nor the semblance of a clue. As out of the
+  darkness of night surrounding, a great horned owl swoops down
+  upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the Indian had
+  come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as well
+  into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the
+  ranchers dispersed&mdash;and the search was over.</p>
+
+  <p>And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery
+  unsurmountable. One morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly
+  had gone, when the new master of the ranch arose it was to find a
+  wicked-looking mouse-coloured cayuse standing motionless by the
+  stable door. Upon him was neither saddle nor bridle nor mark of
+  any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless waste he had been
+  released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he had
+  returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He
+  could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out
+  there amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to
+  pass; but what it was only Nature and Nature's God, who alone
+  were witness, could ever know.</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Where the Trail Divides
+
+Author: Will Lillibridge
+
+Release Date: March 23, 2004  [eBook #11683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Jeremy Eble, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES
+
+By WILL LILLIBRIDGE
+
+Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.
+
+With Frontispiece in Colors
+By The Kinneys
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. PRESENTIMENT
+
+   II. FULFILMENT
+
+  III. DISCOVERY
+
+   IV. RECONSTRUCTION
+
+    V. THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+   VI. THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+  VII. A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+ VIII. THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+   IX. THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+    X. THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+   XI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XII. WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+ XIII. THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+  XIV. FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+   XV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+  XVI. THE RECKONING
+
+ XVII. SACRIFICE
+
+XVIII. REWARD
+
+  XIX. IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+PRESENTIMENT
+
+The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In
+addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
+limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
+throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
+effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
+the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
+country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
+man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
+rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
+his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
+rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
+sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
+wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
+the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
+repressed breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
+then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand gripping the
+butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, the other,
+big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a pendulum at his side.
+
+Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in civilisation,
+humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it here, solitary, exotic,
+no observer would have laughed. Fear, mortal dogging fear, impersonate,
+supreme, was in every look, every action. Somewhere back of that curved
+line where met the earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have
+been adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused. The
+sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop by drop from
+the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but apparently he never
+noticed it. Now and then he attempted to moisten his lips; but his
+tongue was dry as powder, and they closed again, parched as before.
+
+No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the way he was
+going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his only landmark; yet
+as hour after hour went by and the sun sank lower and lower he never
+halted, never seemed in doubt as to his destination. The country was
+growing more rolling now, almost hilly, and he approached each rise
+cautiously, vigilantly. Once, almost at his feet a covey of frightened
+prairie chickens sprang a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped
+like a stone in his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall
+grass; then, reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
+on.
+
+It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from absolute
+physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at last rebelled,
+and not even fear could suffice longer to stimulate him. The grass was
+wet with dew, and prone on his knees he moistened his lips therefrom as
+drinks many another of the fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back,
+not sleeping, but very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the
+return of strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat
+the sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and thicker,
+dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day had appeared the
+fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost brightened; until at last,
+like a curious face, the full moon, peeping above the horizon, lit up
+the surface of prairie.
+
+At last--and ere this the moon was well in the sky--the man arose,
+stretched his stiffened muscles profanely--before he had not spoken a
+syllable--listened a moment almost involuntarily, sent a swift,
+searching glance all about; then moved ahead, straight south, at the old
+relentless pace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls vacillated
+between vexation and solicitude.
+
+"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or not," he
+announced in ultimatum.
+
+Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid, folded his
+arms across his chest with an air of finality.
+
+"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the warning.
+I know your intentions are good, but you people are afraid of your own
+shadows. I know as well as you do that there are Indians in this part of
+the world, some odd thousands of them between here and the Hills, but
+they were here when I came and when you came, and we knew they were
+here. You expect to hear from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,'
+don't you?"
+
+The other made a motion of annoyance.
+
+"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he returned
+swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you were alone,
+Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine without another word;
+but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord she's down in Sioux City
+where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should be, and for her sake--"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned back.
+
+"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for little
+niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his
+son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy
+as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This isn't ancient history, man,
+but took place this very day. It's Indian massacre, and at our own
+throats. The boys are down below the falls getting ready to go right
+now. By night there won't be another white man or woman within
+twenty-five miles of you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here
+arguing. If you will stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and
+the girl. I'll take care of them myself and bring them back when the
+government sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
+reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should jump it
+there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come on."
+
+Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the tone of
+vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had appeared upon the
+scene.
+
+"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed. "Take my
+advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we leave you
+behind."
+
+"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked unemotionally.
+
+"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared. "Danger, with
+Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail! Is it possible you two
+don't realise things as they are?"
+
+"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the Tetons are
+hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us would rebel if we
+were hustled away into a corner like naughty little boys, as they are;
+but actual danger--" The woman threw a comprehensive, almost amused
+glance at the big man, her husband. "We've been here almost two years
+now; long before you and the others came. Half the hunters who pass this
+way stop here. It wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a
+whole antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
+those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would be in
+Sioux City."
+
+"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the other. "I
+don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own eyes."
+
+"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland glanced
+at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost superciliously.
+"Indians are like white people. They have their loves and hates the same
+as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran once before when everyone was
+going, and when we got back not a thing had been touched; but the weeds
+had choked our corn and the rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good
+to the Indians, and they appreciate it."
+
+A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came forward
+swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to the other.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and it's pure
+madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a big-eyed, solemn-faced
+mite of humanity, had come up now and stood staring the stranger
+silently from the side of her mother's skirts. "I hope for the best, but
+before God I never expect to see any of you again."
+
+"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right--when you return," commented
+Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and without a backward
+glance started at a rapid jog trot for the tiny settlement on the river
+two miles away.
+
+Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the departing
+frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes accentuated by the
+tightened lids.
+
+"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there ever
+was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual disturbance
+somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down at the settlement
+leaving--they'd go if they heard a coyote whistle; but Brown tells me
+there've been three different trappers from Big Stone gone through south
+in the last week, and when they leave it means something. If you say the
+word we'll leave everything and go yet."
+
+"If we do we'll never come back."
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not. We went
+before because the others went. If we left now it would be different.
+We'd be tortured day and night if we really feared--what happens now and
+then to some. We came here with our eyes wide open. We can't start again
+in civilisation. We're too old, and there's the past--"
+
+"You still blame me?"
+
+"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned toward
+the rough log shanty unemotionally.
+
+"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's hungry."
+
+A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.
+
+"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its feet, one
+hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the dishes on the rough
+pine dining table clattering with the suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who
+are you, man, and what's the trouble? Speak up--"
+
+The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced about the
+interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.
+
+His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but protruded.
+
+"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.
+
+"But who are you?"
+
+"Water!" fiercely, insistently.
+
+Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner, and
+without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made for it,
+grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after measure,
+the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping onto the sanded
+floor.
+
+"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"
+
+After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir; but at his
+side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering around the fortress of
+her skirts as when before she had argued with Frontiersman Brown, stood
+the little wide-eyed girl, type of the repressed frontier child.
+
+Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working unconsciously.
+
+"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
+Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you; you
+live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop to save
+anything."
+
+Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of perspiration.
+
+"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk so I can
+understand you."
+
+"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of the massacre
+along the Minnesota River?"
+
+"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"
+
+"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a trapper."
+Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive questioner
+doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell you along the
+way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw their signal smokes this
+very morning. They're murdering everyone--men, women, and children. It's
+Little Crow who started it, and God knows how many settlers they've
+killed. They chased me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave
+out yesterday; and since then--But come. It's suicide to chatter like
+this." He turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
+minute."
+
+Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a word; but at
+last the woman shook her head slowly.
+
+Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.
+
+"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.
+
+Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin folding over
+his soft flannel shirt.
+
+"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of amusement.
+
+"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed almost to
+roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."
+
+"There is no settlement."
+
+"What?"
+
+Rowland repeated his statement impassively.
+
+"They've--gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick again.
+
+"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of scorn.
+
+For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite tan and
+dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller whitened. The same
+expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all but insane, that had been
+with him alone out on the prairie returned, augmented. Heedless of
+appearances, all but unconscious of the presence of spectators, he
+glanced about the single room like a beaten rabbit with the hounds close
+on its trail. No avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope of
+protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his forehead, at
+the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he mopped it away with
+the back of a fat, grimy hand.
+
+In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated another
+vacant beside the board.
+
+"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be hungry as
+a coyote."
+
+"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless mood
+returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He started
+shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you think I lie.
+We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught like a beaver in a
+trap." Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did they go!"
+
+Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.
+
+"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City; part west
+toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the inevitable
+contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak. "You'd better take a
+lunch along. It's something of a journey to either place."
+
+Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous hospitality
+of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint Indian basket of
+coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely touched, from the table. A
+loaf of bread followed: a bottle of water from the wooden pail in the
+corner. "You're welcome, friend," she proffered.
+
+Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his eyes.
+
+"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm sorry--" He
+lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the doorway. "Good-bye."
+
+Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected dinner.
+
+"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think we'll run at
+sight of them," he commented.
+
+Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through which
+Mueller had gone, did not answer.
+
+"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.
+
+Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few mouthfuls,
+pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak, and, rising, the man
+made his way across the room to put an arm with rough affection around
+his wife's waist.
+
+"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.
+
+The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable after her
+former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd gone too; but
+now,"--her arms crept around his neck, closed,--"but now--now it's too
+late!"
+
+For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but involuntarily
+his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the woman could not have
+turned. He had been looking absently out the door, south over the
+rolling country leading to the deserted settlement.
+
+In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was
+still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the
+trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a
+spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank
+and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland
+watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the
+movement of a coyote or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was
+the only visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life
+responds to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late,"
+with the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the first
+time, to his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of fear, but
+near akin, as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and the red man its
+child. In a hazy way came the question whether after all it were not
+foolhardy to remain here now, to dare that invisible, intangible
+something before which, almost in panic, the others had fled. To be
+sure, precedent was with him, logic; but--of a sudden--but a minute had
+passed--his arms tightened; involuntarily he held his breath. Hans
+Mueller had been moving on and on; another half minute and he would have
+been behind the base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf
+at one's feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
+tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm of
+other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score--in front, behind, all
+about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had come,
+autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked his eyes; then,
+as came swift understanding, instinctively he shielded the woman in his
+arms from the sight, from the knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears
+from over the prairie: not a single call for help. That black swarm
+simply arose, there was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic
+through the curling heat waves; then one and all, the original dark
+figure, the score of others, disappeared--as suddenly as though the
+earth from which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
+spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
+green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.
+
+Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as pale as had
+been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against the lintel of the
+door.
+
+"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he echoed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it
+was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown
+of earth that filled the spaces between--like the longitudinal stripes
+of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough
+grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares
+of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork
+of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified
+by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature
+waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it, stretching
+northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod corn: the ears already
+formed, the ground whitened from the lavishly scattered pollen of the
+frayed tassels. In the dooryard itself was a dug well with a mound of
+weed-covered clay by its side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over
+its mouth. It was deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the
+surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a
+rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
+meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it
+was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the
+spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away the
+long, sultry afternoons.
+
+Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The single horse
+Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured, was breaking sod far
+to the west on the bank of the Jim River. Not a live thing other than
+human moved about the place. With them into this land of silence had
+come a mongrel collie. For a solitary month he had stood guard; then one
+night, somewhere in the distance, in the east where flowed the Big
+Sioux, had sounded the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately
+nearer and more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
+collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild they
+never knew, nor ever filled his place.
+
+Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that afternoon of
+late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he had seen; elaborately
+careful likewise to carry out the family programme as usual.
+
+"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.
+
+Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent corroboration.
+
+"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to all fours
+and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.
+
+"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the doorway as
+only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun and the dust;
+climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly about his neck, down
+the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the pillow and the patchwork quilt
+with a deftness born of experience.
+
+"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.
+
+"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.
+
+"Sing! I can't sing, kid."
+
+"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"
+
+"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."
+
+"Please, papa; pretty please!"
+
+The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do, braced himself
+in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he knew of the song again
+and again--his voice rough and unmusical as that of a crow, echoing and
+re-echoing in the narrow space--bent over at last, touched his bearded
+lips softly to the winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an
+irresistible catch in his breath, silently to the surface, sent one
+swift glance sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
+cabin.
+
+Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer shotgun,
+and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy beside the door.
+
+"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he overhauled
+the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not deceived. This done,
+notwithstanding the fact that the sun still beat scorchingly hot
+thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit his pipe, drew his
+weather-stained sombrero low over his face, through half-closed eyes
+inspected the lower lands all about, impassively silent awaited the
+coming of the inevitable. Of a sudden there was a touch on his shoulder,
+and, involuntarily starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret
+Rowland.
+
+The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.
+
+"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
+something."
+
+In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more brightly as
+Rowland drew hard.
+
+"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"
+
+The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded reluctant
+corroboration.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"You--saw them?"
+
+Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as well, after
+all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of the rise before
+them. "They waylaid Mueller there."
+
+"And you--"
+
+"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all he--Margaret!"
+
+"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous suggestion!"
+
+"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the quiver of her
+body against his, the involuntary catch of her breath. "Forgive me,
+Margaret."
+
+"You're not to blame. Perhaps--Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"
+
+Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above the
+scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very breath of
+prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or
+a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant
+drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf
+contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In
+sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of
+the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had
+done Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
+"Water! Water! Give us drink!"
+
+Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the woman; like
+children awed by the sudden realisation of their helplessness, their
+hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute understanding. Usually at this time
+of day with nothing to do they slept; but neither thought of sleep now.
+As passed the slow time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour
+of supper; but likewise hunger passed them by. Something very like
+fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at
+motionless impassive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that
+nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod corn
+again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded in
+preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out, out--.
+
+"Sam!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You saw, too?"
+
+An answering pressure of the hand.
+
+"The eyes of him, only the eyes--out there at the edge of the corn!"
+
+"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his breath
+tightened. "They're all about: a score at least--I don't know how many.
+The tall grass there to the east is alive--"
+
+"Sam! They're there again--the eyes! Oh, I'm afraid--Sam--baby!"
+
+"Hush! Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our only chance.
+Let them make the first move." Again the hand pressure so tight that,
+although she made no sound, the blood left the woman's fingers. "Tell me
+you forgive me, Margaret; before anything happens. I'm a criminal to
+have stayed here,--I see it now, a criminal!"
+
+"Don't!"
+
+"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."
+
+"I love you, Sam."
+
+Again in the expanse of grass to the east there was motion; not in a
+single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was visible, not a
+sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here and there it stirred,
+and became motionless, and stirred again.
+
+"And--Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take either of us
+alive. The last one--I can't say it. You understand."
+
+"Yes, I understand. The last load--But maybe--"
+
+"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this way
+if--Margaret, in God's name--"
+
+"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely beneath the
+grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see her again; must,
+must--"
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+"I must, I say!"
+
+"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless we show
+the way. Think--as you love her."
+
+"But if anything should happen to us--She'll starve!"
+
+"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come--now; and Landor
+knows."
+
+"Oh, Sam, Sam!"
+
+There was silence. No human being could give answer to that mother wail.
+
+Again time passed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that were a hell
+of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun sank from sight. In
+the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed red as from a distant
+conflagration. For and eternity previous it seemed to the silent
+watchers there had been no move; now again at last the grass stirred; a
+corn plant rustled where there was no breeze; out into the small open
+plat surrounding the house sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across
+the clearing, headed for the protecting grass, halted at the edge
+irresolute--scurried back again at something it saw.
+
+"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained, unnatural.
+"They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."
+
+"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural tone!
+
+"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man dies."
+
+"Sam Rowland--my husband!"
+
+"Margaret--my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes, regardless of
+everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how can you forgive me, can
+God forgive me!" Tight in his arms he kissed her again and again;
+passionately, in abandon. "I've always loved you, Margaret; always,
+always!"
+
+"And I you, man; and I you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on the field
+mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water hole, so it came.
+Upon the silence of night sounded the hoarse call of a catbird where no
+bird was, and again, and again. In front of the maize patch, always in
+front, a dark form, a mere shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out
+clear against the light of sky. To right and left appeared others, as
+motionless as boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler
+Rowland been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No
+Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand.
+Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited
+passive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight
+before him, God alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again
+in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures
+against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch
+of the cabin roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in
+front. Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge
+pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in front.
+Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the rear, reached the
+edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the maize patch, out of the
+grass, seemingly out of space itself, came a new cry--the trilling call
+of the prairie owl. It was the signal. Like twin drops of rain from a
+cloudless sky fell the two figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter
+a sound, could offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere,
+everywhere, swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them
+forth in legion. In the multitude of hands he was as a child. Within the
+space of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything had
+happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the clearing
+before the door not a human being was visible, not a live thing; only on
+the thatched roof, silent as before, patient as fate, awaited two other
+shadows, darker but by contrast with the weather-coloured grass.
+
+Minutes passed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the silence.
+Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a thing of which
+insanity is made.
+
+"Sam!" called a voice softly.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Sam!" repeated more loudly.
+
+Again no answer of voice or of action.
+
+In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly fearful.
+
+"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped outside.
+
+A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The earth was
+not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie owl. As dropped
+the figures from above there broke forth the Sioux war-cry: long drawn
+out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely
+than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a
+score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth.
+Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they
+swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in
+their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they
+seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage abandon, of drunken
+exhilaration in the cunning that had won the game without a shot from
+the white man's gun, without the injury of a single warrior. They were
+in haste, and yet they were not in haste. They looted the cabin like
+fire and then fought among themselves for the plunder. They applied the
+torch to the shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then
+capered fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until, tinder
+dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all, purposely reserved
+as a climax, they gave their attention to the pair of half-naked, bound
+and gagged figures in their midst. Then it was the scene became an orgy
+indeed. The havoc preceding had but whetted their appetite for the
+finale. Savagery personified, cruelty unqualified, deadly hate,
+primitive lust--every black passion lurking in the recesses of the human
+mind stalked brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister,
+unashamed. But let it pass. It was but a repetition of a thousand
+similar scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of
+the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a nation's
+expansion, as its progression.
+
+It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle of
+prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come,
+unbelievably impassive when but an hour before they had been
+irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their
+journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the
+print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows,
+forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth,
+they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little
+river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement,
+the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to
+other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man
+who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they
+moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
+almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat
+of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer
+rain, the rustle of their passing bodies against the dense vegetation a
+soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.
+Night and distance swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined
+grainfield, the smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the
+glaring white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the
+background of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for
+this, and one other thing--a single sound, repeated again and again,
+dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.
+
+"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its depths
+that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm afraid!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as
+necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To
+the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight
+feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped
+between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the
+square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close
+together and pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by
+numerous portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers
+near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated, mingled and
+intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as diverse a gathering of
+humans as ever graced a single structure even in this land of myriad
+types. Virtually the entire population of frontier Yankton was there.
+Likewise the settlers from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the
+far-away country of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground
+of the Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the
+peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild west of
+the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the Blackfeet, the
+Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the alarm of rapine and of
+massacre had spread afar. Very late to arrive, doggedly holding their
+own until rumour became reality unmistakable, was the colony from the
+Jim River valley to the east; but even they had finally surrendered, the
+dogging grip of fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their
+throats, had fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the
+Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as you
+please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux Falls.
+Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for with the actual
+retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow mile, thanking the
+Providence which had permitted them to arrive unmolested, a
+sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old smoothbore cannon
+before the big south gate and craved admittance. Out to them went
+Colonel William Landor, colonel by courtesy, scion of many generations
+of Landors, rancher at present, cattle king of the future. The
+conversation that followed there with the east reddening in the morning
+sun was very brief, very swift to the point.
+
+"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing them
+collectively, compellingly.
+
+"My name is McPherson."
+
+"Mine is Horton."
+
+"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."
+
+"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered McPherson who
+took the lead.
+
+"From where?"
+
+"Sioux Falls."
+
+"Any news?"
+
+Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now a day
+old.
+
+"And the rest of your settlement--where are they?"
+
+McPherson told him.
+
+"They all went, you say?"
+
+For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he
+qualified.
+
+"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company
+collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That you--men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl
+alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously.
+"You come here with that story and ask me to let you inside?"
+
+McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently, his
+shoulders squared.
+
+"We're here," he announced laconically.
+
+"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids. "Moreover,
+strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned forward involuntarily;
+his breath came quick. "It gives me the opportunity, sir, to tell you to
+your face that you're a damned coward." In spite of an obvious effort at
+repression, the great veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A
+damned coward, sir!"
+
+"What! You call me--"
+
+"Men! Gentlemen!"
+
+"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was
+himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood
+shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done
+with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When
+I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a
+time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the
+Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had
+been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight,
+every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here.
+If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade--not if
+the Santees scalped you before my eyes."
+
+For a second there was silence, inaction.
+
+"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried--"
+
+"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there
+are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned
+to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,--I'm afraid it is;
+but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me?
+Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"
+
+"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of
+speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're
+all with you--that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't
+cats, so we can't croak but once--and that might as well be now as ten
+years from now."
+
+"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the
+motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first
+twenty to return, go."
+
+From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.
+
+"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.
+
+No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.
+
+For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an inverted V;
+then silent as they, equally swiftly, he followed.
+
+Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle back. Not in
+ignorance of possibilities in store did they come. They had no delusions
+concerning the red brother, these frontiersmen. Nor in the hot
+adventurous blood of youth did they respond. One and all were
+middle-aged men; many had families. All save Landor were strangers to
+the man they went to seek. Yet at a moment's call they responded; as
+they took it for granted others would respond were they in need. Had
+they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it
+they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal
+brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated
+abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious,
+smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all
+to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant
+quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled,
+parchment-faced veteran, who alone had followed the Missouri to its
+source and, stranger to relate, had alone returned with his scalp. Then
+came Landor himself, the wiry little mustang he rode all but blanketed
+under the big army saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as
+though an event of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson,
+drew up in place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat
+appreciatively, but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one
+but many riders; a half dozen, a score,--enough to make up the
+allotment, and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly
+accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho, the
+mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of apparel,
+from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or saddleless,
+across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel of a long rifle, at
+the hip of every rider hung a holster, from every belt peeped the hilt
+of a great knife. Long ere this word of the unusual had passed about,
+and now, on the rise of ground at the back of the stockade, a goodly
+group had gathered. Silent as the prairies, as the morning itself, they
+watched the scene below, awaited the _denouement._ Not without influence
+was the taciturn example of the red man in this land from which he was
+slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to the east the red face of
+the morning sun was just peeping when Landor separated himself from the
+waiting group, led the way to the big gate and paused. "Twenty only,
+men," he repeated. "All ready."
+
+First through the opening went Crosby.
+
+"One."
+
+Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.
+
+"Two."
+
+From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came Scotchman
+McPherson; but though he passed fair before the leader's eyes and not a
+yard away, no number was spoken; no hint of recognition, of cognisance,
+crossed the latter's face. Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited
+the next in line, then voiced the one word: "Three."
+
+On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts silent--halting
+at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and twenty men who counted
+but as a score, started into motion, halted again; as by common consent
+every head save one of a sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the
+watching group back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All
+but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out
+where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
+tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the column one
+rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear. Implacable as
+Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that
+would bring with it renewed activity.
+
+And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its
+place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From his position by the
+gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind him, impassive again as
+figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line. At first a mere walk,
+the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot. By this time the
+confines of the tiny frontier town were passed. Before them on the one
+hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown
+from its coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
+glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad
+dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie. Straight
+into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the
+first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of
+civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier,
+which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off
+the passing miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.
+
+Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
+settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was the
+prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before; yet
+with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead, straight as a line drawn
+taut from point to point. Nothing stopped their advance, nothing made
+them turn aside. Seemingly destitute of animal life, the country fairly
+teemed at their approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the
+blue-faced anemone, were everywhere; singly, in coveys, in flocks.
+Troops of antelope, startled in their morning feeding, scurried away
+from the path of the invaders; curious as children, paused on the safety
+of the nearest rise, to watch the horsemen out of sight. Every marshy
+spot, every prairie pond, had its setting of ducks. The teal, the
+mallard, the widgeon, the shoveller, the canvasback--all mingled in the
+loud-voiced throng that arose before the leader's approach, then, like
+smoke, vanished with almost unbelievable swiftness into the hazy
+distance. Prairie dog towns, populous as cities of man a minute before
+their approach, went lifeless, desolate, as they passed through. In the
+infrequent draws and creek beds between the low, rolling hills,
+great-eyed cotton tails scampered to cover or, like the antelope, just
+out of harm's way, watched the passage of this strange being, man.
+Wonder of wonders that display of life would have been to another
+generation; but of it these grim-faced riders were apparently
+unconscious, oblivious. Their eyes were not for things near at hand, but
+for the distance, for the possibility that lurked just beyond that
+far-away rise which formed their horizon, when they had reached that for
+the next beyond, and the next.
+
+Hour by hour the morning wore away. Hotter and hotter rose the sun above
+them. Instead of drops of dew, tiny particles of sun-dried grass flew
+away from beneath the leaders' feet, mingled with the dust of prairie,
+became a cloud shutting the leaders from the sight of those in the rear.
+From being a mere breath, the south wind augmented, became positive,
+insistent. Hot with the latent heat of many days, it sang in their ears
+as they went, bit all but scorching, at their unprotected hands and
+throats. Under its touch the horses' necks, dark before with sweat,
+became normal again: between their legs, under the, edges of the great
+saddles where it had churned into foam, dried into white powder, like
+frostwork amid the hair. Gradually with the change, their breathing
+became audible, louder and louder, until in unison it mingled with the
+dull impact of their feet on the heavy sod like the exhaust of many
+engines. No horseman who values the life of the beast between his legs,
+fails to heed that warning. Landor did not, but at the first dawdling
+prairie creek that offered water and, with its struggling fringe of
+willows, a suggestion of shade, he gave the word to halt, and for four
+mortal, blistering hours while, man and beast alike, the others slept,
+kept watch over them from the nearest rise. Relentless to others this
+man might be, but not even his dearest enemy could accuse him of sparing
+himself.
+
+It was three by the clock when again they took up the trail. It was 3.45
+when they swam what is now the Vermilion River, the last water-course of
+any size on their way. The dew was again beginning to gather when, well
+to the south, they approached the bordering hills that concealed the
+site of Sioux Falls settlement. Then for the first time since they
+began that last relay Landor gave an order.
+
+"It'll be a miracle if we don't find Sioux there in the bottom, men," he
+prophesied. "Perhaps there are a whole band, perhaps it'll only be
+stragglers; but no matter how many or how few there may be, charge them.
+If they run you know what to do--this is no holiday outing. If they
+stand, charge them all the harder." He faced his horse to the north and
+gave the word to go. "It's our only chance," he completed.
+
+What followed belongs to history. Over that last intervening rise they
+went like demons. The first to gain the crown, to look down into the
+valley beyond, was Landor. As he did so, grim Anglo-Saxon as he was, his
+whole attitude underwent a transformation. Back to the others he turned
+his face, and, plain as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage,
+and the lust of battle.
+
+"They're there; a hundred, if a single red!" he shouted. "Come on!" and
+the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse's flanks, dug until
+the blood spurted.
+
+But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction of the
+time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground. Outnumbering
+those who charged many times, it was not in savage nature to face that
+unformed oncoming motley of howling, bloodthirsty maniacs. Slowly at
+first began the retreat; then as, with great swiftness, the others
+shortened the distance intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a
+stampede. Every brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the
+dismantled ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling
+like their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for the
+thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in their
+ears, cutting at the vegetation about them. Into its friendly cover they
+plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the surface of a lake, and were
+swallowed from sight. That is, all but one. That one, unhorsed by
+accident, was left to face that oncoming flood. . . . But why linger.
+Like the charge itself, his fate is history. These men were but human,
+and thick about them were the ashes from the roof-trees of their
+friends.
+
+Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind, musical with the
+drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs from the low land
+adjoining the river, melancholy with the call of the catbird, with the
+infrequent note of the whip-poor-will, was upon the land of the Mandans
+when the score and one, their dripping ponies once more dry, took up the
+last relay of their journey. Night had caught them there in the deserted
+settlement, and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait. Now, far to
+the east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the face
+of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves through the heated
+air, slowly rising, lit up the level country softly as by early
+twilight. Lingeringly, almost reluctantly, Landor got into his saddle.
+Just to his left, impassive as the night, well to the front of the
+company as he had been that mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman
+McPherson. Not once since that early morning scene at Fort Yankton had
+he spoken a word, not once had he been addressed, had another man shown
+consciousness of his presence. A pariah, he had so far kept them
+company; a pariah, he now awaited the end. A moment, fair in his seat,
+Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for hours came
+to pass. Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein beside the other man.
+
+"McPherson," he said, "this morning I called you coward. That you are
+not such you have proven, you are proving now. For this reason I ask
+your pardon. For this reason as well, I give you warning. What we will
+find--where we are going, I do not doubt, now. I do not believe you
+doubt. For it I hold you responsible. You had best turn back before
+belief becomes certainty." Unnaturally precise, cold as November
+raindrops came the words, the sentences. Deadly in meaning was the pause
+that followed. "I repeat, you had best turn back."
+
+For a long half minute, face to face there in the moonlight, Landor
+waited; but no answer came. Just perceptibly he shifted in his place.
+
+"I may forget, give my promise of the morning the lie. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+Another half minute, ghastly in its significance, passed; then without a
+word Landor turned. "You have heard, men," he said, "and may God be my
+judge."
+
+The full moon was well in the sky, showing clear every detail in that
+scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter, patter sounded
+their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more loud they grew, muffled
+yet penetrating in the silence of night, always augmenting in volume.
+Out of the shadows figures came dimly into view, taking form against the
+background of constellations. The straining of leather, the music of
+steel in bit and buckle, the soft swish of the sun-dried grass
+proclaimed them very near; then across the trampled corn patch, into the
+open where had stood the shanty, where now was a thin grey layer of
+ashes, came the riders, and drew rein; their weary mounts crowding each
+other in fear at something they saw. Like a storm cloud they came; like
+the roll of thunder following was the oath which sprang to the lips of
+every rider save one. Good men they were, God-fearing men; yet they
+swore like pirates, like humans when ordinary speech is not adequate. In
+the pause but one man acted, and none intervened to prevent what he did.
+Out into the open, away from the others, rode Scotchman McPherson;
+halted, his hand on the holster at his hip. For a second, and a second
+only, he sat so, the white moonlight drawing clear every line of his
+grizzled face, his stocky figure. Then deliberately his hand lifted,
+before him there appeared a sudden blaze of fire, upon the silence there
+broke a single revolver report, from beneath his lifeless bulk the
+horse he rode broke free, gave one bound, by instinct halted, trembling
+in every muscle; then over all, the quick and the dead, returned
+silence: silence absolute as that of the grave.
+
+How long those twenty men sat there, gazing at that mute, motionless
+figure on the ground not one could have told. Death was no stranger to
+them. For years it had lurked behind every chance shrub they passed, in
+the depths of every ravine, in the darkness of night, from every tangle
+of rank prairie grass in broad daylight. To it from long familiarity
+they had become callous; but death such as this, deliberate,
+cold-blooded, self-inflicted--it awed them while it fascinated, held
+them silent, passive.
+
+"In God's name!" Again it was Landor who roused them, Landor with his
+hand on the holster at his hip, Landor who sat staring as one who doubts
+his own sight. "Am I sane, men? Look, there to your right!"
+
+They looked. They rubbed their eyes and looked again.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned," voiced Crosby; and no man had ever heard him
+express surprise before. To the north, from the edge of the tall
+surrounding grass, moving slowly, yet without a trace of hesitation or
+of fear, coming straight toward them across the trampled earth, were two
+tiny human figures, hand in hand. No wonder they who saw stared; no
+wonder they doubted their eyes. One, the figure to the right, was plump
+and uncertain of step and all in white; white which in the moonlight
+and against the black earth seemed ghostly. The other was slim and
+certain of movement and dark--dark as a copper brown Indian boy, naked
+as when he came on earth. On they came, the brown figure leading, the
+white following trustfully, until they were quite up to the watchers,
+halted, still hand in hand.
+
+"How," said a voice, a piping childish voice.
+
+Like rustics at a spectacle the men stared, turned mystified faces each
+to each, and stared anew. All save one. Off from his horse sprang
+Landor, caught the bundle of white in his arms.
+
+"Baby Rowland! Baby Bess! And you,"--he was staring the other from head
+to toe, the distance was short,--"who are you?"
+
+"Uncle Billy," interrupting, ignoring, the tiny bit of femininity
+nestled close, "Uncle Billy, where's papa and mamma! I want them."
+
+Closer and closer the big bachelor arms clasped their burden; unashamed,
+there with the others watching him, he kissed her.
+
+"Never mind now, Kiddie. Tell me how you came here, and who this is with
+you."
+
+About the great neck crept two arms, clinging tightly.
+
+"He just came, Uncle Billy. I was calling for papa. Papa put me to sleep
+and forgot me. The boy heard me and took me out. I was afraid at first,
+but--but he's a nice boy, only he won't talk and--and--" The narrative
+halted, the tousled head buried itself joyously. "Oh, I'm so glad you
+came, Uncle Billy!"
+
+In silence Landor's eyes made the circle of interested watching faces,
+returned to the winsome brown face so near his own.
+
+"Aren't you hungry, Kid?" he ventured.
+
+On his shoulder the dark poll shook a negative.
+
+"No. We had corn to eat. The boy roasted it. He made a big fire. He's a
+nice boy, only--only he won't say anything."
+
+Again Landor's eyes made the circle, halted at the intrepid brown waif
+who, that first word of greeting spoken, had silently stared him back.
+
+"You're sure you don't know anything more, baby? You didn't hear
+anything until the boy came?"
+
+"No, Uncle Billy. I was asleep. When I woke up it was dark, and I was
+hungry and--and--" At last it had come: the spattering, turbulent tear
+storm. Her small body shook, her arms clasped tighter and tighter. "Oh,
+Uncle Billy, I want my papa and mamma. I tried to find them, and I
+couldn't. Please find them for me, Uncle Billy, Please! Please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was well past midnight. The big full moon, high now in the sky, cast
+their shadows almost about their feet when, their labour complete, the
+party took up the homeward trail. But there were twenty no longer. At
+their head as before rode Landor, in his arms not a rifle but a blanket;
+a blanket from which as they journeyed on came now and anon a sound
+that was alien indeed: the sobs of a baby girl who wept as she slept.
+Back of him, likewise as when they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby;
+but he, too, was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in
+front of him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat,
+was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake
+indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him,
+every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there,
+what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know,
+could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew
+only the bizarre, with whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now,
+weary to death with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable
+reaction from the excitement of the past hours, they moved away, to the
+south, to the west. In front of them, glittering in the moonlight,
+seemingly infinite, stretched the waves of the rolling prairie, bare as
+the sea in a calm. Behind them, growing lesser and lesser minute by
+minute, merging into the infinite white, were three black dots like tiny
+boats on the horizon's edge. On they went, a half mile, a mile, looked
+behind; and, with an awe no familiarity could prevent, faced ahead anew.
+Back of them now as well as before, uniformly endless, uniformly
+magnificent, stretched that giant ocean: silent, serene, as mother
+nature, as nature's master, God himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+RECONSTRUCTION
+
+The day of the Indian terror had passed. No longer did the name of
+Little Crow carry stampede in its wake. The battles of Big Mound, of
+White Stone Hill, and of the Bad Lands had been fought, had become mere
+history; dim already to the newcomer as Lexington or Bull Run. Still in
+the memory, to be sure, was the half-invited massacre of Custer at the
+Little Big Horn; but the savage genius of Sitting Bull, of Crazy Horse,
+and of Gall, who had made the last great encounter bloodily unique in
+the conflict of the red man and the white, was never to be duplicated.
+Rightly or wrongly deprived of what they had once called their own,
+driven back, back on the crest of the ever-increasing wave of
+settlement, facing the alternative of annihilation or of submergence in
+that flood, the Sioux had halted like a wild thing at bay, with their
+backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot of earth on the face of
+the globe, the Black Hills country, and as a cornered animal ever
+fights, had battled ferociously for a lost supremacy. But, robbers
+themselves, holding the land on the insecure title of might alone,
+fighting to the end, they had at last succumbed to the inevitable: the
+all-conquering invasion of the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a
+name stood out: "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," "Little Crow,"
+"Sitting Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall,"
+"John Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic
+suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had long since
+passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to desperation, might
+incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an incorrigible by a
+harrowing reference to one or to another; yet to the incoming swarms of
+land-hungry settlers they were mere supplanted play actors, fit heroes
+for fiction, for romance perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small
+herds safe in the pasture of a reservation, preserved as a relic of a
+species doomed to extinction.
+
+A thing at which to marvel was the growth of the eastern border of
+Dakota Territory in this, the time of the great boom. History can
+scarcely find its parallel. In the space of a decade the census leaped
+from two-score thousand to nearly a half million. New towns sprang up
+like fungi in a night. Railroads reached out like the tentacles of an
+octopus, where a generation before the buffalo had tramped its tortuous
+trail. Prosperous farms came into being in the meadows where the
+antelope had pastured. Artesian wells, waterworks, electric lights,
+street railways, colleges, all the adjuncts of a higher civilisation,
+blossomed forth under the magic wand of Eastern capital. Doomed to
+reaction, as an advancing pendulum is doomed to retrace its cycle, was
+this premature evolution; but temporarily, as a springtime freshet
+bears onward the driftwood in its path, it carried its predecessor, the
+unconventional, fighting, wild-loving adventurer, before. On it went, on
+and on until at last, fairly blocking its path, was the big, muddy,
+dawdling Missouri. Then for the first time it halted; halted in a pause
+that was to last for a generation. But it had fulfilled its mission.
+High and dry on the western side of the barrier, imbued as when they had
+settled to the east, with the restless spirit of the frontier,
+unsubdued, unchanged, it cast its burden. There, as they had done
+before, the newcomers immediately took root, and, after the passage of a
+year, were all but unconscious of the migration. Over their heads was
+the same blue prairie sky. Around them, treeless, trackless, was the
+same rolling, illimitable prairie land. In but one essential were
+conditions changed; yet that one was epoch-making. Heretofore,
+surrounded by a common, an alien danger, compelled at a second's warning
+to band together for life itself, all men were brothers. Now, with the
+passing of the red peril, with eradication of necessity for any manner
+of restraint, an abandon of licence, of recklessness, born of the wild
+life, of overflowing animal vitality insufficiently employed, swept the
+land like a contagion. Unique in the history of man's development was
+this the era of the cowboy, as fantastic now as the era of the red
+peril, its predecessor; yet vital, bizarre, throbbing, unconsciously
+human, as no other period has ever been, as in all probability none
+will ever be again. Generous, spendthrift, murderous when crossed,
+chivalrous, fearless, profane, yet fundamentally religious, inebriate,
+wilful and docile by turns, ceaselessly active, eternally discontented,
+seeking they knew not what, they were their own evil genius; as
+certainly as nature surrounded them with Heaven, they supplied their own
+Hell and, impartial, chose from each to weave the web of their lives.
+
+Of this period, life of this life, was Colonel William Landor; colonel
+no longer, plain Bill, from the river to the Hills, husband these ten
+years now, but not father, Cattle King of an uncontested range. Of this
+life likewise, bred in it, saturated in it, was a dark young woman, his
+adopted daughter, two years past her majority, Elizabeth Rowland Landor
+by name. Of it most vitally of all, born of it, rooted in it through
+unknown centuries of ancestral domicile, was a copper-brown young man,
+destitute as a boy of twelve of a trace of beard, black as a prairie
+crow of hair and eyes, deep-lunged like a race-track thoroughbred, wiry
+as a mustang, garbed as a white man, but bearing the liquid name of a
+Teton Sioux, "Ma-wa-cha-sa, the lost pappoose," yet known wherever the
+Santee Massacre and the tale of his appearance was known, as "How"
+Landor. Of this period, last of all, was the great B.B.--Buffalo
+Butte--ranch, giant among the giants, whose brand was familiar as his
+own name to every cowboy west of the Missouri, whose hospitable ranch
+house, twenty-odd miles from the vest pocket metropolis of Coyote
+Centre, which in turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles
+from nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into
+this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the reverse
+side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one lunger," who, with
+gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie sun and prairie air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE LAND OF LICENCE
+
+For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay Creek ranch
+had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the day previous they
+had suddenly blown in from the north; a great cloud of yellow dust,
+lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty panting of winded bronchos, a
+single demoniacal dare-man whoop heralding their coming, a groaning of
+straining leather, a jingle of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented
+stillness even in this silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was,
+Pete Sweeney, "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was
+who first entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who,
+ere ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only man
+who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute ownership. Pete
+it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared away, assisted in
+laying out that same misguided citizen, in decent fellowship, beneath
+the cottonwood bar, and thrust an adequate green roll in the stiffening
+hand for funeral expenses.
+
+"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I don't visit
+you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to make it square, and
+this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all. D'ye understand?" and from
+Manning, the greybearded storekeeper, to Rank Judge, the one-legged
+saddler, there was no one to say him nay, none to contest his right of
+authority.
+
+By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre. Under
+ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even aggressively, upheld by
+its representative, Marshal Jim Burton. Likewise there was no lack of
+pilgrims, who by devious and circuitous routes sought his residence on
+this occasion, with tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one
+and all departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
+not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an even more
+indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one regretted the
+mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who imparted the information,
+no one deplored the lost opportunity for distinction so much as she; but
+nevertheless the fact remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was
+thrown upon its own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as
+best it might.
+
+Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the beginning
+of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned, and that more than
+intermittently, all but continuously, the red liquor had flowed; to the
+alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins and his straw-haired Norwegian
+rival across the street--Gus Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were
+who fancied that ere this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity
+for absorption had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable
+intention of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
+themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town,
+all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where
+they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in
+peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master,
+had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of
+law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
+corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye
+and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of solid sustenance,
+was, to all visible indications, as fresh and aggressive as at the
+beginning.
+
+Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor down the
+single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its face. One and
+all had succumbed long before to the god of gunpowder. Not a stray dog,
+and Coyote Centre was plethoric of canines, raised its voice nor showed
+even a retreating tail near the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire
+for deepest obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden
+annihilation to the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a
+cyclone were imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They
+were a tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
+experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object lesson
+of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at last patience
+was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of the town hall a tiny
+group of men were gathered, a group who spoke scarcely above a whisper,
+who kept a sharp lookout all surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch
+of an eyelash to disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient.
+In the single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
+plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy bearded, had
+the floor.
+
+"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included indiscriminately. "You
+come here with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of
+you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand
+and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of
+the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including
+disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
+Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned
+cowards, I say."
+
+In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud Smith, the
+weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat hurt him.
+
+"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and agin p'raps
+you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new marshal, but as
+fer's I've been able to discover there's no one hereabouts hankerin' fer
+the job." He spat at a crack in the cottonwood floor meditatively,
+struck true, and seemed mildly pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin'
+comfortably rapidly as it is, without adding any marshals to the
+collection. I've known Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private
+advice is to let him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the
+river to supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
+feelin' as he's feelin' now."
+
+"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky Missourian,
+who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the first time he isn't
+looking."
+
+For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
+meditatively.
+
+"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he commented at
+last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of Pete not lookin'. I
+ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the feller who tackles that
+job to say his prayers before he starts. He won't have much time
+afterwards." With a swifter movement than he had yet made, the speaker
+slid from his place to the floor, involuntarily cast a glance into the
+street without. "I ain't perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and
+I ain't lookin' fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it
+ain't at all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound
+to peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better scatter
+and let it blow over."
+
+"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if you want
+to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying here as long as I
+see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."
+
+"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning with his
+deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well, maybe I've got
+something to say about that." He came out from behind the counter, faced
+the lanky figure before him, with deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty
+stiff-backed boy in the daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the
+dark--" He halted and his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if
+you're so anxious for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you
+take the job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth
+curled again.
+
+Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went white.
+Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered dog, and until
+it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.
+
+"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I might ask you
+the same question. I ain't no property interest here being destroyed
+like you have. Why don't you do the trick yourself, dad?"
+
+For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the old man
+stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to square his
+shoulders; but they remained round as before.
+
+"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand--minus the index and middle
+fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled with rheumatism.
+"Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny storeroom and back
+again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why don't I?" repeated for
+the third time. "Do you imagine for the fraction of a second, Walt
+Wagner, that if I was back twenty years and sound like you are, I'd be
+asking another man why he didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly,
+he stood there before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent,
+distorted senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
+and ask that question of me?"
+
+In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked nervously. His face
+went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud Smith it was, Bud Smith,
+five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie wind had made like a lobster
+display in a cafe window, who had halted at the door, but who now came
+back, he it was who spoke.
+
+"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested slowly, "you
+might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by intimatin' that I had cold
+feet. We'll listen to that, too, any time you see fit to explain,
+pardner."
+
+"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become normal
+again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his elbows back
+against the glass showcase, glancing the while down at the small man,
+almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your benefit, I was merely
+observing that you filled the bill of what dad here said a bit ago we
+all were." He smiled tantalisingly; again showing the vacancy in his
+dental arch. "You remember what that was, don't you?"
+
+"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit. To be dead
+sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."
+
+Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his place behind
+the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he moved. In it
+likewise there was an interruption from without; the subdued clatter of
+a horse's feet on the packed earth of the street, the straining of
+leather, as the man, its rider, alighted, a moment later the click of
+the door latch as the same man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered
+and halted abruptly at what he saw. But those within did not notice.
+Silent as the night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete
+Sweeney, they were staring at those two actors there before them.
+
+"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin' fer
+trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller of my own
+age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to hear you say it.
+I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt Wagner."
+
+Again within the room there was silence, and again from without there
+approached an interruption. From up the street, from out the door of Red
+Jenkins's joint it came; the patter, patter of many feet, leading it the
+heavy clump of mighty cowhide boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the
+jingle of spurs on those same boots at every step, the deep breathing of
+a cowman intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
+doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and nearer.
+Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had noticed. The
+arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In the depths of his
+pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly, nervously. His face had
+gone whiter than before. Once he had opened his lips to speak, revealing
+the blackness of the vacant tooth; but he had closed them again
+silently. Now at last he cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a
+long breath. Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew.
+What if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
+at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street swung
+open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it, blocking it,
+appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman, while upon their ears,
+like the menacing bellow of an enraged bull, burst a voice--the
+challenging, bullying voice of Pete Sweeney, inebriate.
+
+"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was no answer
+repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"
+
+For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction while
+every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker; at first
+almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the interruption
+came over them, with sensations as divergent as their various individual
+minds. There was no need to tell them who looked at that towering,
+intruding figure that tragedy lurked in the air, that death on the
+slightest provocation, at the twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in
+those big twin Colts lying menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic
+escaped was a pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with
+Pete Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god--bull
+mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
+hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad from the
+soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to the bulging
+holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt around his waist,
+to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red silk handkerchief about his
+throat, to the dark unshaven face, to the drink-reddened nose, to the
+mere slits of eyes, to the upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of
+wiry hair; bad in detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.
+
+"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence he came a
+step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart. "What've you got to say
+for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker meeting. Speak up. What're you all
+doin' here?"
+
+Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red Bud Smith.
+
+"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained evenly.
+
+"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes. "You lie by
+the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of skunks." From man to
+man he passed the look, halted at last at the figure of the lanky
+Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to pot me, and I'm lookin' to
+see the colour of his hair. Who was it, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as before Smith
+spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do. You can own the whole
+county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend to your knittin'. Dad here
+wants to close up, now."
+
+"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon as you
+name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted, dropped like
+claws on the figure of the little land man. "You know who it is I'm
+lookin' for. Tell me his name."
+
+"You don't know me very well, Pete."
+
+"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was inspecting
+the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its paws. "In other
+words, you mean you know, but won't tell me." Lingeringly, baitingly,
+almost exultingly, he was dragging the _denouement_ on and on. "That's
+what you mean to imply, is it?"
+
+"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's body
+twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even tone.
+There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime, knowing as he
+knew that but one man present could interfere to prevent, that that man
+wouldn't, he spoke those four words: "You've guessed it, Pete." And but
+minutes before Manning had called this man coward!
+
+For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain
+failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal;
+then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension,
+came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible,
+unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took
+place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it
+was done. They only knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had
+reached the single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at
+the same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that the
+odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting slowly
+toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a curtain that once
+raised made them shudder, made their blood run cold, for it revealed
+there, stretched on the floor, huddled as it had dropped, lifeless,
+motionless, the figure of the man who had refused, the weazened face of
+Land Man Bud Smith! All this they realised in that first second; then
+something that was almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man
+who had done this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the
+only means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two great
+revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now. As swiftly
+as that horrible thing had been done he had gone sober. Yet no man who
+saw him that instant feared him one whit less. Not a man present,
+believer or scoffer, but breathed a silent prayer. And there was reason.
+If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete, had possessed a real friend on earth, he
+possessed that one no more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but
+friends--there had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant
+of oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend; murdered
+him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his tracks. Not another
+had done this thing but he himself, he, Cowman Pete. Small wonder that
+they who watched this man prayed, that surreptitious glances sought for
+an avenue of escape where there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner
+went whiter and whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon
+the floor, there would be a reckoning,--and what that reckoning would be
+God alone could tell!
+
+And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary movement, he
+had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the
+breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at
+that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably,
+with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have
+forgotten the others' presence, seemed at their mercy; and to the mind
+of Walt Wagner there came a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand
+came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his
+hip; advanced and halted and advanced again, reached almost--almost--.
+
+"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a snarl: the
+snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your breeches or by
+God--"
+
+No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as though
+drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.
+
+"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had known was
+but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's son of you. Step
+lively."
+
+They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them
+there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a
+trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge,
+stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat
+market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the
+tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall,
+smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed,
+at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up
+they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons
+to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another
+time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that
+mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other
+menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous. It
+was ghastly in its confession of impotence, in its mute acquiescence to
+another's will.
+
+The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete
+did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling
+from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids
+narrowing, moment by moment. A long half minute he waited, gloating on
+their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption. A
+step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless. A
+hand tried the knob of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on
+the panel.
+
+Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but the
+narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the unshaven jaws
+tightened.
+
+Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.
+
+This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's hand moved to
+the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands," snarled a voice.
+
+Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted in air.
+
+"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another followed, until
+there were not two but twelve.
+
+"Make a move, damn you,"--one of the revolvers had returned to its
+holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,--"and I'll drop you, every
+cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I swing the next
+second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand
+returned to the holster. "Come in, you idiot," he challenged into the
+darkness without, "come in and take your medicine with the rest."
+
+Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open doorway,
+peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw nothing; then of a
+sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily, noiselessly on moccasined
+feet, entered a brand new actor, advanced half across the room, while
+his eyes adjusted themselves to the light, halted curiously. Back of him
+that instant the door again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty
+bolt grating in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded
+the snarl the others knew so well.
+
+"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin' here?"
+
+Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer turned. From
+his height of six feet one, an inch below that of Pete himself, he
+returned the other's look fixedly, without answer. He wore a soft
+flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown corduroy trousers, supported by
+a belt. Unconsciously, as though he were alone, he hitched the corduroys
+up over his narrow hips, in the motion of one who has been riding. That
+was all.
+
+Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable disfigurement.
+Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.
+
+"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his voice was
+almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to you. What the
+devil are you here for?"
+
+No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or a muscle.
+
+Ten seconds passed, fifteen.
+
+"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with an
+effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of a rusty
+spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the habit of doin'
+that either, pard." He halted and his great chest heaved with the effort
+of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned a bit forward. "Tell me what
+you want here, and tell me quick, or by the eternal I'll fill you so
+full of holes your own mother wouldn't recognise you."
+
+One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed
+upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the
+flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."
+
+At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant in the
+career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded room. No need to
+tell seven of them at least that it was a moment of life or death. If
+something, something which seemed inevitable, happened, if one of those
+curling, itching fingers on the triggers tightened, if but once that
+took place, their lives were not worth the wording of a curse. If once
+again that black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there
+would be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
+cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and man by
+man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The jaws of Bob
+Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from beneath their
+sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling
+pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips
+as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved,
+but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted
+from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like
+an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
+uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
+before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a
+somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the
+line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world.
+Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he--but for his clothes, his
+most intimate friend would not have recognised him at that moment. In
+him, blind, racking terror was personified. To have saved his soul he
+could not keep still, and his heavy walking shoes grated as they
+shuffled on the rough floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood
+in his mouth and trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes,
+like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
+constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.
+If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
+hundred times over and over that second.
+
+Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
+no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
+that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
+kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
+thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
+doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
+blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
+was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
+soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
+unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
+Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
+fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
+took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
+from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
+Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
+mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
+Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
+he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
+that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
+but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
+better--
+
+But we anticipate.
+
+"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.
+
+But he heard nothing:--yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe, catlike figure
+straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw this same figure look
+at him fully, squarely; as though for the first time really conscious of
+his presence. He saw two unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek
+bones, out of a copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them;
+hold them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
+owner of those eyes move--he did not hear, there was no sound, not even
+a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw--and move toward him. He
+saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to pass a prostrate body on
+the floor; always silent, but always coming, always drawing nearer. He
+saw this thing, he, Pete Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was
+terror. He knew what it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had
+sworn to do; the muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but
+he made no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
+unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this man. As
+his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
+preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the message
+that would make the muscles tense; but he could not. Those two eyes were
+holding him and he could not. All this he knew; and all the while that
+other was coming nearer and nearer. He began to have a horror of that
+coming that he could not halt. The great unshaven jaw of him worked;
+worked spasmodically, involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a
+sudden felt cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands.
+Something he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
+others like those six in the background, began to grip him; something
+that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden weak--weak as he
+had never felt before. And still those eyes were upon him, still that
+dark face came closer and closer. Once more his brain sent the message
+to kill, once more he battled against the inevitable; and that message
+was the last. There was no more response than if he were clay, than if
+his muscles were the muscles of another man. In that instant, without
+the voicing of a word, the deed was done. That instant came the black
+chaotic abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence,
+his arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now, so
+near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace himself,
+tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming, which he read on the
+page of that other face. But he was too late. Watching, almost doubting
+their own eyes, the six saw the end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden
+clench, shoot out like a brown light. They heard an impact, and a second
+later the thud of a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter
+lift, stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
+for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck true.
+That was all.
+
+For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence, inaction. Then
+for the first time the victor turned, facing the spectators.
+Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an instant almost
+curiously,--but he did not smile. Twelve arms, that had forgotten to
+lower, were still in the air--but he did not smile. Instead he sought
+out the stranger in knickerbockers and blouse.
+
+"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to the B.B.
+ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this he?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE
+
+Well out upon the prairie, clear of the limits of the tiny town, two men
+were headed due west, into the night, apparently into the infinite.
+There was no moon, but here, with nothing to cast a shadow, it was not
+dark. The month was late October, and a suggestion of frost was in the
+air: on the grass blades of the low places, was actually present. As was
+all but usual at that day, the direction they were going bore no trace
+of a road; but the man astride the vicious-looking roan cayuse who led
+the way, the same copper-brown man with the corduroys of Bob Manning's
+store, showed no hesitation. Like a hound, he seemed to discern
+landmarks where none were visible to the eye. He rode without saddle or
+blanket, or spur, or quirt; yet, though he had not spoken a word from
+the moment they had started, the roan with the tiny ears had not broken
+its steady, swinging, seemingly interminable lope, had scarcely appeared
+conscious of his presence. Almost as unit seemed this beast and human.
+It was as though the man were born in his place, as though, like a
+sailor on a tiny boat, accustomed through a lifetime to a rolling,
+uncertain equilibrium, the adjustment thereto had become involuntary as
+a heart beat, instinctive as breathing. A splendid picture he made there
+in the starlight and the solitude; but of it the man who followed was
+oblivious. Of one thing alone he was conscious, and that was that he was
+very tired; weary from the effect of an unusual exercise, doubly
+exhausted in the reaction from excitement passed. With an effort he
+urged his own horse alongside the leader, drew rein meaningly.
+
+"Let's hold up a bit," he protested. "I've come twenty-five miles to-day
+already, and I'm about beat." He slapped the breast pocket of his coat a
+bit obviously, and as his companion slowed to a walk, produced a
+silver-mounted, seal-covered flask and proffered it at arm's length.
+"The cork unscrews to the left," he explained suggestively.
+
+The dark figure of the guide made no motion of acceptance, did not even
+glance around.
+
+"Thanks, but I never drink," he declined.
+
+"Not even to be sociable,"--the hand was still extended,--"not when I
+ask you as--a friend?"
+
+"I am a Sioux," simply. "I have found that liquor is not good for an
+Indian."
+
+For a second the white man hesitated; then with something akin to a
+flush on his face, he returned the flask to his pocket untasted.
+
+Again, without turning, the other observed the motion.
+
+"Pardon me, but I did not mean to prevent you."
+
+He spoke stiffly, almost diffidently, as on unused to speech with
+strangers, unused to speech at all; but without a trace of embarrassment
+or of affectation.
+
+"I do not judge others. I merely know my people--and myself."
+
+Again the stranger hesitated, and again his face betrayed him. He had
+scratched an aborigine, and to his surprise was finding indications of a
+man.
+
+"I guess I can get along without it," shortly. "I--" he caught himself
+just in time from framing a self-extenuation. "I didn't have time--back
+there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for what you did. I wish to
+do so now." He was looking at the other squarely, as the smart civilian
+observes the derelict who has saved his life in a runaway. Already,
+there under the stars, it was difficult to credit to the full that
+fantastic scene of an hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real
+man, of condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a
+nasty mess, and I appreciate it."
+
+No answer. No polite lie, no derogation of self or of what had been
+done. Just silence, attentive, but yet silence.
+
+For the third time the white man hesitated, and for the third time his
+face shaded red; consciously and against his will. Even the starlight
+could not alter the obtrusive fact that he had cut a sorry figure in the
+late drama, and his pride was sore. Extenuation, dissimulation even,
+would have been a distinct solace. Looking at the matter now, the
+excitement past, palliation for what he had done was easy, almost
+logical. He had not alone conformed. He had but done, without
+consideration, as the others with him had done. But even if it were not
+so, back in the land from which he had come, a spade was not always so
+called. His colour went normal at the recollection. The habitual, the
+condescending pressed anew to the fore.
+
+He inspected the silent figure at his side ingenuously, almost
+quizzically; as in his schoolboy days he had inspected his plodding
+master of physics before propounding a query no mortal could answer.
+
+"I know I waved the white flag back there as hard as any of them," he
+proffered easily. "I'm not trying to clear myself; but between you and
+me, don't you think that Pete was merely bluffing, there at the end when
+you came?" The speaker shifted sideways on the saddle, until his weight
+rested on one leg, until he faced the other fair. "The fellow was drunk,
+irresponsibly drunk, at first, when the little chap stirred him up; but
+afterwards, when he was sober.... On the square, what do you think he
+would have done if--if you hadn't happened in?"
+
+For so long that Craig fancied he had not given attention to the
+question, the guide did not respond, did not stir in his seat; then
+slowly, deliberately, he turned half about, turned and for the first
+time in the journey met the other's eyes. Even then he did not speak;
+but so long as he lived, times uncounted in his after life, Clayton
+Craig remembered that look; remembered it and was silent, remembered it
+with a tingling of hot blood and a mental imprecation--for as indelibly
+as a red-hot iron seals a brand on a maverick, that look left its
+impress. No voice could have spoken as that simple action spoke, no
+tongue thrust could have been so pointed. With no intent of discourtesy,
+no premeditated malice was it given; and therein lay the fine sting, the
+venom. It was unconscious as a breath, unconscious as nature's joy in
+springtime; yet in the light of after events, it stood out like a signal
+fire against the blackness of night, as the beginning of an enmity more
+deadly than death itself, that lasted into the grave and beyond. For
+that silent, unwavering look set them each, the red man and the white,
+in their niche; placed them with an assurance that was final. It was a
+questioning, analytic look, yet, unconcealed, it bore the tolerance of a
+strong man for a weak. Had that look been a voice, it would have spoken
+one word, and that word was "cad."
+
+For a moment the two men sat so, unconscious of time, unconscious of
+place; then of a sudden, to both alike, the present returned--and again
+that return was typical. As deliberately as he had moved previously, the
+Indian faced back. His left arm, free at his side, hung loose as before.
+His right, that held the reins, lay motionless on the pony's mane. In no
+detail did he alter, nor in a muscle. By his side, the white man
+stiffened, jerked without provocation at the cruel curb bit, until his
+horse halted uncertain; equally without provocation, sent the rowels of
+his long spurs deep into the sensitive flank, with a curse held the
+frightened beast down to a walk. That was all, a secondary lapse, a
+burst of flowing, irresponsible passion like a puff of burning
+gunpowder, and it was over; yet it was enough. In that second was told
+the tale of a human life. In that and in the surreptitious sidelong
+glance following, that searched for an expression in the boyishly soft
+face of his companion. But the Indian was looking straight before him,
+looking as one who has seen nothing, heard nothing; and, silent as
+before the interruption, they journeyed on.
+
+A half hour slipped by, a period wherein the horses walked and galloped,
+and walked again, ere the white man forgot, ere the instinct of
+companionship, the necessity of conversation, urban-fostered, gained
+mastery. Then as before, he looked at the other surreptitiously, through
+unconsciously narrowed lids.
+
+"I haven't yet asked your name?" he formalised baldly, curtly.
+
+The guide showed no surprise, no consciousness of the long silence
+preceding.
+
+"The Sioux call me Ma-wa-cha-sa: the ranchers, How Landor."
+
+Craig dropped the reins over his saddle and fumbled in his pockets.
+
+"The Indian word has a meaning, I presume?"
+
+"Translated into English, it would be 'the lost pappoose.'"
+
+The eyebrows of the Easterner lifted; but he made no comment.
+
+"You have been with my uncle, with Mr. Landor, I mean, long?"
+
+"Since I can remember--almost."
+
+The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor produced a
+pipe and lit it. It took three matches.
+
+"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting a girl.
+Bess he called her, was it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in getting it
+alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking out of doors.
+
+"Do you like this country, this--desert?" he digressed suddenly.
+
+"It is the only one I know."
+
+"You mean know well, doubtless?"
+
+"I have never been outside the State."
+
+Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was habitual.
+
+"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere that it
+were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern cemetery than
+to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning to believe it."
+
+No comment.
+
+"I suppose you will leave though, some time," pressed the visitor. "You
+certainly don't intend to vegetate here always?"
+
+"I never expect to leave. I was born here. I shall die here."
+
+Once more the shoulders of the Easterner lifted in mute thanksgiving of
+fundamental difference. Of a sudden, for some indefinite reason, he felt
+more at ease in his companion's presence. For the time being the sense
+of antagonism became passive. What use, after all, was mere physical
+courage, if one were to bury it in a houseless, treeless waste such as
+this? The sense of aloofness, of tranquil superiority, returned. He even
+felt a certain pleasure in questioning the other; as one is interested
+in questioning a child. Bob Manning's store and Pete Sweeney were
+temporarily in abeyance.
+
+"Pardon me, if I seem inquisitive," he prefaced, "but I'll probably be
+here a month or so, and we'll likely see a good deal of each other. Are
+you married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will be, though." It was the ultimatum of one unaccustomed to
+contradiction. "No man could live here alone. He'd go insane."
+
+"I eat at the ranch house sometimes, but I live alone."
+
+"You won't do so, though, always." Again it was the voice of finality.
+
+The Indian looked straight ahead into the indefinite distance where the
+earth and sky met.
+
+"No, I shall not do so always," he corroborated.
+
+"I thought so." It was the tolerant approval of the prophet verified.
+"I'd be doing the same thing myself if I lived here long. Conformity's
+in the air. I felt it the moment I left the railroad and struck
+this--wilderness." Once again the unconscious shoulder shrug. "It's an
+atavism, this life. I've reverted a generation already. It's only a
+question of time till one would be back among the cave-dwellers. The
+thing's in the air, I say."
+
+Again no comment. Again for any indication he gave, the Indian might not
+have heard.
+
+Craig straightened, as one conscious that he was talking over his
+companion's head.
+
+"When, if I may ask, is it to be, your marriage, I mean?" he returned.
+"While I am here?"
+
+For an instant the other's eyes dropped until they were hid beneath the
+long lashes, then they returned to the distance as before.
+
+"It will be soon. Three weeks from to-day."
+
+"And at the ranch, I presume? My uncle will see to that, of course."
+
+"Yes, it will be at the ranch."
+
+"Good! I was wondering if anything would be doing here while I was
+here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and adjusted
+the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do you--your
+people--celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a bit ignorant on
+the point."
+
+"Celebrate? I don't think I understand." The Easterner glanced at his
+companion suspiciously but the other man was still looking straight
+ahead into the distance.
+
+"You have a dance, or a barbecue or--or something of that sort, don't
+you? It's to be an Indian wedding, is it not?"
+
+Pat, pat went the horses' feet on the prairie sod. While one could count
+ten slowly there was no other sound.
+
+"No, there will be no dance or barbecue or anything out of the ordinary,
+so far as I know," said a low voice then. "It will not be an Indian
+wedding."
+
+Craig hesitated. An instinct told him he had gone far enough. Lurking
+indefinite in the depths of that last low-voiced answer was a warning, a
+challenge to a trespasser; but something else, a thing which a lifetime
+of indulgence had made almost an instinct, prevented his heeding. He was
+not accustomed to being denied, this man; and there was no contesting
+the obvious fact that now a confidence was being withheld. The latent
+antagonism aroused with a bound at the thought. Something more than mere
+curiosity was at stake, something which he magnified until it obscured
+his horizon, warped hopelessly his vision of right or wrong. He was of
+the conquering Anglo-Saxon race, and this other who refused him was an
+Indian. Racial supremacy itself hung in the balance: the old, old issue
+of the white man and the red. Back into the stirrup went the leg that
+hung over the saddle. Involuntarily as before he stiffened.
+
+"Why, is it not to be an Indian wedding?" he queried directly. "You
+seemed a bit ago rather proud of your pedigree." A trace of sarcasm
+crept into his voice at the thinly veiled allusion. "Have you forsaken
+entirely the customs of your people?"
+
+Pat, pat again sounded the horses' feet. The high places as well as the
+low bore their frost blanket now, and the dead turf cracked softly with
+every step.
+
+"No, I have not forsaken the customs of my people."
+
+"Why then in this instance?" insistently. "At least be consistent, man.
+Why in this single particular and no other?"
+
+The hand on the neck of the cayuse tightened, tightened until the tiny
+ears of the wicked little beast went flat to its head; then of a sudden
+the grip loosened.
+
+"Why? The answer is simple. The lady who is to be my wife is not an
+Indian."
+
+For an instant Craig was silent, for an instant the full meaning of that
+confession failed in its appeal; then of a sudden it came over him in a
+flood of comprehension. Very, very far away now, banished into remotest
+oblivion, was Pete Sweeney. Into the same grave went any remnants of
+gratitude to the other man that chanced to remain. Paramount, beckoning
+him on, one thought, one memory alone possessed his brain: the
+recollection of that look the other had given him, that look he could
+never forget nor forgive. "Since you have told me so much," he
+challenged "you will probably have no objection to telling me the lady's
+name. Who is it to be?"
+
+Silence fell upon them. Far in the distance, so far that had the white
+man seen he would have thought it a star, a light had come into being.
+Many a time before the little roan had made this journey. Many a time he
+had seen that light emerge from the surface of earth. To him it meant
+all that was good in life: warmth, food, rest. The tiny head shook
+impatiently, shifted sideways with an almost human question to his rider
+at the slowness of the pace, the delay.
+
+"That light you see there straight ahead is in the ranch house,"
+digressed the Indian. "It is four miles away."
+
+Again it was the warning, not a suggestion, but positive this time; and
+again it passed unheeded.
+
+"You have forgotten to answer my question," recalled Craig.
+
+Swift as thought the Indian shifted in his seat, shifted half about;
+then as suddenly he remembered.
+
+"No, I have not forgotten," he refuted. "You tell me you have already
+heard of Bess Landor. It is she I am to marry."
+
+At last he had spoken, had given his confidence to this hostile stranger
+man; not vauntingly or challengingly, but simply as he had spoken his
+name. Against his will he had done this thing, despite a reticence no
+one who did not understand Indian nature could appreciate. Then at
+least it would not have taken a wise man to hold aloof. Then at least
+common courtesy would have called a halt. But Clayton Craig was neither
+wise nor courteous this night. He was a great, weary, passionate child,
+whose pride had been stung, who but awaited an opportunity to retaliate.
+And that opportunity had been vouchsafed. Moreover, irony of fate, it
+came sugar coated. Until this night he had been unconscious as a babe of
+racial prejudice. Now of a sudden, it seemed a burning issue, and he its
+chosen champion. His blood tingled at the thought; tingled to the tips
+of his well-manicured fingers. His clean-shaven chin lifted in air until
+his lashes all but met.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me,"--his voice was a bit higher than normal and
+unnaturally tense,--"do you mean to tell me that you, an Indian, are to
+marry a white girl--and she my cousin by adoption? Is this what you
+mean?"
+
+Seconds passed.
+
+"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss the matter
+further."
+
+"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the family it is
+my right, and I demand an answer."
+
+Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would not be long
+until they were home now.
+
+"Yes," answered the Indian.
+
+"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again the
+silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."
+
+Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a red flood,
+that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about him.
+
+"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I live, and
+if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is white, you'll not
+marry her. If it's the last act of my life, I'll prevent you!"
+
+The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not. Beat, beat,
+beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until the hot blood fairly
+roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not until the challenge was spoken
+did he realise to the full what he had done, that inevitable as time
+there would be a reckoning. Now in a perfect inundation, the knowledge
+came over him, and unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move.
+Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
+reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's store,
+the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding thereto,
+recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now
+irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might against the feeling, a
+terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind,
+unreasoning, primitive terror. But one impulse possessed him: to be
+away, to escape the outburst he instinctively knew was but delayed. In
+an abandon he leaned far forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur
+dug viciously into his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan
+from the surprised beast, a forward leap--then a sudden jarring halt.
+As by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another hand.
+
+"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do that. It will
+only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the same hand, stopped
+there on the prairie. The riders were face to face. "I have tried to
+prevent this, for the sake of the future, I have tried; but you have
+made an understanding between us inevitable, and therefore it may as
+well be now." The voice halted and the speaker looked at his companion
+fixedly, minutely, almost unbelievingly. "I know I am not as you white
+men," went on the voice. "I have been raised with you, lived my life so
+far with you; yet I am different. No Indian would have done as you have
+done. I cannot understand it. Not three hours ago I saved your life. It
+was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and yet already you have
+forgotten, have done--what you have done." So far he had spoken slowly,
+haltingly; with the effort of one to whom words were difficult. Now the
+effort passed. "I say I cannot understand it," he repeated swiftly. "Mr.
+Landor has been very good to me. For his sake I would like to forgive
+what you have done, what you promise to do. I have tried to forgive it;
+but I cannot. I am an Indian; but I am also a man. As a race your people
+have conquered my people, have penned them up in reservations to die;
+but that is neither your doing nor mine. We are here as man to man. As
+man to man you have offered me insult--and without reason." For the
+first time a trace of passion came into the voice, into the soft brown
+face. "I ask you to take back what you have just said. I do not warn
+you. If you do so, there is no quarrel between us. I merely ask you to
+take it back."
+
+He halted expectant; but there was no answer, Craig's lips were
+twitching uncontrollably, but he did not speak.
+
+Just perceptibly the Indian shifted forward in his seat, just
+perceptibly the long brown fingers tightened on his pony's mane.
+
+"Will you not take it back?" he asked.
+
+Once more the white man's lip twitched. "No," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+That was all--and it was not all. For an instant after the Easterner had
+spoken the stars looked down on the two men as they were, face to face;
+then smiling, satiric they gazed down upon a very different scene: one
+as old and as new as the history of man. Just what happened in that
+moment that intervened neither the white man nor the red could have
+told. It was a lapse, an oblivion; a period of primitive physical
+dominance, of primitive human hate. When they awoke--when the red man
+awoke--they were flat on earth, the dust of the prairie in their
+nostrils, the short catch of their breath in each other's ears, out one,
+the dark-skinned, was above. One, again the dark-skinned, had his
+fingers locked tight on the other's throat. This they knew when they
+awoke.
+
+A second thereafter they lay so, flaming eyes staring into their
+doubles; then suddenly the uppermost man broke free, arose. In his ears
+was the diminishing patter of their horses' hoofs. They were alone there
+on the prairie, under the smiling satiric stars. One more moment he
+stood so; he did not turn; he did not assist the other to rise; then he
+spoke.
+
+"I do not ask your pardon for this," he said. "You have brought it upon
+yourself. Neither do I ask a promise. Do as you please. Try what you
+have suggested if you wish. I am not afraid. Follow me," and,
+long-strided, impassive as though nothing had happened, he moved ahead
+into the distance where in the window of the Buffalo Butte ranch house
+glowed a light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+It was very late, so late that the sun entering at the south windows of
+the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of his bed when
+Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long been over, but
+throughout the unplastered ranch house the suggestion of coffee and the
+tang of bacon still lingered. At home those odours would have aroused
+slight sensations of pleasure in the man, even at this time of day; but
+now and here they were distinctly welcome, distinctly inviting. With the
+aid of a tin pail of water and a cracked queensware bowl, he made a
+hasty toilet, soliloquised an opinion of a dressing-room without a
+mirror, and descended the creaking stairs to the level below.
+
+The main floor of the ranch house contained but three rooms. Of these,
+it was the living-room which he entered. No one was about. The pipe
+which he had smoked with his uncle before retiring the night before
+remained exactly as he had put it down. His cap and gloves were still
+beside it. Obviously there was no possibility of breakfast here, and he
+moved toward the adjoining room. On his way he passed a hook where upon
+arrival he had hung his riding blouse. Telltale with its litter of dust
+and grass stems, it hung there now; and unconsciously he scowled at the
+recollection it suggested.
+
+Opening the door, he was face to face with a little fast-ticking cheaply
+ornate clock. Its hands indicated eleven, and the man grimaced
+tolerantly. As in the living-room, no human was present, but here the
+indications for material sustenance were more hopeful. It was the
+dining-room, and, although in the main the table had been cleared, at
+one end a clean plate, flanked by a bone-handled knife and fork and an
+old-fashioned castor, still remained. Moreover, from the third room, the
+kitchen, he could now hear sounds of life. The fire in a cook-stove was
+crackling cheerily. Above it, distinct through the thin partition, came
+the sound of a girlish voice singing. There was no apparent effort at
+time or at tune; it was uncultivated as the grass land all about; yet in
+its freshness and unconsciousness it was withal distinctly pleasing. It
+was a happy voice, a contented voice. Instinctively it bore a suggestion
+of home and of quiet and of peace; like a kitten with drowsy eyes
+purring to itself in the sunshine. A moment the visitor stood silent,
+listening; then, his heavy shoes clumping on the uncarpeted floor, he
+moved toward it. Instantly the song ceased, but he kept on, pushed open
+the door gently, stepped inside.
+
+"Good-morning!" he began, and then halted in an uncertainty he seldom
+felt among women folk. He had met no one but his uncle the previous
+night. Inevitably the preceding incident with his guide had produced a
+mental picture. It was with the expectation of having this conception
+personified that he had entered, to it he had spoken; then had come the
+revelation, the halt.
+
+"Good-morning!" answered a voice, one neither abnormally high nor
+repressedly low, the kind of voice the man seldom heard in the society
+to which he was accustomed--one natural, unaffected, frankly interested.
+The owner thereof came forward, held out her hand. Two friendly brown
+eyes smiled up at him from the level of his shoulder. "I know without
+your introducing yourself that you're Mr. Craig," she welcomed. "Uncle
+Landor told me before he left what to expect. He and Aunt Mary had to go
+to town this morning. Meanwhile I'm the cook, and at your service," and
+she smiled again.
+
+For far longer than civility actually required, to the extreme limit of
+courtesy and a shade beyond, in, fact, until it unmistakably sought to
+be free, Clayton Craig retained that proffered hand. Against all the
+canons of good breeding he stared. Answering, a trace of colour,
+appearing at the brown throat, mounted higher and higher, reached the
+soft oval cheeks, journeyed on.
+
+"I beg your pardon," apologised the man. He met the accusing eyes
+fairly, with a return of his old confidence. "You had the advantage of
+me, you know. I was not forewarned what to expect."
+
+It was the breaking of the ice, and they laughed together. The girl had
+been working with arms bare to the elbow, and as now of a sudden she
+rolled the sleeves down Craig laughed again; and in unconscious echo a
+second later she joined. Almost before they knew it, there alone in the
+little whitewashed kitchen with the crackling cook-stove and the
+sunshine streaming in through the tiny-paned windows, they were friends.
+All the while the girl went about the task of preparing a belated
+breakfast they laughed and chatted--and drew nearer and nearer. Again
+while Craig ate and at his command the girl sat opposite to entertain
+him, they laughed and chatted. Still later, the slowly eaten meal
+finished, while Elizabeth Landor washed the dishes and put everything
+tidy and Craig from his seat on the bottom of an inverted basket
+reversed the position of entertainer, they laughed and chatted. And
+through it all, openly when possible, surreptitiously when it were wise,
+the man gave his companion inspection. And therein he at first but
+followed an instinct. Very, very human was Clayton Craig of Boston,
+Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and very, very good to look upon was
+brown-eyed, brown-skinned, brown-haired Elizabeth Landor. Neither had
+thought of evil, had other thought than the innocent pleasure of the
+moment that first morning while the tiny clock on the wall measured off
+the swift-moving minutes. Good it is to be alive in sun-blessed South
+Dakota on a frosty warm October day, doubly good when one is young; and
+these two, the man and the girl, were both young. Months it takes, years
+sometimes, in civilisation, with barriers of out on the prairie, alone,
+with the pulse of nature throbbing, throbbing, insistently all about,
+the process is very swift, so swift that an hour can suffice. No, not
+that first hour wherein unconsciously they became friends, did the angel
+with the big book record evil opposite the name of Clayton Craig; not
+until later, not until he had had time to think, not until--.
+
+But again we anticipate.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," the girl had ejaculated, "now when you have."
+At last the work was over, and in unconscious comradery they sat side by
+side on the broad south doorstep; the sun shining down full upon their
+uncovered heads--smiling an unconscious blessing more potent than
+formula of clergy. She was looking out as she spoke, out over the level
+earth dazzling with its dancing heat waves, mysterious in its suggestion
+of unfathomable silence, of limitless distance. "It's such a little time
+now before I am going away, and Uncle Landor has talked of you so much,
+particularly of late." A pause, a hesitating pause. "I suppose you'll
+laugh at me, but I hope you'll stay here, for a time, anyway, after I'm
+gone."
+
+Clayton Craig, the listener, was not gazing out over the prairie. The
+object at which he was looking was very near; so near that he had leaned
+a trifle back the better to see, to watch. He shifted now until his
+weight rested on his elbow, his face on his hand.
+
+"You are going away, you say?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes. I supposed you knew--that Uncle had told you." Despite an effort,
+the tiny ears were reddening. She was very human also, was Elizabeth
+Landor. "I am to be married soon."
+
+"Married?" A long pause. "And to whom, please?" The voice was very low.
+
+Redder than before burned the tiny ears. No more than she could keep
+from breathing could she prevent telling her secret, her happiness, this
+prairie girl; no more than she could prevent that accompanying telltale
+scarlet flood.
+
+"You didn't know it, but you've met him already," she confided. "You met
+him last night." To her at this time there was no need of antecedent.
+There was but one to whom the pronoun might refer. "It was he who showed
+you here--How Landor."
+
+For a long time--for he was thinking now, was Clayton Craig, and did not
+answer--there was silence. Likewise the girl, her confession voiced,
+said no more; but her colour came and went expectantly, tantalisingly,
+and the eyes that still looked into the distance were unconscious of
+what they saw. From his place the man watched the transparent pantomime,
+read its meaning, stored the picture in his memory; but he did not
+speak. A minute had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was
+thinking of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had
+received--and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl, but it
+was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big shaggy-haired
+collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his aimless wandering about
+the place to thrust a friendly muzzle into the stranger's hand; but even
+then he did not respond. For almost the first time in his irresolute
+life a definite purpose was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig,
+and little things passed him by. A third minute passed. The colour had
+ceased playing on the face he watched now. The silence had performed its
+mission. It was the moment for which he was waiting, and he was
+prepared. Then it was the angel of the great book opened the volume and
+made an entry; for then it was the watcher spoke.
+
+"I met him last, night, you say?" It was the hesitating voice of one
+whose memory is treacherous, "I have been trying to recall--Certainly
+you must be mistaken. I saw no one last night except Uncle Landor and an
+Indian cow-puncher with a comic opera name." He met the brown eyes that
+were of a sudden turned upon him, frankly, innocently. "You must be
+mistaken," he repeated.
+
+Searchingly, at first suspiciously, then hesitatingly, with a return of
+the colour that came as easily as a prairie wind stirs the down of a
+milk-weed plant, Elizabeth Landor returned his look. It was an instinct
+that at last caused her eyes to drop.
+
+"No, I was not mistaken," she voiced. "How Landor is an Indian. It is he
+I meant."
+
+For a carefully timed pause, the space in which one recovers from
+hearing the unbelievable, Craig was silent; then swiftly, contritely he
+roused. "I beg a thousand pardons," he apologised. "I meant no
+disrespect. I never dreamed--Forgive me." He had drawn very near. "I
+wouldn't hurt you for the world. I--Please forgive me." He was silent.
+
+"There's nothing to forgive." The girl's colour was normal again and she
+met his eyes frankly, gravely.
+
+"But there is," protested the man humbly. "Because he happened to be
+minus a collar and had a red skin--I was an ass; an egregious,
+blundering ass."
+
+"Don't talk that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know him, was all.
+If you had been acquainted all your life as I have--" Against her will
+she was lapsing into a defence, and she halted abruptly. "You were not
+at fault."
+
+Again for a carefully timed pause the man was silent. Then abruptly,
+obviously, he changed the subject.
+
+"You said you were going away," he recalled. "Is it to be a wedding
+journey?"
+
+"Yes," tensely.
+
+"Tell me of it, please; I wish to hear."
+
+"You would not be interested."
+
+"Elizabeth--" syllabalised, reproachfully. "Am I not your cousin?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Haven't you forgiven me yet?" The voice was very low. Its owner was
+again very near.
+
+"You'd laugh at me if I told you," repressedly. "You wouldn't
+understand."
+
+Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away--resumed the former position;
+the place from which, unobserved, he could himself watch.
+
+"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly, reluctantly.
+Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right. "Just the two of us
+are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse and a tent and How's camp
+kit and stay out there alone until winter comes." Against her will she
+was warming to the subject, was unconsciously painting a picture to
+please the solitary listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and
+plenty to read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never
+carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game whenever we
+want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when we please." Again
+unconsciously she glanced at the listener to see the effect of her art.
+"We'll be together, How and I, and free--free as sunshine. There'll be
+nothing but winter, and that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's
+what I've always wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes
+away every year, and he's promised this once to take me along."
+Suddenly, almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her
+companion. "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.
+
+"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of listlessness
+in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want anything at any time you
+can go to the nearest ranch house. One always does forget something you
+know."
+
+"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly. "That's the
+best of it all. The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch that way, to the
+west, until you get to the Hills. We probably won't see another human
+being while we're gone. We'll be as much alone as though we were the
+only two people in the world."
+
+Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.
+
+"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I was
+thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for breakfast.
+And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly if I were changing
+my residence so frequently." He lifted from his elbow. "Pardon me again,
+though," he added contritely. "I always do see the prosaic side of
+things." The smile vanished, and for the first time he looked away,
+absently, dreamily. As he looked his face altered, softened almost
+unbelievably. "It would be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be
+alone, absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for
+most, the single person who always had the same likes and dislikes, the
+same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of such a thing before; it
+would be wonderful, wonderful!"
+
+No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face and her
+eyes were bright.
+
+"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig. Warmer and
+warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always envy other
+people the things we haven't ourselves; and I--" He checked himself
+abruptly.
+
+"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate, sympathetic,
+unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land. Just this she was; and
+another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad. Inevitably
+she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird
+responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.
+
+"Maybe it's true now--you think it is," she halted; "but there'll be a
+time--"
+
+"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed shortly,
+unmusically. "It's merely my lot."
+
+The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly for her
+as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it
+altered now under the cloud of another's unhappiness. But one suggestion
+presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her
+child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.
+
+The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.
+
+"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought differently,
+when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl I
+understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter how well
+I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch, never become
+necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm the only one of my
+kind, that I must go through life so--alone."
+
+Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as one child
+presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her companion's hands
+lay listless on his knee, and instinctively, compellingly, she placed
+her own upon it, pressed it softly.
+
+"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my own love,
+my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply couldn't help it,
+it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so sorry."
+
+Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at her. When
+he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his voice; but that
+was all.
+
+"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't know how
+lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a bit ago, shows
+me the other side of life, the happy side; and I wish I were dead." A
+mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The future looks so blank, so
+hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to me. Anything else would be
+preferable, anything. It's so to-day, now." He halted and of a sudden
+turned away so that his face was concealed. "God forgive me, but I wish
+it were over with, that I were dead!"
+
+"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful entirely, the
+girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could not prevent were in
+the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so good to be alive. You
+can't mean it. You can't."
+
+"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up. "What's
+the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else cares, ever will
+care. What's the use--"
+
+"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all of us here
+care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear to hear you." She
+halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose hinderingly in her throat.
+"I feel somehow as though I was to blame, as though if you should mean
+what you said, should--should--" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes
+glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her fingers
+locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless; then of a
+sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had suggested came
+over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve. Not the faintest
+suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his honesty, occurred to her, not
+the remotest doubt. In all her life no one had ever lied to her; she had
+never consciously lied to another. The world of subterfuge was an unread
+book. This man had intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant
+it. He would do it, unless--unless--
+
+"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still lying idle
+on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it, held it prisoner
+between her own. It was not a suggestion she was combating now. It was a
+certainty. "Promise me you won't do this thing." She shook the hand
+insistently; at first gently, then, as there was no response, almost
+roughly. "Tell me you won't do it. Promise me; please, please!"
+
+"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless absolutely; I
+never realised before how useless. You didn't intend to do it, but
+you've made me see it all to-day. I don't blame you, but I can't
+promise. I can't."
+
+Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a mountain,
+as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the prairie. For
+seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out, distorted seconds;
+then, interrupting, something happened. There was not a cloud in the
+sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun still shone bright as before;
+yet distinctly, undeniably, the man felt a great wet spattering drop
+fall from above upon his hand--and a moment later another. He glanced
+up, hesitated; sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of
+the little woman already standing.
+
+"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe it." He took
+her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's length; and the
+angel who watched halted with pen in air, indecisive. "We've known each
+other such a ludicrously short time--but a few hours. Can it be possible
+that you really meant that, that at least to someone it does really
+matter?" It was his turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no
+answer came. "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess,
+tell me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained
+its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively sought
+that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his ancestors, had
+done to similar chins in their day, lifted it until their eyes met. Had
+he been facing his Maker that moment and the confession his last,
+Clayton Craig could not have told whether it were passion or art, that
+action. "Tell me, Bess girl, is it mere pity, or do you really care?"
+
+Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers, meeting by
+chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's mind in the glitter
+of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so fantastic, so unexpected
+that for a moment the girl did not realise, did not understand. For an
+instant she stood so, perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and
+wider, opening wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what
+she feared--and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking,
+ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength of a
+captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second longer she stood
+there, not her chin alone, but her whole body trembling; then without a
+word she turned, mounted the single step, fumbled at the knob of the
+door. "Bess," said the man softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not
+glance back nor speak, and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard
+her slowly climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close
+behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET
+
+Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain
+the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois
+and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception
+to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made
+his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob
+Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the
+free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held
+true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
+soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked
+above the knob of the door before him.
+
+"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like a strip
+of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the entrance, found it
+locked, and in lieu of entering tested the badge of sorrow between thumb
+and finger. "Pant stuff, sure enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob
+himself, or they'd have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now
+what in thunder, I wonder--"
+
+He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house. Like the
+general store, the door was closed, and just above the catch, flapping
+languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the mate to the black rag
+dangling at his back. The spectator's shaggy eyebrows tightened in
+genuine surprise, and with near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts
+of the short row of other buildings along the street.
+
+"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
+evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse with
+carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted, indecisive, and
+for the first time became conscious that not a human being was in sight.
+In the street before him a pair of half-grown cockerels with ludicrously
+long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from
+amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's
+meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
+physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of
+the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the
+present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet.
+Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin
+prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had
+hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal
+recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the
+sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead--.
+
+"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though another were
+listening. "There must have been a general cleanup this time. I fear
+that the report of my respected nephew--" He checked himself suddenly, a
+bit guiltily. Even though no one was listening, he was loath to voice an
+inevitable conclusion. Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at
+last, and, leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud
+citizens denominated the residence quarter--a handful of unpainted
+weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
+surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now, and as
+he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious satisfaction at
+the relief. At the second domicile, a residence as nearly like the first
+as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he turned in at the lane leading
+to the house unhesitatingly, and without form of knocking opened the
+door and stepped inside.
+
+The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its uncarpeted
+cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished, smoke-tinted walls. In it,
+to the casual observer, there were visible but four objects: an
+old-fashioned walnut desk that had once borne a top, but which did so no
+longer; two cane-bottomed chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one
+thereof, a man. The latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing
+an unshaven chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of
+which the lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie,
+and scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair
+was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though he
+looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the scrutiny,
+there was no salutation, not even when, without form of invitation, the
+rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and tossed his broad felt
+hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk. A moment they sat so, while
+with an effort the newcomer recovered his breath.
+
+"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated eventually. "I've
+noticed that the last place to look for a doctor is in the proximity of
+a funeral." He fumbled in his pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that
+in the other's mouth. "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather
+from the appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than
+ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face was
+concealed.
+
+"Rather," laconically.
+
+"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze had
+cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion appreciatively.
+"I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I think she can be trusted
+to attend to such little matters."
+
+Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes were
+observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two men known
+each other these five years.
+
+"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family," commented
+Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper, any time." Again
+the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't decided yet to prove the
+fact for yourself, have you?"
+
+Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that had
+brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent. Only too
+well he knew the signs--the good-natured satire that ill concealed a
+tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of trivialities that cleared the
+way later of non-essentials. In silence he waited; and, as he had known
+the moment that big figure appeared in the doorway, it came.
+
+Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as deliberately
+flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his side, inspected the
+burning tuck critically.
+
+"Supposing," he introduced baldly, "a fellow--an old fellow like
+myself," he corrected precisely, "was to be going about his business as
+an old fellow should, in a two-seated surrey with canvas curtains such
+as you've seen me drive sometimes." The speaker paused a second to clear
+his throat. "Supposing this old fellow was just riding through the
+country easy, taking his time and with nothing particular on his mind,
+and all of a sudden he should feel as though someone had sneaked up and
+stuck him from behind with a long, sharp knife. Supposing this should
+happen, and, although it was the middle of the day, everything should go
+black as night and he should wake up, he couldn't tell how much later,
+and find himself all heaped up in the bottom of the rig and the team
+stock still out in the middle of the prairie." Deliberately as it had
+left, the cigar returned to the speaker's lips, was puffed hard until
+it glowed furiously; and was again critically examined. "Supposing such
+a fat old fellow as myself should tell you this. As a doc and a
+specialist, would you think there was something worth while the matter
+with him?"
+
+Still Chantry did not speak, but the burned-out stump in his fingers
+sought a remote corner of the room, consorted with a goodly collection
+of its mates, and the drooping eyelid tightened.
+
+"Supposing," continued Landor, "the thing should happen the second time,
+and the old fellow, who wasn't good at walking, should be spilled out
+and have to foot it home three miles. What would you think then?"
+
+One of Chantry's hands, itself not over clean, dusted the ash off his
+vest absently.
+
+"When was it, this last time?" he questioned.
+
+"Yesterday," impassively. "I'd started for here to meet my nephew when
+the thing struck me; and when I managed to get home I sent How over
+instead." He halted reminiscently. "I wrote the boy to come a couple of
+weeks ago--that's when it caught me first."
+
+"Your nephew, Craig, knows about it, does he?"
+
+Landor puffed anew with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+"No. I thought there was no call to tell the folks at the ranch. Mary'd
+have a cat-fit if she knew. I told them I got out to shoot at a coyote,
+and the bronchos ran away." He glanced at the other explanatorily,
+deprecatingly. "Clayton is my sister's son and the only real relative I
+have, you know. I just asked him to come on general principles."
+
+Chantry made no comment. Opening a drawer of the desk, he fumbled amid a
+litter of articles useful and useless, and, extracting a battered
+stethoscope, shifted his chair forward until it was close to the other
+and stuck the tiny tubes to his ears. Still without comment he opened
+the rancher's shirt, applied the instrument, listened, shifted it,
+listened, shifted and listened the third time--slid his chair back to
+the former position.
+
+"What else do you know?" he asked.
+
+Landor buttoned up the gap in his shirt methodically.
+
+"Nothing, except that the thing is in the family. My father went that
+way when he was younger than I am, and his father the same." The stogie
+had gone dead in his fingers, and he lit a fresh one steadily. "I've
+been expecting it to catch up with me for years."
+
+"Your father died of it, you say?"
+
+"Yes; on Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in
+sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I
+remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed
+sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and
+Frances--that's my sister--were waiting, and they sent me running to
+call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself up and
+work. I was starved hungry, and I remember I hot-footed it proper
+upstairs to his den and threw open the door." Puff! puff! went the big
+stogie. "An Irish plasterer with seven kids ate that turkey, I
+recollect," he completed, "and I've never kept Thanksgiving from that
+day to this."
+
+"And your grandfather?" unemotionally.
+
+"Just the same. He was a preacher, and the choir was singing the opening
+anthem at the time."
+
+The doctor threw one thin leg over the other and stared impassively out
+the single window. It faced the main street of the town.
+
+"The doings are over for this time, I fancy," he digressed evenly. "I
+see a row of bronchos tied down in front of Red's place."
+
+Landor did not look around.
+
+"Mary and Mrs. Burton will count them, never fear," he recalled in mock
+sarcasm. "What I want to know is your opinion."
+
+"In my opinion there's nothing to be done," said Chantry.
+
+Landor shifted again, and again the chair groaned in mortal agony.
+
+"I know that. What I mean is how long is it liable to be before--" he
+halted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"before Bob and the rest
+will be doing that to me?"
+
+Chantry's gaze left the window, met the shrewd grey eyes beneath the
+other's drooping lids.
+
+"It may be a day and it may be ten years," he said.
+
+Unconsciously Landor settled deeper into his seat. His jaws closed
+tight on the stump of the stogie. Unwaveringly he returned the other's
+gaze.
+
+"You have a more definite idea than that, though," he pressed. "Tell me,
+and let's have it over with."
+
+For five seconds Chantry did not speak; but the restless black eyes
+bored the other through and through, at first impersonally, as, scalpel
+in hand, he would have studied a patient before the first incision in a
+major operation; then, as against the other's will, a great drop of
+sweat gathered on the broad forehead, personally, intimately.
+
+"Yes, my opinion is more definite than that," he corroborated evenly. He
+did not suggest that he was sorry to say what he was about to say, did
+not qualify in advance by intimating that his prognosis might be wrong.
+"I think the next attack will be the last. Moreover, I believe it will
+come soon, very soon." Impassively as he had spoken, he produced a book
+of rice paper from his pocket and a rubber pouch of tobacco. The long
+fingers were skilful, and a cigarette came into being as under a
+machine. Without another word he lit a match and waited until the flame
+was well up on the wood. Of a sudden a great cloud of kindly smoke
+separated him from the other.
+
+With an effort the big rancher lifted in his seat, passed his sleeve
+across his forehead clumsily.
+
+"Thank you, Chantry." He cleared his throat raspingly. "As I said, I
+expected this; that's why I came to see you to-day." For the second time
+his cigar was dead, but he did not light it again. There was no need of
+subterfuge now. "I want you to do me a favour." He looked at the other
+steadily through the diminishing haze. "Will you promise me?"
+
+"No," said Chantry.
+
+Landor stared as one who could not believe his ears.
+
+"No!" he interrogated.
+
+"I said so."
+
+A trace of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as, with an
+effort, he got to his feet.
+
+"I beg your pardon then for disturbing you," he said coldly. "I was
+labouring under the delusion that you were a friend."
+
+The brief career of the cigarette was ended. Chantry's long fingers had
+locked over his knee. He did not move.
+
+"Sit down, please," he said. "It is precisely because I am your friend
+that I will not promise."
+
+Landor halted, a question in every line of his face.
+
+"I think I fail to understand," he groped. "I suppose I'm dense."
+
+"No, you're merely transparent. You were going to ask the one thing I
+can't promise you."
+
+Landor stared, in mystified uncertainty.
+
+"Please sit down. You were going to ask me to take charge of your
+affairs if anything was to happen. Is it not so?"
+
+"Yes. But how in the world--" "Don't ask it then, please," swiftly. He
+ignored the other's suggestion. "Get someone else, someone you've known
+for a long time."
+
+"I've known you for a long time--five years."
+
+"Or leave everything in your wife's hands." Again Chantry scouted the
+obvious. "If there should be need she could get a lawyer from the
+city--"
+
+"Lawyer nothing!" refuted Landor. "That's just what I wish to avoid.
+Mary or the girl, either one, have about as much idea of taking care of
+themselves as they have of speaking Chinese. They'd be on the county
+inside a year, with no one interested to look out for them."
+
+"But How--"
+
+"He's as bad. He can ride a broncho, or stalk a sandhill crane where
+there isn't cover to hide your hat, or manage cattle, or stretch out in
+the sun and: dream; but business--He wouldn't know a bank cheque if he
+saw one; and, what's worse, he doesn't want to know."
+
+"Craig, then, your nephew--" It was not natural for Chantry to be
+perfunctory, and he halted.
+
+For a moment the big rancher was silent. In his lap his fingers met
+unconsciously, tip to tip, in the instinctive habit of age.
+
+"I anticipated that," he said wearily. "I realise it's the obvious thing
+to do. I never adopted How as I did the girl--I was willing to, but he
+didn't see the use--and so Craig's the only man kin I have." The life
+and magnetism, usually so noticeable in Landor's great figure, had
+vanished. It was merely an old man facing the end who settled listlessly
+into his seat. "I had big hopes of the boy. I hadn't seen him since he
+was a youngster, and Frances, while she lived, was always bragging about
+his doings. That's why I sent for him." Pat, pat went the big fingers in
+his lap against each other. "I've always felt that if worst came to
+worst the women folks would have someone practical to rely on; but
+somehow, when I saw him last night, from what he said and what he didn't
+say, from the way he acted and the way he explained--what happened here
+last evening--" The speaker caught himself. A trace of the old
+shrewdness crept into the grey eyes as he inspected his companion
+steadily. "I know How pretty well, and when someone intimates to me that
+he is a grand-stand player, or goes out of his way to pick a quarrel, or
+meddles with someone else's affairs--" Again the big man caught himself.
+The scrutiny became almost a petition. "I cut you off short about what
+went on here yesterday," he digressed. "I didn't want to hear. I guess I
+was afraid to hear. It's been foolish, I know, but I've depended a good
+deal upon the boy, and I'm afraid he's going to be a--disappointment."
+
+With the old machine-like precision Chantry rolled another cigarette,
+lit it, sent a great cloud of smoke tumbling up toward the ceiling. That
+was all.
+
+"You see for yourself how it is," said the rancher. "I wouldn't ask you
+again if there was anyone else I could go to; but there isn't. Maybe I'm
+only borrowing trouble, maybe there won't be anything for you or anyone
+to do; but it would be a big load off my mind to know that if anything
+should happen.--" He halted abruptly. It was not easy for this man to
+discuss his trouble, even to a friend. "It isn't such a big thing I'm
+asking," he hurried. "I'm sure if positions were reversed and you were
+to request me--"
+
+"I know you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I--" Of a sudden,
+interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin, ungainly figure in
+shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the point of caricature.
+Unconsciously he started pacing back and forth across the room,
+restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the years he had previously known
+the man had Landor seen him so, seen him other than the impassive,
+almost forbidding practitioner of a minute ago. For the time being his
+own trouble was forgotten in surprise, and he stared at the
+transformation almost unbelievingly. Back and forth, back and forth went
+the thin, ungainly shape, the ill-laid floor creaking as he moved,
+paused at last before the single dust-stained window, stood like a
+silhouette looking out over the desolate town. Watching, Landor shifted
+uncomfortably in his seat. Once he cleared his throat as if to speak. An
+instinct told him he should say something; but he was in the dark
+absolutely, and words would not come. Reaching over to the desk he took
+up his broad felt hat and sat twirling it in his fingers, waiting.
+
+As suddenly as he had arisen Chantry returned, resumed his seat. His
+face had grown noticeably pale, and his left eyelid drooped even more
+than normally.
+
+"I feel I owe you an apology," he said swiftly. "In a way we've been
+friends, and as you say, it's not a big thing you ask of me; but
+nevertheless I can't grant it. Please don't ask me."
+
+The hat in Landor's hands became still, significantly still.
+
+"I admit I don't understand," he accepted, "but of course if you feel
+that way, I shall not ask you again." Unconsciously a trace of the
+former stiffness returned to his manner as he arose heavily. "I think
+I'd better be going." His mouth twitched in an effort at pleasantry.
+"Mary'll be dying to give me the details."
+
+Chantry did not smile, did not again ask the other to resume his seat.
+Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest squarely.
+
+"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said repressedly.
+"Would you like to hear?"
+
+"Yes--if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to, however--"
+
+"No, I'd rather you--understood than to go that way." The doctor cleared
+his throat in the manner of one who smokes overmuch. "We all have our
+skeleton hid away somewhere, I suppose. At least I have mine, and it
+keeps bobbing out at times like this when I most wish--" He caught
+himself, met his companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you
+wondered why I ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried
+suddenly. "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
+don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there was
+something peculiar about it all?"
+
+"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving again. He
+had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it tolerantly, with a
+vague sense of commiseration--an attitude very similar to that with
+which the uninitiated observe a player at golf; but that there might be
+another, a sinister meaning--.
+
+"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem peculiar, now that
+you consider it?" The question came swiftly, tensely, with a
+significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell me, please."
+
+"Yes, perhaps; but--"
+
+"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but see." The
+speaker started anew the restless, aimless pace. "The country is full of
+us; all new countries are." He was still speaking hurriedly, tensely, as
+we tell of a murder or a ghastly tragedy; something which in duty we
+must confide, but which we hasten to have over. "It's easier to get here
+than to Mexico or to Canada, and until the country is settled, until
+people begin to suspect--" He halted suddenly opposite the other, his
+face deathly pale, deathly tortured. "In God's name, don't you
+understand now?" he questioned passionately. "Must I tell you in so many
+words why I refused, why I don't dare do anything else but refuse?"
+
+"No, you don't need to tell me." Absently, unconsciously, the rancher
+produced a red bandana handkerchief and wiped his face; then thrust it
+back into his pocket. "I think I understand at last." His eyes had
+dropped and he did not raise them again to his companion. "I'm sorry,
+very sorry, that I asked you; sorry most of all that--" He halted
+diffidently, his great hands hanging loose at his side, his broad
+shoulders drooping wearily. He was not glib of speech, at best, and this
+second blow was hard to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant,
+searching for words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the
+door. "I really must be going," he concluded.
+
+Chantry did not ask him to stay, made no motion to prevent his going.
+Tense, motionless, he stood where he had last paused, waited in silence
+until the visitor's hand was upon the knob.
+
+"Good-bye Landor," he said then simply.
+
+Not the words themselves, but something in the tone caused the rancher
+to halt, to look back.
+
+"Good-day, you mean, rather," he corrected.
+
+"No, good-bye. You will not see me again."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"No. I'm too much of a coward for that, or I should have done so long
+ago. I merely mean I'll move on to-morrow."
+
+Face to face the two men stood staring at each other. Seconds drifted
+by. It was the doctor who spoke at last.
+
+"God knows that if I could, I'd change with you even now, Landor," he
+said repressedly. "I'd change with you gladly." A moment he stood so,
+tense as a wire drawn to the point of breaking, ghastly tense; then of a
+sudden he went lax. Instinctively his fingers sought his pockets, and
+there where he stood he started swiftly to roll a cigarette.
+
+"Go, please," he requested. "Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE WILD
+
+Eight miles out on the prairie, out of sight of the Buffalo Butte ranch
+house--save for a scattering herd of grazing cattle in the distance, and
+a hobbled mouse-coloured broncho feeding near at hand, out of sight of
+every living thing--a man lay stretched full length upon the ground. It
+was the time of day that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's
+store, and the broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to
+keep the glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket;
+an Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a blot
+of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his moccasined
+feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would have thought him
+asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes that looked forth
+motionless from beneath the hat brim, that apparently never for an
+instant left that scattering blot where, distorted, fantastic from
+distance and through the curling heat waves the herd grazed, were very
+wide awake indeed. They were not even drowsy or off guard. They were
+merely passive, absolutely passive. The whole body was passive,
+motionless, relaxed in every muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the
+marvel--to all save the thousandth human in this restless age, the
+impossibility. To be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely
+nothing, not even sleep--seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one
+of the most difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need
+is sufficient; but man, modern man--Here and there one retains the
+faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth; but
+here and there only. Yet it was such an one that lay alone out there on
+the Dakota prairie that October day; one who, as Craig had said, hinted
+unfortunately of comic opera, but who never, even in remotest
+conception, fancied that comic opera existed, a dreamer and yet,
+notwithstanding, a doer, an Indian, and still not an Indian;
+Ma-wa-cha-sa by name.
+
+With the approach of midday a light wind had arisen, and now, wandering
+northward, it tugged at the pony's long, shaggy mane and tail, set each
+individual hair of the little beast vibrating in unjustified ferocity;
+and, drifting aimlessly on, stirred the brittle grass stalks at the
+man's feet with the muffled crackling of a far-distant prairie fire. The
+herd, a great machine cutting clean every foot of the sun-cured grass in
+its path, moved on and on, reached a low spot in the gently rolling
+country, and passed slowly from view; then, still moving forward, took
+shape on the summit of the next rise, more distinct than before.
+
+Time passed as the man lay there, time that to another would have been
+interminable, that to him was apparently unnoted. Gradually, as the full
+heat of the day approached, the breeze became stronger, set the heat
+waves dancing to swifter measure, sang audibly in the listener's ears
+its siren song of prairie and of peace. The broncho, its appetite
+temporarily satisfied, lay down fair in its tracks, groaned lazily in
+the action, and shut its eyes. It was the rest time of the wild, and the
+same instinct appealed to the leader of the distant herd. Down it went
+where it stood as the pony had done, disappeared absolutely from view. A
+moment later another followed, and another, and another. It was almost
+uncanny, there in the fantastic glimmer, that disappearance. In the
+space of minutes, look where one would, the horizon was blank. Where the
+herd had been there was nothing, not even a blot. It was as the desert,
+and the vanished herd a mirage. It was like the far northland tight in
+the grip of winter, like the ocean at night. It was the Dakota frontier
+at midday.
+
+Again time passed and, motionless as at first, wide eyed, the man lay
+looking out. The pony was sound asleep now. Its nostrils widened and
+narrowed rhythmically and it snored at intervals. Save for this and the
+soft crackle of the grass and the aeolian song of the wind the earth was
+still; still as death; so still that, indescribably soft as it was
+immeasurably distant, the man detected of a sudden against it a new
+sound. But he did not stir. The black eyes looked out motionless as at
+first. He merely waited a minute, two--and it came again; a bit louder
+this time, more distinct, unmistakable.
+
+This time the listener moved. Deftly, swiftly, he unrolled the gaudy
+blanket, spread it thin upon the ground, covered it completely with his
+body. In lieu of a pillow his arms crossed under his head, and, leaning
+back, the hat brim still shading his eyes, he lay gazing up into the
+sky, motionless as a prairie boulder.
+
+Again the sound was repeated; not a single note, but a medley, a chorus.
+It was still faint, still immeasurable as to distance; but nearer than
+before and approaching closer second by second. Not from the earth did
+it come, but from the air. Not by any stretch of the imagination was it
+an earthly sound, but aerial. It was an alien note and still it was not
+alien. There upon the silent earth with its sunshine and its illimitable
+distances, it seemed very much a part of the whole. Its keynote was the
+keynote of the time and place, its message was their message, the thrill
+it bore to the listener the thrill of the whole. It was not a musical
+call, that steadily approaching sound. No human being has ever been able
+to locate it in pitch or metre; yet to such as the listening man upon
+the ground, to those who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless
+the sweetest, most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note
+which will compare, none other which even approaches its appeal. It is
+the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom
+impersonate. It is to-day, it was then; for the sound that the man heard
+drawing nearer and nearer that October afternoon was the swelling,
+diminishing note of the migrant on its way south, of the grey Canada
+honker en route from the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+"Honk! honk!" Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within a half
+mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its
+makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys,
+louder and louder, confused as children's voices at play; then in turn
+diminishing, retreating. Very mystifying to one who did not understand
+would have been that augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting
+human boulder it was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he
+knew every movement of that approaching triangle. As certainly as the
+broncho near by and the herd in the distance had responded to the
+sunshine and the time of day, he knew they were responding. To all wild
+things it was the rest hour, and to those a half mile high in the air as
+inevitably as to the beast on earth instinct had said "halt." They were
+still going southward, still drawing nearer and nearer; but it would not
+be for long. Already they were circling, descending, searching here and
+there for a place to alight, to rest. Suspicious even here, they were
+taking their time; but distinct now amid the confusion was the sound of
+their great wings against the denser air, and the "Honk! honk! honk!"
+was a continuous chatter.
+
+Circle after circle made the flock. Once their noise all but ceased, and
+the listener fancied for an instant they were down, but in a moment it
+was resumed louder than before, and he knew they were still a-wing.
+"Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" They were very near indeed, so
+near that the sleeping pony was aroused at the clamour and, lifting its
+head, looked about curiously.
+
+"Honk! honk! honk! Flap! flap! Swish!" Between the sun and the watcher
+there fell a moving shadow and another--then a multitude. The clamour
+was all-surrounding, the flap of great wings a continuous beating, the
+whistle of air like that in a room with a myriad buzzing electric fans.
+Temporarily the prairie breeze was lost; swallowed up in the greater
+movement. Surprised, for the moment frightened, the broncho sprang to
+his feet--paused irresolute. For an instant the sky was hid. Overhead,
+to right, to left, all-obscuring, was nothing but a blot of great grey
+bodies, of wide wings lighter on the under surface, of long, curious
+necks, of dangling feet; then, swiftly as it had come it passed; the sun
+shone anew; the cloud and the shadow thereof, going straight in the face
+of the wind, wandered on. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" they
+repeated; but it was the voice of departure. The thing was done. There
+on the level earth, fair in view, they had passed overhead within twenty
+feet of their arch-enemy, man; and had not known. Now less than a
+quarter of a mile away they were circling for the last time. One big
+gander was already down and stretching his long neck from side to side.
+Another, with a great flapping of wings, was beside him; and another,
+and another. The prairie wind carried along the sound of their chatter;
+but it was subdued now, entirely different from the clamour of a bit
+ago. Against the blue of the sky where they had been a blot only, the
+curling, dancing heat waves arose. One and all had answered the siesta
+call.
+
+Up to this time the man who watched had not stirred. As they had gone
+over, the wide-open eyes had stared up at them; but not in the twitching
+of a muscle had the long body betrayed him. Not even now that it was
+over did he move. Instead, low at first, then louder, a whistle sounded.
+The pony, wide awake now, was grazing contentedly; but he paused. The
+whistle sounded for the third time, and reluctantly he drew near, halted
+obediently. Then at last there was action. With one motion the Indian
+was on his feet. Swiftly as it was spread the blanket was rolled and
+replaced in the waterproof pouch with the remnants of the lunch and a
+book of odds and ends which he carried always with him. The whole was
+strapped to the pony's bare back. As swiftly the hobble was removed and,
+not a minute from the time the last bird was down, the man and the
+beast, the latter only visible from the direction in which they were
+going, were moving on a zigzag, circuitous trail toward the resting yet
+ever-watchful flock before them.
+
+On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his body even
+with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through the wind-tossed
+mane. First to the right, then to the left they tacked, halting at
+intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will halt now and then to feed;
+but never losing the general direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer
+and nearer. A half hour passed by and in it they covered forty
+rods--half the distance. Thirty minutes more elapsed and they had
+crossed an equal portion of the remaining space. Then it was they halted
+and a peculiar thing happened.
+
+The wind had gradually risen during the day, and now, the middle of the
+afternoon, was blowing steadily. Light objects unattached move easily
+across the level prairie at this time of year, and here and there under
+its touch one after another of a particular kind were already in motion.
+Fluffy, unsubstantial objects they were, as large as a bushel measure
+and rudely circular. Looking out over the level earth often a half dozen
+at a time were visible, rolling and halting and rolling again on an
+endless journey from nowhere to nowhere. They were the well-named tumble
+weeds of the prairie; as distinctive as the resting flock of late
+autumn, of approaching winter. One of these it was now that came
+tumbling in lazily from the south and, barely missing the indifferent
+birds themselves, dawdled languidly on toward the pony beyond. On it
+came, would have passed to the right; but, under an impulse he in no way
+understood, the broncho moved to intercept it. Fair in its path, the
+little beast would still have shifted to give it right of way, for the
+weed is very prickly; but again the authority he did not question held
+him in his place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came
+together. Then it was the _finale_ began, the real test, the matching of
+human cunning and animal watchfulness.
+
+Left alone there upon the prairie, the indifferent broncho resumed its
+feeding. Away from it, foot by foot, so slowly that a careful observer
+could barely have seen it stir, moved the great weed. No animal on the
+face of earth save man himself would have been suspicious of that
+natural blind; even he would have overlooked it had he not by chance
+noted that while every other of its kind was moving with the wind, it
+slowly but surely was advancing against it. The scene where the drama
+was taking place was level as a floor, the grazed grass that covered it
+scarcely higher than a man's hand; yet from in front not an inch of the
+Indian's long body was visible, not a sound marked its advance. In
+comparison with its movement time passed swiftly; a third half hour
+while it was advancing ten rods. Already the short autumn afternoon was
+drawing to a close. The sun was no longer uncomfortably hot. The heat
+waves had ceased dancing. In sympathy the prairie breeze, torn of the
+sun, was becoming appreciably milder. As certainly as it had come, the
+brief rest period was drawing to a close.
+
+But the long figure that gave the blind motion showed no haste. Inch by
+inch it advanced, never still, yet never hurrying. The great
+unsuspicious birds were very near now, so near that a white hunter
+would have lost his equanimity in anticipation. Through the meshwork of
+the blind the stalker counted them. Twenty-seven there were together,
+and near to him another, a sentinel. He was within half the distance of
+a city block of the latter, so close that he could see the beady,
+watchful eyes, the pencillings of the plumage, the billowing of feathers
+as the long neck shifted from side to side. Verily it was a moment to
+make a sportsman's blood leap--to make him forget; but not even then did
+the Indian show a sign of excitement, not for a minute did the lithe
+body cease in its soundless serpentine motion. It was splendid, that
+patient, stealthy approach, splendid in its mastery of the still hunt;
+but beyond this it was more, it was fearful. Had an observer been where
+no observer was, it would inevitably have carried with it another
+suggestion--the possibilities of such a man were a real object, one
+vital to his life, and not a mere pastime, at stake. What would this
+patient, tireless, splendid animal do then? What if another man, his
+enemy, were the object, the quarry?
+
+The rest time at last was over. Insidiously into the air had crept a
+suggestion of coolness, of approaching night. In the background the pony
+ceased feeding, stood patiently awaiting the return of its rider. Far in
+the distance, the herd, a darker blot against the brown earth, were once
+more upon their feet. The flock, that heretofore like a group of
+barnyard fowls in the dust and the sun had remained indolently resting
+and preening their plumage, grew alert. One after the other they began
+wandering here and there aimlessly, restlessly. The subdued chatter
+became positive. Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a
+challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings tentatively,
+and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The cycle was all but
+complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them south, that
+had for this brief time sent them to earth, was calling again. In
+sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went still. Another minute,
+another second even, perhaps, and they would be gone. Through the filmy
+screen the stalker saw it all, read the meaning. He had ere this drawn
+unbelievably near. Barely the width of a narrow street separated him
+from the main flock--less than the breadth of a goodly sized room the
+motionless sentinel. It was the moment for action.
+
+And action followed. Like a mighty spring the slim muscular body
+contracted in its length. Toes and fingers dug into the earth like a
+sprinter awaiting the starting pistol. He drew a long breath. Then of a
+sudden, straight over the now useless blind, unexpected, startling as a
+thunderclap out of a cloudless sky, directly toward the nearest bird
+bounded a tall brown figure, silent as a phantom. For a second the
+entire flock stared in dumb paralytic surprise; then following there
+came a note of terror from eight and twenty throats that rose as one
+voice, that over the now silent prairie could have been heard for
+miles. It was the signal for action, for escape, and, terror-mad, they
+broke into motion. But a flock of great Canada geese cannot, like quail,
+spring directly a-wing. They must first gather momentum. This they
+attempted to gain--in its accomplishment all but one succeeded. That
+one, the leader, the sentinel, was too near. Almost before that first
+note of terror had left his throat the man was upon him. Ere he could
+rise two relentless hands had fastened upon his beating wings and held
+him prisoner. Hissing, struggling, he put up the best fight he could;
+but it was useless. "Honk! honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!" shrilled the
+flock now safe in the air. "Honk! honk! honk!" as with wings and feet
+they climbed into the sky. "Honk! honk! honk!" softer and softer. "Honk!
+honk! honk!" for the last time, faint as an echo; and they were gone.
+Behind them the human and the wild thing his prisoner stood staring at
+each other alone.
+
+For a long, long time neither moved. Its first desperate effort to
+escape past, the bird ceased to struggle, stood passive in its place;
+passive as the man himself had remained there on the ground a few hours
+before. Its long neck swayed here and there continuously, restlessly,
+and its throat was a-throb; but no muscle of the body stirred. It had
+made its fight--and lost. For the time being resistance was fatuous, and
+it accepted the inevitable. Silent as its captor, it awaited the move of
+the conqueror. It would resist again when the move came, resist to the
+last ounce of its strength; but until then in instinctive wisdom it
+would husband its energy.
+
+Yet that move was very slow in coming. It was the time of day when
+ordinarily the herder collected his drove and returned toward the home
+corral; still he showed no intention of haste. The broncho was shaking
+his head at intervals restlessly; too well trained to leave, yet
+impatient as a hungry child for the return--and was ignored. For the
+time being the man seemed to have forgotten all external considerations.
+Not savagely nor cruelly, but with a sort of fascination he stood gazing
+at this wild thing in his power. For a long, long time he did nothing
+more, merely looked at it; looked admiringly, intimately. No trace of
+blood hunger was in his face, no lust to kill; but pure
+appreciation--and something more; something that made the two almost
+kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike. Each was
+graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of its kind physical
+perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of the wild; of solitude,
+of magnificent distances. Each was a part of its setting; as much so as
+the all-surrounding silence. Last of all, each stood for one quality
+dominant, one desire overtowering all others; and that was freedom,
+unqualified, absolute.
+
+Long as it was they stood there so, the bird was true to its instinct of
+passive inaction. It was the human that made the first move. Gently,
+slowly, one hand freed itself, stroked the silky soft plumage; stroked
+it intimately, almost lovingly--as an animal mother caresses its young.
+The man did not speak, made no sound, merely repeated the motion again
+and again. Under the touch the restless head became still, the watchful
+black eyes more watchful. That was all. Slowly as it had moved before,
+the man's hand shifted anew, passed down, down, the glossy throat to the
+breast--paused over the heart of the wild thing. There it remained, and
+for the first time a definite expression came into the mask-like face; a
+look of pity, of genuine contrition. A moment the hand lay there; then,
+childish as it may seem, absurd, if you please, the man spoke aloud.
+
+"You're afraid of me, deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he queried
+softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a cannibal, I'm going
+to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into the black eyes--deep,
+mysterious as the wild itself. "You think this, and still you don't
+grovel, don't make a sound. You're brave, birdie, braver than most men."
+He paused, and one by one his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of
+you; so proud that I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his
+full height. Unconsciously his arms folded across his chest. "Go,
+birdie; you're free."
+
+A moment longer there was inaction. Unbelieving, still a captive, the
+great bird stood there motionless as before; then of a sudden it
+understood; it was free. By some chance, some Providence, this great
+animal, its captor, had lost the mastery, and it was free.
+Simultaneously with the knowledge the pent-up energy of the last minutes
+went active, fairly explosive. With a mighty rush it was away; feet and
+wings beating the earth, the air. Swifter and swifter it went, gaining
+momentum with each second. It barely touched the frost-brown prairie; it
+cleared it entirely, it rose, rose, with mighty sweeps of mighty wings.
+Oh, it was free! free! free! "Honk! honk!" Free! free! "Honk! honk!
+honk!"
+
+Like a statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot
+on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at last into the
+all-surrounding brown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
+
+It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor returned that
+evening. The herd safely corralled for the night, he rode slowly toward
+the ranch house, and, without leaving the pony's back, opened and closed
+the gate of the barb wire fence surrounding the yard and approached the
+house. There was a bright light in the living-room, and, still without
+dismounting, he paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs.
+Landor, looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her
+hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his feet
+on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking a cigarette,
+and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the room looked blue.
+Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not finding conversation easy,
+and the former appeared distinctly bored. Neither Landor himself nor the
+girl was anywhere visible, and, after a moment, the spectator moved on
+around the corner. The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the
+kitchen, and the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing
+at last under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It
+was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim light was
+burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the barebacked broncho
+hesitated, looking up; then rolling his wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder
+he moved very close to the weather-boarded wall. The building was low,
+and, by stretching a bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the
+second story. He tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.
+
+No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.
+
+Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.
+
+Still no answer.
+
+Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit frosty, the pony
+stamped impatiently.
+
+"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me good-night?"
+
+This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash was
+opened; a face appeared, very white against the black background.
+
+"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.
+
+The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was unrolled.
+
+"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not sick?"
+
+"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired, is all."
+
+For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his black head
+bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed human that he was,
+there seemed to him nothing now to say, nothing adequate. Meanwhile the
+pony was growing more and more impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the
+half-frozen ground rhythmically.
+
+"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit there in the
+window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."
+
+The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.
+
+"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade closed as
+before.
+
+For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of head,
+motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a sound, and
+at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own quarters.
+
+The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the Buffalo Butte
+ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room shack, grudgingly
+built according to government requirements to prove up on a homestead,
+it had recently been enlarged by the addition of a second larger room,
+and as a whole the place further improved by the building of a sod and
+weather-board barn. The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted
+with the tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had
+remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor himself
+could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for years, and in
+all that time, even in the coldest weather, the voluntary exile had
+never lived under a roof. Primitive or evolved as it might be, as youth
+and as man, the Indian was a tent-dweller. Just now the little house was
+being fitted up for occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of
+the day and at evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under
+eight by ten feet of canvas near at hand.
+
+A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against a dark
+horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house yard the man on
+the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that he had company; yet,
+characteristic in his every action, he did not hurry. Methodically he
+put up the pony in the new barn, fed and bedded him for the night. From
+the adjoining stall, out of the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish
+whine and the protest of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an
+observer would have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a
+pair of sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two
+gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible. It was
+to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps from his lunch
+remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the pony, he made a bed;
+then--though the little beast was only a grey prairie wolf, it was a
+baby and lonely--he knelt down and for a moment laid his own face
+against the other's softly shaggy face.
+
+When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there was a moist
+spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had inscribed its
+affection.
+
+On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man with his
+back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap and stepped
+inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the manner of one
+whose thoughts had been far away.
+
+"You're late to-night," he commented.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or expected,
+and the subject dropped.
+
+There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in silence the
+Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging opposite was burning
+low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the tin reflector so that the
+light would play on the scene of operations. Leaving the tent for a
+moment, he returned with a young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put
+it in a skillet to fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he
+produced a couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the
+opposite side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be
+dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that supper
+was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey red cloth was
+set, the odour of coffee--cheap coffee, yet surprisingly fragrant--was
+in the air, and the bird and potatoes were temptingly brown. It was
+almost uncanny the way this man accomplished things. Landor himself
+never ceased to marvel. How always seemed unconscious of what he was
+doing, seemed always thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a
+motion, and when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was
+so in small things. It was identical in large.
+
+Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a word had
+been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted hospitably.
+
+"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an early supper.
+I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."
+
+"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his seat
+wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."
+
+In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not press his
+invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's admission. Either
+would have been superfluous. Instead he ate with the hearty appetite of
+a healthy human, and thereafter, swiftly and methodically as he had
+prepared the meal, cleared the table and put all in order. Then at last,
+the fire replenished and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown
+within the radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the
+perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and awaited
+the something he knew had brought the other to him at this unusual hour.
+"There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of the little table at your
+right," he assisted.
+
+Landor roused with a trace of surprise.
+
+"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.
+
+"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the superfluous, the
+obvious explanation.
+
+Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and pressed the
+brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match he lit crackled
+explosively, and he started at the unexpected sound as one whose nerves
+were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still sat for a moment puffing hard.
+
+"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a favour.
+Will you promise me?"
+
+The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my power,
+yes, sir," he said.
+
+That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the relation of
+the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the younger, the trace of
+almost patriarchal respect that never left his manner when, addressing
+the elder. "If in my power, yes, sir."
+
+"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly. "It's
+simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of waiting until the
+day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though the speaker were uncertain
+whether or no to say more. "I have a particular reason for wishing it,"
+he completed inadequately.
+
+For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question was voiced;
+there was no probing of the confidence the other preferred not to give.
+
+"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.
+
+Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already glowing
+bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had done.
+
+"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong now, but
+nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day while I was in
+town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form, but I feel
+better to have things settled." With forced matter of factness he
+knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the grate and filled the
+bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any responsibility, so I left
+practically everything to Bess. I know that if anything should happen to
+me you'd take care of her mother."
+
+No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.
+
+"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very different
+from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher to-night, very
+obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear natural. "I know you'll
+make her happy, my boy."
+
+Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted uncomfortably.
+As well as he knew his own name he knew that his secret was secret no
+longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild thing that hides itself to die
+alone he avoided direct mention of the fact, direct wording of the
+inevitable. But something in the attitude of the motionless figure
+before him prevented further dissimulation. Some influence urged him to
+hasten the _denouement_ which he knew was but postponed. With an effort
+he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the other's black
+eyes steadily.
+
+"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned directly.
+
+"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is that I'm
+sorry you did as you did."
+
+"Sorry, How?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Very sorry."
+
+"And why?"
+
+No answer.
+
+The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon the Indian's
+face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the corner by the stove was
+in shadow.
+
+"I will tell you why." He returned to his place and stretched himself as
+before, his hands locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr.
+Landor, and Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you
+will compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have
+seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."
+
+For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with a
+fragment of coal from the grate.
+
+"I don't see why, How," he refuted.
+
+"You do, though, sir."
+
+"No. Tell me."
+
+There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other would not
+answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black eyes fixed upon him
+unshiftingly.
+
+"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As we are now
+I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because--I love her." He
+paused, and into the tent there came the long-drawn-out wail of the baby
+prisoner. Silence returned. "As surely as that little wolf is lonely,
+Bess will know the trouble money brings if you do as you intend. Not
+myself, but other men will teach her."
+
+Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his fingers.
+
+"Once more I ask why, How?"
+
+The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.
+
+"Because she is white and they are white, and I--am an Indian."
+
+At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto
+succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no
+longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true.
+Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing--as they would
+do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a
+child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make
+it possible!
+
+Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move
+about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by
+inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been
+dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great
+hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last
+he turned.
+
+"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and understand the way
+you feel. God knows I wish it were different, wish I did not believe
+what you say true; but things are as the are. What we have to do now is
+the best thing possible under the circumstances." He sat down in the
+chair again heavily, his hands still locked in his lap. "If wrong has
+been done I am to blame, I myself, in raising you and Bess together. I
+might have known that it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for
+each other; but I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess--"
+
+"Mr. Landor--"
+
+The big man halted. For the first time he realised the admission of what
+he had been saying, the inevitable implication--and he was silent. For
+seconds likewise the Indian was still; but in them he was looking at the
+other steadily, in a way he had never looked at him before, with an
+intensity that was haunting.
+
+"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There was no anger
+in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes, pathos--terrible,
+gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else felt so--everyone except
+Bess herself; but you--you--I did not know that before, Mr. Landor."
+
+Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the bottom of
+his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in self-defence; but
+he could not. There was nothing to say.
+
+"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the repressed voice,
+"not even when at first you were slow to give your consent to our
+marriage. I fancied it was merely because you thought me impractical,
+because I cared nothing for a life that was different, was not my own.
+Nor again, even a bit ago when you asked me to promise--what I did
+promise--I did not suspicion such a thing. I thought it a compliment,
+the sincerest compliment I had ever received in my life: the fact that
+you should trust me so, with all that was dear to you in the world."
+Just perceptibly he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's
+face. "But I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You
+are like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that we've
+lived together for half a generation makes no difference. You're square,
+square to the end. You even like me in a way. You've given your word and
+won't go back on it; but nevertheless you're sorry. Even while you urge
+us to marry, to have the thing over, to have a responsibility off your
+mind, you feel you are sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a
+second, and even at this time Landor was conscious that it was
+infinitely the longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't
+blame you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
+race; but nevertheless, nevertheless--"
+
+The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes were of a
+sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at the roof of the
+tent. No power on earth could have made him complete that sentence, made
+him admit the deadly hurt it suggested. From the unusual confidence of a
+bit ago he merely lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive
+self. Yet as plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the
+difference, realised as well that while outwardly there would be no
+change, from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
+the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to exist. He
+had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the knowledge for the
+first time in the years they two had lived together he realised how much
+after all he had grown to depend upon this laconic human, how much he
+had lost. It was the last drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing
+straw. His great ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in
+his hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
+marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with his
+deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them, silence that by
+word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from the stable there
+sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a moment later, muffled,
+echo-like from the distance, the answering call of one of its own kind
+free upon the infinite prairie; but apparently neither man noticed,
+neither man cared--and the silence returned. Long minutes passed. The
+fire in the stove burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a
+suggestion of the coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without
+a word he put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were
+unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a moment
+he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of attempting an
+explanation where none was possible; but he realised it would but make
+matters worse, and desisted. The Indian, too, had arisen, and
+repressedly courteous, stood ready to open the flap of the tent for the
+other to pass. For a moment, the last moment they were ever to see each
+other alive, they stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each
+knowing that the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly,
+Landor took a step forward.
+
+The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he passed; then
+closed again, shutting him out.
+
+For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man remained
+as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an inanimate thing. The
+kerosene lamp was burning low now and sputtered dismally; but he did not
+notice, did not hear. For the third time, tremulous against the
+background of night and of silence, came the wail of the lonely little
+captive. It was a kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the
+figure responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute
+later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey, bright-eyed
+something, happy as a puppy at release and companionship. Methodically
+the man banked the coal fire and put out the lantern. He did not make a
+bed, did not undress. Instead, weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid
+the buffalo robes, lay still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed,
+inquiring nose in the darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no
+response, and becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the
+silent being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly--and likewise
+became still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+The darkness that precedes morning had the prairie country in its grip
+when Howard, the gaunt foreman of the B.B. ranch, drew rein before the
+silent tent, and with the butt end of his quirt tapped on the heavy
+canvas.
+
+"Wake up," he called laconically. "You're wanted at the ranch house."
+
+Echo-like, startling in its suddenness, an inverted V opened in the
+white wall and in it, fully dressed, vigilant, appeared the figure of
+its owner.
+
+"What is it?" asked a voice insistently.
+
+The Texan stared in unconcealed surprise.
+
+"In Heaven's name, man, don't you ever sleep?" he drawled. "The boss is
+dead," he added baldly at second thought.
+
+The black V closed again, and distinct in outline against the white
+background appeared the silhouette of the listener. His arms were folded
+across his chest in a way that was characteristic, and his moccasined
+feet were set close together. He spoke no word of surprise, asked no
+question; merely stood there in the silence and the semi-darkness
+waiting.
+
+The foreman was by no means a responsive soul, yet, watching, there
+instinctively crept over him a feeling akin to awe of this other silent
+human. There was the mystery of death itself in that motionless,
+listening shadow.
+
+"It was just before I came over to tell you that Mrs. Landor raised the
+house," he explained. "She woke up in the night and found the boss
+so--and cold already." Unconsciously his voice had lowered. "She
+screamed like a mad woman, and ran down-stairs in her nightdress,
+chattering so we could hardly understand her." He slapped at his baggy
+chaperajos with his quirt absently. "That's all I know, except there's
+no particular use to hurry. It's all over now, and he never knew what
+took him."
+
+Silently as before the aperture in the tent opened and closed and the
+listener disappeared; to reappear a moment later with a curled-up woolly
+bundle in his arms. Without a word of explanation he strode toward the
+barn, leaving Howard staring after him uncertainly. Listening, the
+latter heard a suppressed little puppyish protest, as though its maker
+were very sleepy, a moment later the soft, recognising whinny of a
+broncho, and then, startlingly sudden as the figure had first emerged
+from the tent, it appeared again, mounted, by his side.
+
+For half the distance to the ranch house not a word was said; then of a
+sudden Howard drew his horse to a walk meaningly.
+
+"I suppose it's none of my business," he commented without preface, "but
+unless I'm badly mistaken there'll be hell to pay around the Buffalo
+Butte now."
+
+Again, as at the tent door, his companion made no answer; merely waited
+for the something he knew was on the other's mind. The east was
+beginning to lighten now, and against the reddening sky his dark face
+appeared almost pale.
+
+Howard shifted in his saddle seat and inspected the ground at his right
+as intently as though there might be jewels scattered about.
+
+"The boss's relative--Craig," he added, "has taken possession there as
+completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead of been a
+visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the man's face an
+unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted characteristically. "I like you,
+How, or I wouldn't stick my bill into your affairs. That boy is going to
+make you trouble, take my word for it."
+
+Even then there was no response; but the overseer did not seem surprised
+or offended. Instead, the load he had to impart off his mind, his manner
+indicated distinct relief. But one thing more was necessary to his
+material comfort--and that solace was at hand. Taking a great bite of
+plug tobacco, a chew that swelled one of his thin cheeks like a wen, he
+lapsed into his normal attitude of disinterested reverie.
+
+The ranch house was lighted from top to bottom, abnormally brilliant,
+and as the Indian entered the odour of kerosene was strong in his
+nostrils. In the kitchen as he passed through were the other two
+herders. They sat side by side in uncomfortable inaction, their big
+sombreros in their hands; and with the suppression of those unused to
+death nodded him silent recognition. The dining-room was empty, likewise
+the living-room; but as he mounted the stairs, he could hear the muffled
+catch of a woman's sobs, and above them, intermittent, authoritative,
+the voice of a man speaking. His moccasined feet gave no warning, and
+even after he had entered the room where the dead man lay none of the
+three who were already present knew that he was there.
+
+Just within the doorway he paused and looked about him. In one corner of
+the room, well away from the bed, sat Mary Landor. She did not look up
+as he entered, apparently did not see him, did not see anything. The
+first wild passion of grief past, she had lapsed into a sort of passive
+lethargy. Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the loose dressing
+sack she had put on, and now and then her thin lips trembled; but that
+was all.
+
+Only a glance the newcomer gave her, then his eyes shifted to the bed;
+shifted and halted and, unconsciously as he had done when Howard first
+broke the news, his feet came close together and his arms folded across
+his chest in characteristic, all-observing attention. Not a muscle
+moved, he scarcely seemed to breathe. He merely watched.
+
+And this was what he saw: The shape of a dead man lying as at first
+beneath the covers; only now the sheet had been raised until the face
+was hid. Beside it, stretched out in abandon as she had thrown herself
+down, her head all but buried from view, was the girl Bess. She was
+sobbing as though her heart would break: sobbing as though unconscious
+of another human being in the world. Above her, leaning over her, was
+the form of a man: Craig. His uncle had brought his belongings from the
+tiny town the day before, and even at this time his linen and cravat
+were immaculate. He was looking down at the little woman before him,
+looking and hesitating as one choosing between good and evil.
+
+"Bess," he was saying, "you must not. You'll make yourself sick.
+Besides, it's nearly morning and people will be coming. Don't do so;
+please!"
+
+No answer, no indication that he had been heard; only the muffled,
+racking, piteous sobs.
+
+"Bess," insistently, "Bess! Listen to me. I can't have you do so. Uncle
+Landor wouldn't like it, I know he wouldn't. He'd be sorry if he knew.
+Be brave, girlie. You're not alone yet."
+
+Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty, curved
+shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.
+
+The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face went very
+close.
+
+"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't let you
+cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl; infinitely too
+much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly, hurts me more than I
+can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated, and like an inexperienced
+gambler his face went tense and white. "You must listen to me,
+Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are others who will take care of
+you. I myself will take care of you, girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's
+something I must tell you, something you make me tell you now." Swiftly,
+unhesitatingly, he leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed
+about her and he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle,
+could not prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you
+two days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is
+why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love you!"
+
+This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the roof,
+came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living actors
+remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the
+tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting
+before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking
+at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in
+bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him
+tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the
+climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself
+into a man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the
+close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a sound,
+one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate--and again the first.
+Unexpected as death itself would have been at that instant, Craig felt
+two mighty irresistible hands close on his shoulders; close with a grip
+that all but paralysed. Irresistibly again he felt himself turned about,
+put upon his feet; realised of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly
+even to admit of a cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot
+distant, he was staring into the face of the one being on earth from
+whom he had most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully
+intervening, a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came
+between. The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.
+
+"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he didn't.
+Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive him--for my
+sake."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test kerosene still
+hung about the closed living-room where the same four people sat in
+council. No effort had as yet been made to put the place to rights, and
+in consequence it was stuffy and disordered and proportionately
+depressing. The mound of cigarette stumps which Craig had builded the
+night before lay unsightly and evil of odour on the table. The faded rag
+carpet was littered with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding
+blouse and cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat,
+which he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a
+chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences of
+his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two days'
+residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete possession.
+Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority in the past,
+concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That voice was speaking
+now.
+
+"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is buried in
+Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's father." The voice
+halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his other sister, who died
+years and years ago, are both there." Obviously, too obviously, he
+turned away until his face was hid. Into the voice there crept a throb
+that was almost convincing. "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure,
+even though he wouldn't have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned
+it the first night I came, but of course I didn't realise--then--" The
+voice was silent.
+
+As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no emotion, did
+not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain awakened, had she
+grasped the full meaning of the thing which had happened to her. Later,
+indefinitely later, the knowledge would come, and with it the hour of
+reckoning; but for the present she was a mere puppet in the play. Craig,
+the dominant, had told her to dress, and she had dressed. He had
+summoned her to the council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her
+now that he had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had
+entered, stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had
+spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.
+
+"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who cares for him
+or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was becoming unmanageable
+and the girl halted, winking hard. "It seems cruel."
+
+"Not if he would have wished it, Bess."
+
+"But if he hadn't wished it--"
+
+"I repeat I think he would." Craig shifted until his back was toward the
+other man. "I think that his mentioning the possibility at all, the
+first night I came, proves that he wished it."
+
+"Perhaps.... I don't know." ... A long pause; then of a sudden the girl
+arose and walked to the window. But subterfuge was from her a thing
+apart, and she merely leaned her face against the casement. "I can't
+bear to think of it," she trembled.
+
+Craig moved half way toward her; then remembered, and halted.
+
+"Yes, let's decide, and not talk about it," he returned swiftly. "You
+agree with me after all, don't you, Bess?"
+
+The girl did not look up.
+
+"Don't ask me. You and How and Aunt Mary decide." With an effort she
+resumed her former place; but even yet she did not glance at him.
+"Wherever you take him I shall go along, is all."
+
+Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.
+
+"Yes, I think he would have liked that. I ... You agree with me too,
+don't you, Aunt Mary?"
+
+The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up vacantly.
+"What?" she queried absently.
+
+Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.
+
+"Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me," she returned
+monotonously.
+
+In sympathy, the girl's brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig turned away
+almost impatiently. "Let's consider it settled then," he said.
+
+For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at Craig that she
+looked. It was at that other figure in the background, the figure that
+not once through it all had stirred or made a sound. "What shall we do,
+How? what ought we to do?" she asked.
+
+For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig recognise
+the other's presence by so much as a glance. Only the look of exultation
+left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids tightened perceptibly.
+
+"Don't consider what I think, Bess," said a low voice at last. "Do what
+you feel is right."
+
+It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who brought the
+decision to pass. How Landor, the Indian, it was who, alone in the
+dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man out decently, and for
+five dragging minutes thereafter, before the others had come, stood like
+a statue gazing down at the kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own
+that no living human had ever seen or would ever see. How Landor, the
+Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with the closely drawn
+canvas curtains, drove all that day and half the night to the nearest
+undertaker at the railroad terminus beyond the river, seventy-five miles
+away. How Landor, the Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses,
+but barely a pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail,
+and ere it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre,
+knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of Mary
+Landor he knew. How Landor it was once more who, before twenty-four
+hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the unwilling visitor
+by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch yard. Last of all, How
+Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the old surrey once more to the
+east, and with still another team before him and a cold lunch in his
+pocket, sat waiting within the hour to take the departing ones away.
+
+Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was superfluous.
+What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew. That he had expected
+what had taken place in his absence, his bringing Mrs. Burton proved. At
+last realisation had come, and Mary Landor was paying the price of the
+brief lethargic respite; paying it with usury, paying it with the
+helpless abandon of the dependent. The dreary weather-coloured ranch
+house was not a pleasant place to be in that day. Craig left it
+thankfully, with a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting
+topcoat, as the door closed behind him. The other passenger, the one who
+should have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth--.
+
+How Landor it was again who, when minutes of waiting had passed, minutes
+wherein Craig consumed cigarettes successively, tied the team and
+disappeared within doors. What he said none save the girl herself knew;
+but when he returned he was not alone, and though the eyes of his
+companion were red, there was in her manner no longer a trace of
+hesitation.
+
+The two passengers comfortably muffled in the robes of the rear seat,
+the driver buttoned the curtains tight about them methodically. The day
+was very still, not a sound came to them from over the prairie, and of a
+sudden, startlingly clear, from the house itself there came an
+interruption: the piteous, hopeless wail of a woman in a paroxysm of
+grief, and a moment later the voice of another woman in unemotional,
+comforting monotone.
+
+"How," said a choking, answering voice, "I can't go after all, I can't!"
+
+Within the carriage, safe from observation, her companion took her hand
+authoritatively, pressed it within his own.
+
+"Yes, you can, Bess," he said low. "Aunt Mary will have to fight it out
+for herself. You couldn't help her any by staying."
+
+But already the Indian was gone. Within the house as before, even
+keen-eared Mattie Burton failed to catch what he said. Had she done so,
+she would have been no wiser, for apparently that moment a miracle took
+place. Of a sudden, the hysterical voice was silent. The man spoke again
+and--the watcher stared in pure unbelief--her own hand in her
+companion's hand, Mary Landor followed him obediently out to the surrey.
+
+"We haven't any time to lose," he said evenly, as he drew back the flap
+of the curtain. "You'd better say good-bye now."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Bessie, girl. Bessie!"
+
+Again within the ranch house, Mary Landor sank into a seat with the
+utter weariness of a somnambulist awakened. Fully a half minute the
+Indian stood looking down at her. For one of the few times in his life
+his manner indicated indecision. His long arms hung loose from his
+shoulders. His wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes. The watcher thought he
+looked very, very weary. Then of a sudden he roused. Bending over--did
+he foresee what was to come, that moment?--he did something he had never
+done before.
+
+"Good-bye, mother," he said, and kissed her on the lips.
+
+The door closed behind him noiselessly, and a half minute later the
+loose-wheeled old surrey went rumbling past the door. Mrs. Burton was
+feminine and curious, and she went to the window to watch it from sight.
+The Indian, alone on the front seat, sat looking straight ahead. The
+bronchos, fresh from the stall, and but a few weeks before wild on the
+prairie, tugged at the bit wickedly, tried to bolt; but the driver did
+not stir in his place. The left hand, that held the reins, rose and fell
+with their motion, as an angler takes up slack in his line; that was
+all. The woman had lived long on the frontier. She was appreciative and
+pressed her face against the pane the better to see. They were through
+the gate now, well out on the prairie. The clatter of the waggon had
+ceased, the figure of the driver was concealed by the curtains; but the
+bronchos were still tugging at the bit, still--.
+
+"Mary! In heaven's name!" The sound of a falling body had caught her ear
+and she had turned. "Mary Landor!" The dishes in the cupboard against
+the wall shook as something heavy met the floor. "Mary!" A pause and a
+tongue-tied examination. "My God! The woman is dead!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was ten minutes before starting time. The old-fashioned engine,
+contemptuously relegated to the frontier before going to the junk heap,
+was puffing at the side of the low sanded station platform. The rough
+cottonwood box was already in the baggage car. How himself had assisted
+in putting it there, had previously settled for its transportation.
+Likewise he had bought the girl's ticket, and checked her scanty
+baggage. The usual crowd of loafers was about the place, and his every
+action was observed with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the
+spectators followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels
+for his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the
+vanquished--and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing upon
+the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop sounded; and
+when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was repeated intrepidly
+near at hand. They put themselves elaborately in his way, to move at his
+approach with grunts of guttural protestation. Already, even here on the
+frontier, the Sioux and his kind were becoming a novelty. Verily they
+were rare sportsmen, those mimicking loafers; and for Indians it was
+ever the open season. All about sounded the popping of their artillery;
+to be, when exhausted, as often reloaded and fired again.
+
+But through it all, apparently unseeing, unconscious, the man had gone
+about his business. Now as he left the ticket window and approached the
+single coach, it was nearly starting time. The girl had already entered
+and sat motionless in her seat watching him through the dusty window
+glass. Craig, his feet wide apart, stood on the platform smoking a last
+cigarette. He shrugged in silence as the other passed him and mounted
+the steps.
+
+Save for the girl, the coach was empty; but, destitute of courtesy, the
+spectators without stared with redoubled interest. Without a word the
+man handed over the ticket and checks. Still in silence he slipped a
+roll of bills into her passive hand. Until that moment the girl had not
+thought of money; but even now as she accepted it, there never occurred
+the wonder from whence it had come. Had she known how those few dollars
+had been stored up, bit by bit, month by month--But she did not know.
+Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless, was
+Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on the
+threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was entering,
+she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was merely passive,
+trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down from the prairie
+milkweed plant, she was to be the sport of every breath of wind that
+blew. And already that wind was blowing. She had watched the scene on
+the platform, had understood the intent of the mimicry, had seen the
+winks and nudges, had heard the mocking war whoop. All this she had
+seen, all this had been stored away in her consciousness to recur again
+and again in the future. Even now her cheeks had burned at the
+knowledge, and at last she had watched the man's coming with a feeling
+of repression she had never known before, whose significance she did not
+try to analyse, did not in the least understand. She did not thank him
+for the money. To do so never occurred to her. It was the moment for
+parting, but she did not throw her arms about his neck in abandon, as
+she would have done a week before. Something, she knew not what,
+prevented. She merely sat there, repressed, passive, waiting. A moment,
+by her side, the Indian paused. He did not speak, he did not move. He
+merely looked at her; and in his dark eyes there was mirrored a
+reflection of the look there had been in the eyes of the wild thing he
+had stalked and captured that day alone on the prairie. But the girl was
+not looking at him, did not see. A moment he stood so, unconsciously as
+so many, many times before, in pose; then deliberately, gently, ignoring
+the row of curious observant eyes, he took her hand and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said low. "Come back as soon as you can; and don't
+worry. Everything will come right." Gently as he had lifted the hand, he
+released it. A smile--who but he could have smiled at that
+moment?--played for an instant over his face. Then, almost before the
+girl realised the fact, before the repressive something that held her in
+its grip gave release, he was gone.
+
+As he left the coach, Craig, who was waiting, started without a word or
+a hint of recognition to enter. His foot was already on the step, when
+he felt a hand upon his arm; a hand with a grip whose meaning there was
+no misinterpreting. Against his will he drew back. Against his will he
+met the other, face to face, eye to eye. For what seemed to him minutes,
+but which in reality was only a second, they stood so. Not a word was
+spoken, of warning or of commonplace. There was no polite farce for the
+benefit of the spectators. The Indian merely looked at him; but as once
+before, alone under the stars, that look was to remain burned on the
+white man's memory until he went to his grave.
+
+"A'board," bawled the conductor, and as though worked by the same wire,
+the engineer's waiting head disappeared within the cab window.
+
+Side by side, Clayton Craig and Elizabeth Landor sat watching the
+weather-stained station and the curious assembled group, as apparently
+they slowly receded. The last thing they saw was the alien figure of an
+Indian in rancher's garb, gazing motionless after them; and by his side,
+in baiting pantomime, one gawky urchin engaged in the labour of scalping
+a mate. The last sound that reached their ears was the ironic note of a
+war whoop repeated again and again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
+
+It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the girl had
+left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the bare lot
+adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith, the twelfth since
+How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny railway terminus. The one train
+from the East was due at 8:10 of the morning. It was now eight o'clock.
+Within the shambling, ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior
+and its wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and
+freshly dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the
+single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed according
+to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey, recently oiled and
+tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn up conveniently to the
+door. In a tiny room, designated the study, of the Methodist parsonage,
+on the straggling outskirts of the town, the only minister the
+settlement boasted sat staring at the unpapered wall opposite. He was a
+mild-featured young man of the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from
+a school of theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the
+frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared marriage
+licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time to time he
+glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to the tiny
+fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and frowned
+unconsciously.
+
+At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the arrival or
+departure of a train were congregated. In some way suggestions of the
+unusual had passed about, and this day their number was greatly
+augmented. Just what they anticipated they did not know; they did not
+care. Restless, athirst for excitement, they had dumbly responded to the
+influence in the air and come. In the foreground, where a solitary
+Indian stood motionless, waiting, there was being repeated the same
+puerile pantomime and horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals,
+from the rear, sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as
+that afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar
+even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily into the
+sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and lighter, became
+denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy, the humorists on the
+platform redoubled their efforts. The instinct of anticipation, of
+Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that had brought them there, urged them
+on. Not one throat but many underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection.
+A half dozen voices caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to
+throat. Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing
+became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before, who had
+come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd pressed closer and
+closer about the alien, the centre of attraction. When he moved farther
+along the platform to avoid them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the
+innate racial hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air
+jostled him--and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no
+retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion redoubled,
+drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators in the rear began
+mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to see. Within the station
+itself the shirt-sleeved agent surreptitiously locked the door to the
+ticket-room and sprung the combination of the safe. Beginning
+harmlessly, the incident was taking on a sinister aspect, and he had
+lived too long in this semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning
+to his place of observation at the window, he was just in time to see a
+decayed turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with
+enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear. Simultaneously, with
+a roar and a puff of displaced air, the light train drew into the
+station, on time.
+
+Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move twice
+farther away along the platform, he had not stirred. Unbelievable as it
+may seem, even when the missile had struck him, though it had left a
+great red welt, he gave no sign of feeling. For a space following the
+arrival of the train there was a lull, and in it, as though nothing had
+happened, he approached the single coach and stood waiting.
+
+It was the last of the week and travel was very light.
+
+A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip descended
+first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared with speed. A
+big rancher with great curling moustaches and a vest open save at the
+bottom button followed. He likewise took stock of the surroundings, and
+discreetly withdrew. Following him there was a pause; then of a sudden
+onto the platform, fair into view of the crowd, appeared one for whom
+apparently they had been looking, one who on the instant caused the
+confusion, temporarily stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a
+dainty brown girl with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth
+Landor returned alone!
+
+"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the refound voice
+of the expectant crowd.
+
+"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had introduced the
+jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her; we don't mind."
+
+A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far up the
+single street, and that brought curious faces to a half score of doors.
+
+"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!"
+
+Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had appeared. Her
+great eyes opened wider than before, her face shaded paler momentarily,
+the soft oval chin trembled. Another minute, another second even.
+
+"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll take
+care of you."
+
+It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure curiosity the
+crowd went silent, listening--silent until he was silent; then with the
+lack of originality ever manifest in a mob, they caught up his words
+themselves.
+
+"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't keep him
+waiting."
+
+But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that moment, she
+could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the chin had at first
+presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but she was beyond the reach
+of tears now. The complete meaning of the scene had come to her at last,
+the realisation of personal menace; and a fear such as she had never
+before known, gripped her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word;
+but her muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old
+telescope satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes,
+wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now rapidly
+accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.
+
+"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't stand there,
+come."
+
+At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly, with
+trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then of a sudden
+she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted defensively. But she was
+not quick enough, had seen too late; and that instant came the
+_denouement._ A second turnip, decayed like its predecessor, aimed
+likewise unerringly, caught her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke
+into fragments that fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain
+after a thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down
+her face.
+
+Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still prairie about
+them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had themselves wittingly or
+unwittingly done. Save one, not a human being stirred. That one, no need
+to tell whom, transformed visibly; transformed as they had never seen a
+human being alter before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself
+on the platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from
+sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically. In the
+stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear distinctly. For
+an instant after he had reached her the Indian stood so, his left arm
+about her, his back toward them. He did not say a word, he did not move.
+For the first time in his life he dared not. He did not see red that
+moment, this man; he saw black--black as prairie loam. Every savage
+instinct in his brain was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his
+free hand was clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind
+his right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone, it
+was nothing, he could forgive; but now--now--He stared away from them,
+stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky; but, listening, they,
+who almost with fascination watched, could hear beneath the catch of the
+girl's sobs the sound of his breathing.
+
+Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second or a
+minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell. What they
+did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them. All their lives
+they had seen passion, seen it in every phase, seen it until it was
+commonplace. It was in the very air of the frontier, to be expected,
+life of the life; but as this man shifted they saw a kind of which they
+had never dreamed. For How Landor was master of himself again, master,
+as well--they knew it, every man and youth who saw,--of them. For
+another indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them;
+looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face within the
+surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a drunken cowman, had
+seen that identical look. Now not one but a score saw it, felt a
+terrible ice-cold menace creep from his brain into their brains. Even
+yet he did not speak, did not make a sound; nor did they. Explain it as
+you will, he did this thing. Another thing he did as well; and that was
+the end. Slowly, deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out
+his hand. Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes
+were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but she had
+grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully calm--almost as much so
+as the man. Deliberately as he had stepped down into the spectators'
+midst, the Indian took the old telescope from the girl's hand and, she
+following by his side, moved a step forward. He did not touch her again
+nor did she him. They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up
+the single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were
+alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed;
+through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by magic
+closed behind them, until they were within a solid human square. But of
+all the assembled spectators that day, an aggregation irresponsible,
+unchivalrous as no other rabble on earth--a mob of the frontier,--not
+one spoke to challenge their action, not one attempted to bar their way.
+The complete length of the platform they went so, turned the corner by
+the station--and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view, hid
+by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl weakened.
+Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it fast.
+
+"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this with you and
+me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"
+
+But the man said never a word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire crackled
+cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room where the same two
+people sat alone. Already the world had taken on a different aspect. Not
+that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten that recent incident at the depot.
+She would never forget it. It had merely passed into temporary
+abeyance, taken its proper place in the eternal scheme of things.
+Another consideration, paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded
+it from the stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent
+far longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that at
+last prompted speech.
+
+"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried suddenly.
+
+"How did _you_ know I would be at the train to meet you?" echoed a
+voice.
+
+The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.
+
+"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow when you
+wrote as if I--I--" A swiftly gathered shower called a halt. Tear drops,
+ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell me," she completed.
+
+The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic life, so there
+was little to record of the death of Mary Landor. "It was best that you
+were away," he ended. "It was best for her that she went when she did."
+
+"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious query.
+"You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"
+
+"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."
+
+A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something more.
+
+"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would--go while I was
+away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me away on
+purpose."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How. I want to know."
+
+"I thought so, Bess," simply.
+
+For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new understanding
+of this solitary human stole over her, an appreciation that drowned the
+sadness of a moment ago. "How you must care for me," she voiced almost
+unconsciously. "How you must care for me!"
+
+She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again a silence
+fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she was thinking.
+Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were passively waiting. At the
+parsonage the young minister still sat scowling in his study. No time
+had been set for the visit he expected. There was no apparent reason why
+he should not have gone about his work; but for some reason he could
+not. Angry with himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket
+and, placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked
+over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.
+
+Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl shifted, dropped
+to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged slowly red.
+
+"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me to-day that
+I would come alone?"
+
+The Indian showed no surprise.
+
+"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."
+
+"Why, How?" The question was just audible.
+
+"Because I trusted you, Bess."
+
+Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes glanced
+up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance fell. A longer
+pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not have spoken if she
+would. A great preventing lump was in her throat, an obstacle that
+precluded speech. Many things had happened in the short time since she
+had last been with this man, some things of which she was not proud; and
+beside such a trust as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition
+upon her part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise
+without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The memory of
+that draught was with her now. Under its influence she spoke.
+
+"You are better than I am, How," she said.
+
+If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He did not
+even look at her. Time was passing, time which should have found them
+upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It was his day, his moment,
+his by right; but no one looking at him would have doubted that he
+himself would never first suggest the fact. Conditions had changed very
+rapidly in the recent past, altered until, from his view-point, it was
+impossible for him to make the move toward the old relation, to even
+intimate its desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In
+the fulness of time he was rewarded.
+
+"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed voice, "will
+you do me a favour?"
+
+"What is it, Bess?"
+
+The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the recall
+had come, and for the first time he was looking at her steadily.
+
+"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.
+
+"I promise."
+
+Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she wished to
+say.
+
+"You won't be--offended or angry, How?"
+
+"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me angry."
+
+"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you humour
+me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married to-day you'll
+be dressed--well, not the way you usually dress." Her colour came and
+went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed like--You understand, How."
+
+Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he checked
+himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the immaterial, went, as
+ever, straight to fundamentals without preface or delay. Scarce one
+human in a generation would have held aloof at that moment. It was his,
+his by every right; but even yet he would not take it, not until--.
+
+"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to
+answer me--as you would answer your mother were she alive." Once again,
+unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms across his breast, his great
+shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr. Landor's will. He has left you
+nearly everything. You are rich, Bess; I won't tell you how rich because
+you wouldn't understand. You are young and can live any life you wish.
+You know what marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You
+know what others, people of your own race, think when you are with me.
+They have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all
+this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish to come?
+Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer. Don't do it, or
+we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as you know I love you,
+whether you have thought of all this and still wish to marry me. Tell
+me." He was silent. Once again it was a climax, and once again came
+oblivion of passing time. For minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide
+open eyes, the girl made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision
+made, not as before in ignorance of what that decision meant.
+Deliberately, with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight
+of future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.
+
+"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I wish to
+marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's no one in the
+world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry you to-day, How."
+
+Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until then, he
+accepted his reward.
+
+"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise. "Bess!" That
+was all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled with
+portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was gathered; only
+now it was not at the station, but at a place of far more sinister
+import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope" saloon. Again in
+personnel it was different, notably different from that of the first
+occasion. The same irresponsibles were there, as ever they are present
+at times of storm; but added to the aggregation now, outnumbering them,
+were others ordinarily responsible, men typical in every way of the time
+and place. A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
+gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had
+brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last, these
+dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously. Rumour,
+inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story
+buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to
+haunt the station at the time of the incoming train. The incident of the
+morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had
+followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become
+certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the
+point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its
+place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the
+girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street
+through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
+prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the
+ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet
+well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as
+on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet
+call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous
+familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an
+instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace. Not once did
+he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his
+side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when
+he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor
+realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as
+surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise--and
+that soon, very, very soon.
+
+Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever
+garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously
+grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and
+the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable
+unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying
+dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not
+the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the
+alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they
+went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them,
+at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and
+noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope
+saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
+William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where
+the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in
+sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to
+the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed--for they were
+in the residence section now--had its pair or multiple pairs peering out
+through the slats of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a
+performance, at the side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had
+spread; like turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their
+shells; yet everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to
+take a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the pedestrians
+were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding across the lawn to
+pause at a safe distance and growl a menace; and again the all-noting
+Indian had observed the cause of the unwonted bravery, had heard the low
+voice from the kitchen that had urged the beast on.
+
+Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm approached.
+Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the girl not been
+living in the future instead of the present, she would have recognised
+its coming. For the pursuers were gaining rapidly now. They had crossed
+onto the same street, the principal residence thoroughfare, and were
+coming as a crowd ever moves: swiftly, those in the rear exerting
+themselves to get to the fore, and so again. Far from silent by this
+time, the man ahead, the man who never deigned a backward glance, could
+hear their voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
+interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
+seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a commander, a
+directing spirit--and as well as he knew his own name he knew who that
+leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in the ways of the world was this
+man; but in the reading of his fellows he was a master.
+
+Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had congregated at
+the train, he had nevertheless observed them individual by individual;
+and in his own consciousness had known that the moment, his moment, had
+not come: for a leader, the leader, was not there. Again when the train
+had pulled in he had watched--and still the leader did not appear. But
+he was not deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had
+trusted in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that
+one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been right. For
+the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained on them so
+rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in those brief hours the
+Indian and the girl had been alone in the tiny room at the hotel had
+vitalised the lukewarm racial hostility into a thing of menace, was the
+same man whose life he had once saved, the same man about whose throat
+ere the identical night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig
+by name, one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master
+of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!
+
+Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was again
+looking out the single window. Time and time again he had tried to
+work--and as often failed. At last he had conformed to the inevitable
+and was merely waiting. The house was on the outskirts of the town and
+the window faced the open prairie; bare and rolling as far as the eye
+could reach. He was city bred, this mild-faced servant of God, and as
+yet the prairie country was a thing at which to marvel. He was looking
+out upon it now, absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and
+its silence--when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no longer
+silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by moment,
+penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an indistinct roar; rising,
+lowering, yet ever constant: a sound unlike any other on earth,
+distinctive as the silence preceding had been typical--the clamour of
+angry, menacing human voices _en masse._ Once, not long before, in a
+city street the listener had heard that identical sound; and
+recognition was instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike
+that had been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden
+appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate figure of
+the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment only, for life, in
+their midst. Swift as memory came that picture; and swift upon its
+heels, blotting it out, the present returned. Clifford Mitchell had not
+been among this people long; yet already he had caught the spirit of the
+place, and as he listened he knew full well what a similar gathering
+among them would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor;
+not a drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after
+moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first real
+terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind was there a
+doubt as to the destination of that oncoming multitude. Premonition had
+been too electric in the air that day for him to question its meaning.
+They were coming to him, to him, Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible
+menacing humans. It might be another for whom they had gathered; but he
+as well would share in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he
+was a party to the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from
+the time the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours
+of trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in
+anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a certainty.
+Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring out on his
+forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand.
+Following came a purely physical weakness; and stumbling across the room
+he took the seat beside the desk. Unconsciously nervous, restless, his
+fingers fumbled with the pile of papers before him until they came to a
+certain one he had buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to
+do so he spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly
+waiting.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible,
+cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by it
+alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He could hear
+them down the street at the other end of the block before the residence
+of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a certainty because part of those who
+came were on the sidewalk, and that was the only piece of cement in
+town. Again, by the same token, he knew when they passed the only other
+house in the block besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk
+there, and when the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps
+went suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in a
+moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own yard, the
+roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could even distinguish
+what they were saying now, could catch names, his own name.
+
+Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed before
+his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously faces, not a few
+but as many as could crowd into the space, appeared outside the panes,
+staring curiously in. Involuntarily he arose to draw the shade; and at
+that moment, interrupting, startlingly loud, there came a knock at his
+front door.
+
+Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood irresolute;
+and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of curious faces
+multiplied.
+
+The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but deliberately
+and with an insistence there was no misunderstanding.
+
+This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out the faces
+of the curious. The licence he had been absently holding was still in
+his hand; but he did not delay to put it down. There was something
+compelling in that knock; something that demanded instant obedience, and
+he obeyed. The living-room through which he passed on his way had two
+windows and, identical with that of his study, each was black with
+humanity; but he did not even glance at them. His legs trembled
+involuntarily and his throat was dry as though he had been speaking for
+hours; yet, nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly
+he turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto the
+street, looked out.
+
+While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the uncounted
+throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that October day, they
+remembered that moment, the moments that followed. As real life is ever
+stranger than fiction, so off the stage occur incidents more stirring
+than at the play. Standing there in the narrow doorway, white-faced,
+hesitant, awaiting a command, the minister himself exemplified the fact
+beyond question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had
+thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his consciousness for
+but one impression; and that was for the drama ready there before him.
+And small wonder, for, looking out, this was what he saw:
+
+An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass
+and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on
+fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In
+the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of
+his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was
+a solid zone of motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and
+untrimmed beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation
+and passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously aping
+their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments; all ages and
+conditions of the human frontier male were there--but in that zone not a
+single woman. Ranchers there were in corduroys and denims, cowboys in
+buckskin and flannel, gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of
+their kind, business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in
+anything and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the
+surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to bay.
+
+In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple of paces
+of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them, a rather small
+brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of ready-made clothes
+and a derby hat of the model of the year before, were nearest; so near
+that the door, which swung outward, all but touched them. The other, a
+well-built, smooth-faced Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands,
+was opposite. His dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat
+and patent leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his
+linen was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin.
+Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to prevent, as
+he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and left. One look told his
+story. He had been drinking, drinking for days; and, worst of all, he
+had been drinking this day, drinking in anticipation of this very
+moment, swallowing courage against the necessity of the now. All this
+the stage and its setting, upon which the white-faced minister raised
+the curtain. Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the
+real play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used
+front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not a
+sound marked the opening of the drama.
+
+A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could feel; then
+of a sudden it was broken--not by words, but by action. One step the
+white-skinned man took forward; a step toward the girl. A second step he
+advanced, and halted; for, preventing, the hand of the other man was
+upon his own.
+
+"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for
+congratulations yet. Stand back, please."
+
+Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a curse, a
+challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical terrified little
+cry the girl shrank back into the doorway itself. But none other, not
+even the minister, stirred.
+
+"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in the
+stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to stand back. I
+don't warn you, I merely request--but I shall not ask it again." Of a
+sudden the speaker's hand left the other's arm, dropped by his own side.
+"Stand back, please."
+
+Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working, passionate,
+menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky overhead. A moment they
+remained so while the breathless onlookers expected anything, while from
+the doorstep the minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then
+slowly, lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took
+silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still another, and
+was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first time he found voice.
+
+"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd have let
+you go if you'd given up the girl; but now--now--May God have mercy on
+your soul now, How Landor!"
+
+Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first meeting on
+the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It was the crisis,
+and as before an instinct which she did not understand, which she merely
+obeyed, brought her to the Indian's side; held her there motionless,
+passive, mysteriously unafraid. Her usually brown face was very pale and
+her eyes were unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably
+calm--calm as a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that
+solid zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or
+no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that motionless,
+dominant human by her side.
+
+A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear each other
+breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the minister's lips
+became audible; then came the end. Incredible after it was over was that
+_denouement_, inexplicable to a legion of old men, then among the boys,
+who witnessed it, to this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take
+place in this world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate
+other men it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first
+challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken. The
+only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life found
+voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that listening,
+expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion his arms folded
+across his chest.
+
+"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done my best to
+avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything at your hands,
+every insult which you could conceive, things which no white man would
+have permitted for a second; and so far without resentment. But I shall
+stand it no more. I'm one to a hundred; but that makes no difference.
+Bess Landor and I are to be married now and here; here before you all. I
+shall not talk to you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace;
+but as surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to
+me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I shall
+kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing." A
+moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms;
+then, still facing, he moved back a step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we
+are ready."
+
+And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred
+curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night
+itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married. The
+minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close
+before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the
+pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet it was done, and, save
+one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent
+stayed and listened to the end. That one, a tall, modish alien with a
+red, flushed face covered with a two-days' growth of bread, was likewise
+watching when it began. But when it was over he was not there; and not
+one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
+
+Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling,
+sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl
+of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of
+them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a
+straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling
+brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall,
+the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
+mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after
+three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though
+the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey
+flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the
+ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the
+ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at
+intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of
+the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried
+grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was
+no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny
+town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
+behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
+followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he
+was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce visible landmarks he
+alone distinguished was returning to his own, to the wild that lay in
+the distance beyond.
+
+Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went; and back of
+them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built terminus grew
+dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as completely as though it
+had never been. Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot
+against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three
+miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious
+motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind
+them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue
+surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there
+with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
+alone.
+
+As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From
+horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion
+of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or
+hate--and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she
+could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift
+her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of
+fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have
+been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so,
+did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch
+her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the
+last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something
+which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing
+taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of
+darkness. But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had
+awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they
+had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
+panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations,
+thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been
+hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare
+on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the
+experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events
+had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but _en masse_ the
+effect had been definite--startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may
+seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
+consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
+metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an
+adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place.
+Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself
+to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as
+existence itself, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back
+there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not,
+mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came
+to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing
+that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear
+again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
+taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the
+woman.
+
+Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the
+swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the
+personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into
+abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the
+hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent
+dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain
+itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by
+minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
+impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming
+bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it
+blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had
+done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that
+the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite
+loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a
+child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
+intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future
+endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied
+a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony
+would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature
+impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration
+intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
+distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled
+the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for
+worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was
+no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge
+overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born,
+became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first
+time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable.
+Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she
+sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her
+eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.
+
+"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"
+
+The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not
+yet completely returned.
+
+"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."
+
+"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a
+walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close.
+"I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."
+
+"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has
+never hurt it. It merely is."
+
+At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not
+move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change
+had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful
+as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The
+high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made
+a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious.
+Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a
+colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The
+black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
+of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of
+exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a
+standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour
+had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the
+truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was
+almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it
+should prove a myth.
+
+Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
+worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his
+God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus
+the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been
+eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his
+again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork,
+watched to the end; and then, observing that _finale_, laughed--and with
+the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
+understand, and I can't tell you."
+
+She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture
+she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly
+with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all
+right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She
+laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
+"It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
+someone else; even though that property were a girl."
+
+Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On
+his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that
+something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true
+to his instincts, waited.
+
+"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl,
+"even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
+anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to
+do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to
+you; not even as possibility."
+
+Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light
+came.
+
+"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never
+occur to me to do so."
+
+More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of
+Elizabeth Landor.
+
+"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the
+vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I
+hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than
+you; but now--now--" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap
+the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a
+sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"
+
+More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to
+fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled
+with the reins impotently.
+
+"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell
+me what it is, won't you?"
+
+"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?"
+Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is
+wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as
+you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone?
+Wrong: the preposterous idea!"
+
+She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to
+be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking
+at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible
+in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He
+did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the
+seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace
+of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
+the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab
+she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and
+contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood
+changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears.
+In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed
+close to his face.
+
+"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous
+and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the
+map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere
+to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.
+
+Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when,
+far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had
+seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short
+fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn,
+was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low
+sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the
+old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the
+tall frost-cured grass to feed.
+
+"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it
+face north, south, east, or west?"
+
+"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the
+morning."
+
+With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set
+about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box.
+The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More
+quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take
+shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself
+was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and
+swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed
+and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by
+legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed
+the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the
+frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task
+was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
+and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that
+light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole.
+Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless
+earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for
+her to descend.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a
+time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook
+supper and all. Come, girlie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel
+William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the
+same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light
+from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face.
+In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo
+robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was
+toward her. His eyes--eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature
+man--were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was
+living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was
+at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
+made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
+worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a
+devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they
+had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence
+at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had
+apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said,
+"we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day--" he had
+looked down as he had spoken--"to-day I felt somehow as though I could
+not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."
+
+Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time;
+and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing
+at her--and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return
+that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning,
+her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was
+afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
+gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths
+of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such
+confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it--and still she did
+not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save
+the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason
+therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to
+shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively,
+almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the
+way.
+
+"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly.
+"It makes me afraid of myself--afraid of dropping. Supposing I should
+fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you,
+could ever put the pieces together."
+
+"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be
+there to catch you."
+
+"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth,
+you know."
+
+"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in
+the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated,
+too, then."
+
+The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon,
+very carefully.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm
+perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very--bad at times."
+
+The other smiled; that was all.
+
+"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I
+don't like you and run away."
+
+"If you did you'd return very soon."
+
+"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"
+
+"I know so."
+
+"Why, How?"
+
+"Because you care for me."
+
+"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."
+
+"You'd find your mistake and come back."
+
+The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.
+
+"And when I did--come back--you'd forgive me, How?"
+
+"There'd be nothing to forgive."
+
+"It wouldn't be wrong--to leave you that way?"
+
+"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."
+
+"Not if I did anything, if I--ran away with another man?"
+
+The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.
+
+"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."
+
+"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no
+matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"
+
+For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the
+man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since
+they had been speaking his eyes dropped.
+
+"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have
+everything go on as before--I am human. I could not."
+
+A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of
+a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.
+
+"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say
+it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry
+a mortal, you know."
+
+The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
+
+"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the
+girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me
+anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run
+away? Would you forgive him, too?"
+
+Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
+
+"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't
+give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
+
+Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted
+in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood
+out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
+
+"Forgive _him_, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
+
+That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking
+at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no
+human being could have misread the answer. With the same little
+hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense
+hands went lax.
+
+"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day,
+you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things
+lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed
+before that I possessed them."
+
+Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man
+arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the
+girl to her feet.
+
+"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something
+you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now,
+girlie?"
+
+Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look
+up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long
+lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow
+of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.
+
+"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She
+smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for
+me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How,
+man; absolutely nothing."
+
+For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but,
+still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip
+that was a caress his hands dropped.
+
+"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel
+that you are unhappy, is all."
+
+"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so
+easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm
+very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't
+you?"
+
+"Forgive you!--Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast,
+the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as
+the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only
+realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you
+could only realise!"
+
+Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes,
+sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
+
+"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that
+you love me. Tell me! tell me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+FATE, THE SATIRIST
+
+Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read
+and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth
+of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were
+left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only
+nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a
+tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once
+"unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the
+aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate
+not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had
+builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city
+bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
+could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my
+adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of
+greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned
+laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but
+incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other
+names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called
+How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred
+words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet
+was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him
+who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William
+Landor of the Buffalo Butte.
+
+Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution.
+Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated
+manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that
+score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather
+case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a
+kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence
+he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded
+Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took
+possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo
+Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place
+upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked
+to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
+
+Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a
+memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and
+wife--and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back
+from the land of nothingness they came--and again no one was at hand to
+welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that
+plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration
+of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced.
+Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay
+for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering
+Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle
+against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew
+not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks
+she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The
+very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of
+change on the morrow. The next day it was the same--and the next. When
+they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the
+time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her
+companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and
+the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day
+by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was
+struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way
+they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days
+that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the
+change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she
+lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on
+precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it
+was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly.
+What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever
+know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man
+and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had
+there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another.
+That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could
+have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey
+which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have
+questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed.
+The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown
+sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics.
+Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the
+first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had
+shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit
+the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this
+newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the
+prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they
+returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.
+
+One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that
+was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax
+boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had
+intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch,
+and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its
+furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up
+in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable,
+in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that
+frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he
+led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he
+threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed
+her.
+
+"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said,
+and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.
+
+A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and
+cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never
+before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl
+realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive
+human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his
+own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the
+knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms
+flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.
+
+"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"
+
+"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.
+
+For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening
+the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.
+The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision
+of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection
+of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch
+for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left
+astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark
+or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever
+considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and
+the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl
+stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into
+the darkness.
+
+"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone
+about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and
+that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.
+
+Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his
+manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a
+blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the
+obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by
+nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable.
+Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne
+what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;
+but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched
+linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant
+town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he
+polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly
+an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who
+knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from
+humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing
+at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in
+this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How
+Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it
+all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of
+a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered
+his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish
+undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes
+to observe, to pity perchance, then--But let it pass what he did then.
+It is another tale and extraneous.
+
+Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew
+shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No
+human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on
+pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had
+both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the
+execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a
+distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They
+accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further
+than that--they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with
+whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on--whither no
+one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old
+Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had
+been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the
+olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor
+was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were
+gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did
+a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when
+by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His
+reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again,
+they were white and he was red--and between them the chasm yawned.
+
+Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It
+was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was
+one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and
+there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal
+white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights
+the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh
+layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more
+into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished,
+migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or
+at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the
+booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this
+impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God
+is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally
+manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite
+bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon
+beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of
+words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the
+girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days
+at a time did not glance without.
+
+Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long
+before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its
+advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the
+range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound
+was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and
+frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page
+appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and _en masse_,
+wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of
+an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of
+prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies
+branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on
+the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were
+changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though
+soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling
+white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day,
+as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they,
+and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky
+now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of
+his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed
+through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.
+After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
+in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks;
+flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not
+only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white
+blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long
+absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on
+motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their
+five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders,
+appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and
+grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last,
+the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable,
+with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
+whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
+following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in
+their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with
+their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's
+advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical
+as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie
+and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
+that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive,
+alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and
+re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it
+repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each
+to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung
+slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the
+stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no
+sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the
+newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable,
+did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway,
+he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his
+long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.
+
+The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in approved riding
+togs, halted likewise and returned the look; equally minutely, equally
+suspiciously. The horse he rode was one of a kind seldom seen on the
+ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider
+sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another
+life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance
+they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective
+"smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness
+of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general
+youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there,
+have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so, taking in every detail
+of the commonplace surroundings. Then, apparently satisfied, he
+dismounted and, tying the animal to the wheel of an old surrey drawn up
+in the yard, he approached the single entrance of the house and rapped.
+
+To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a
+frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a plain gingham gown.
+A moment they looked at each other; then the man's riding cap came off
+with a sweep and he held out his hand.
+
+"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was all. Then he
+looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see your husband," he
+exclaimed. "Is he at home?"
+
+The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched hand.
+
+"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that you had
+returned."
+
+A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his hand
+dropped; but his eyes held their place.
+
+"Yes. I only came yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to
+talk over with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"
+
+Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.
+
+"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man. "Aren't we to
+be even neighbourly?"
+
+"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be otherwise."
+
+"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming positive
+now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."
+
+"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately. "Answer?" She
+undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by courtesy, that after
+I've lived the last four months I'm still such a child as that? Do you
+really wish me to answer, Neighbour Craig?"
+
+For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins in his
+trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously. Then again he
+looked up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave an hour
+ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It was you I came
+to see. May I stay?"
+
+Again the girl ignored the question.
+
+"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you wouldn't have
+come, that nothing you know of could have made you come? Let's
+understand each other in the beginning. You admit this?"
+
+"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"
+
+The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the eyes;
+silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could not fathom,
+could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as deliberately she released
+him, looked away.
+
+"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."
+
+"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an obvious effort
+he checked himself "Thank you," he completed repressedly.
+
+This time the girl did not smile.
+
+"Don't you realise yet that sort of thing is useless?" she queried
+unemotionally.
+
+It was the man this time who was silent.
+
+"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so; but for
+once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us good, we're both
+living a lie; but at least we understand each other. Let's not waste
+energy in pretending--when there's no one to be deceived."
+
+Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too much a part
+of his life to shake off instantly. Then he laughed.
+
+"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway be it so.
+And now, that I'm to stay--" A meaning glance through the open door.
+"You were working, weren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch. You
+remember another morning once before, don't you--a morning before you
+grew up--"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."
+
+"I am quite deficient in imagination."
+
+"At least, though, dishes must be washed."
+
+"Not necessarily--this moment at least. They have waited before."
+
+"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or interfere."
+
+"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and enjoy the
+sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated? They're clean, I
+know. I scrubbed them this very morning myself."
+
+The man hesitated. Then he sat down.
+
+"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm going to
+return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit--the way you are now.
+You've changed terribly."
+
+"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely as I am
+this moment for--a lifetime."
+
+"For--how long, Bess?"
+
+"A lifetime, I think."
+
+"For four months, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps--it's all the same."
+
+"Since you did a foolish thing?"
+
+"I have done many such."
+
+"Since the last, I mean."
+
+"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened. "The last
+was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in the smallest
+possible manner since then."
+
+The man inspected his boots.
+
+"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at length.
+
+"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took a place
+beside him. "I had forgotten."
+
+They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real perplexity.
+
+"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."
+
+"I have not denied it," evenly.
+
+The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for anything;
+but he was finding his mistake.
+
+"This life you've--selected, is wearing on you," he added. "Frankly, I
+hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and happy."
+
+"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin mine. You're
+dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the signs."
+
+The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank criticism
+than to receive it.
+
+"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said intimately, "nor
+attempt to deny it. There is a reason, however."
+
+"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually is an
+explanation for everything we do in this life."
+
+"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."
+
+"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."
+
+"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."
+
+The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back against the
+lintel of the door. She looked very young that moment--and very old.
+
+"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my explanation for
+being--as I am. What is yours?"
+
+"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"
+
+"I wish to know the reason."
+
+"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be here."
+
+"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you have
+married?"
+
+"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life, and--the man you
+have named."
+
+"I don't believe I understand, Bess."
+
+"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence I
+possessed, for two weeks."
+
+"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.
+
+"I repeat you have the compliment--if you consider it such."
+
+Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all the time,
+the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them now, steadily,
+immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without, against the background
+of the dark interior his eyes shone as though they were afire.
+
+"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I have
+made you unhappy."
+
+"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a voice.
+
+"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"
+
+"No. I merely understand you--now. You're not sorry, because otherwise
+you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be here--even though my
+husband were away."
+
+Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly a novelty
+in his life to be treated as he was being treated this day. Ordinarily
+glib of speech, for some reason in the face of this newfound emotionless
+characterisation, he had nothing to say. It is difficult to appear what
+one is not in the blaze of one's own fireside. It was impossible under
+the scrutiny of this wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events
+gone by.
+
+"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've got other
+things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway." He looked at her
+openly, significantly. "Your own self, for instance."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I'm listening. Tell me everything."
+
+"You really fancy I will after--the past?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And why, please?"
+
+"You've already told me why."
+
+"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to be
+ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."
+
+"I'm still listening."
+
+"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"
+
+"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your husband?
+You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"
+
+The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively, impassively.
+Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an untrained eye, a black dot
+stood out above the horizon line. Her eyes paused upon it.
+
+"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Never, Bess."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"I swear."
+
+Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.
+
+"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still perjure
+yourself. To answer your question, I really don't know."
+
+"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll stand a lot
+from you, but there's a limit--"
+
+"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's not a soul
+but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be seated."
+
+From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily,
+resentfully--then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were
+mingled. He sat down.
+
+The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and on.
+
+"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my soul, if I
+have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make the exchange, no
+one who can give me light. Does that answer your question?"
+
+Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.
+
+"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"
+
+"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are why."
+
+No answer, only silence.
+
+"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl. "A little
+tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit? You're not plural,
+but nevertheless you personified that pack. You and the unknown things
+you represented were pressing me close. I was confused and afraid. I was
+a babe four months ago. I was not afraid of How, I had loved him--at
+least I thought I had, I'm sure of nothing now--and, as I say, I was
+afraid of you--then."
+
+"And now--"
+
+Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she looked
+away.
+
+"I'm not in the least afraid of you now--or of anything."
+
+"Not even of your husband?"
+
+"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."
+
+Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.
+
+"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I made a
+mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am afraid of
+something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are of death, of this
+infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip deep, unconsciously. "I
+sometimes think the old fear of everything were preferable, were the
+lesser of the two evils."
+
+Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose skin under
+his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.
+
+"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think you've
+gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked away; but
+unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the landscape that
+spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you realise what a mess
+you've made of your life."
+
+The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.
+
+"Yes, I think I do," she said.
+
+"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a brute after
+all in attempting to prevent your doing as you did."
+
+"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't been a
+brute."
+
+Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.
+
+"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then, Bess? Cared
+for me myself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that I frightened you back here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.
+
+"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it now?"
+
+The girl looked away in silence.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"
+
+"I can't tell you. I don't know."
+
+"Don't know?"
+
+"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days--anything except
+that I'm afraid."
+
+"Of the future?"
+
+"Yes--and of myself."
+
+For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said nothing. A
+long silence fell between them. It was the girl herself who broke it.
+
+"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and the voice
+was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with Uncle Landor."
+
+"Was I to blame, Bess?"
+
+"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."
+
+"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."
+
+The girl said nothing.
+
+"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can restore
+the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making you unhappy?"
+
+"Yes. I admit it."
+
+The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.
+
+"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.
+
+"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't. You're too
+selfish."
+
+"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.
+
+"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.
+
+The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.
+
+"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively maddening!"
+
+"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be ourselves
+to-day. I merely told you things as they are."
+
+Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in silence. One of
+his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay in his lap. Against
+his will now and then a muscle contracted nervously; and of a sudden he
+thrust the telltale member deep into his trousers pocket.
+
+"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't go on
+this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Haven't you ever thought of it?"
+
+"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else--for an age."
+
+"And you've decided nothing?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing."
+
+Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his voice
+trembled.
+
+"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.
+
+"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By what right
+should you be permitted to decide?"
+
+The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His eyes were
+steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that he would win,
+that the moment was his moment.
+
+"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said simply.
+
+"Love me, after what you have done?"
+
+"Yes. I have been mad--and done mad things. But I've discovered my
+fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you so--and to make amends."
+
+Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look; but the
+man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure that he voiced a
+challenge.
+
+"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you ran away,
+in spite of the fact that you are married, you love me!"
+
+Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her lips
+parted, but she said no word.
+
+"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't--because it is true."
+
+A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second time that day
+Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise. While yet he was
+master of the situation, while yet the time was his, he arose.
+
+"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He looked at her
+deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say, for I've told you
+that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember this: If I've stolen
+your happiness, I'll give it all back. As God is my witness, I'll give
+it all back with interest." Swiftly, before she could answer, he turned
+away and strode toward the impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he
+undid the tie strap and mounted. Without another word, or a backward
+glance, he rode away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the
+damp spring earth.
+
+Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not move. She
+did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at the C-C ranch
+house, until the buildings hid the owner from view, did her eyes leave
+him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she looked away over the
+prairie, away where the last time she had glanced a tiny black dot stood
+out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not
+find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not.
+Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the
+unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes.
+With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable
+doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening, and as he
+came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled his feet as one
+unconsciously will when very weary. He was wearing his ready-made
+clothes and starched collar; but the trousers were deplorably baggy at
+the knees from much riding, and his linen and polished shoes were soiled
+with the dust of the prairie.
+
+Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared. Serving
+it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the
+slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and
+throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek. A
+young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his
+hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the
+buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace
+just outside the ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly,
+continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year
+before. To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her
+companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned,
+unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a
+note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted
+colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every
+motion. Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing
+human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation:
+yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the
+unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never
+was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive,
+sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not remarkable.
+He had never done so except when she had not. When he looked at her
+there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that
+also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery in the depths of his
+steady black eyes. Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious
+was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the
+girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring
+night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes
+intimately close.
+
+Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south
+breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears;
+about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the
+subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing
+things. But not even then could the girl be still. Far too full of this
+day's revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be
+silent. The mood of her merely changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless,
+ceased. In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a
+definite question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed
+arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown,
+when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she did not alter her
+position.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "whether if one has made a mistake, it were better
+to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to
+admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay
+the penalty?" She paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do
+you think, How?"
+
+In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the lighter sky her
+face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a silhouette.
+
+"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he answered.
+
+"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from suffering?"
+
+"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."
+
+The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.
+
+"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the truth makes
+one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any difference, How?"
+
+The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with his steady
+eyes.
+
+"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he said. "I
+think this is one of them."
+
+Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.
+
+"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.
+
+"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with
+ourselves or not."
+
+"You think that, really?"
+
+"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."
+
+Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last,
+abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new
+query.
+
+"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
+
+"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no
+irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain.
+"How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at
+all?"
+
+Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words
+themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
+
+"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
+
+This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where
+the running might read.
+
+"Yes, I have an idea--and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness,
+has always been the first thing in my life."
+
+Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by
+step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she
+was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched
+her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he
+made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately
+from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was
+filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke
+no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not
+but have admired her child that night.
+
+One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had
+walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no
+hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.
+
+"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I
+haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She
+paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been
+watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become
+restless week by week. Last night,--you didn't notice, but I did,--I
+heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see
+what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and
+I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn.
+It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost
+as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but
+all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere
+away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing
+there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that
+second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he
+could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He
+didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he
+couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the
+chain stretched across his back--" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat
+up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she
+pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me
+you'll let him go!"
+
+Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.
+
+"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save Shaggy's
+life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out of her den and
+shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when I found him."
+
+"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't make any
+difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him here."
+
+Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with the
+argument.
+
+"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't live
+through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will shoot him on
+sight."
+
+"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the girl. "We
+all have to take our chances in this life."
+
+For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.
+
+"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill the first
+animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of that?"
+
+The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.
+
+"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I made him as
+he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to be; and if he's bad,
+God alone is to blame." Her glance returned, met the other fair. "I wish
+you'd let him go, How."
+
+The man made no answer.
+
+"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"
+
+"You really wish it, Bess?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a sudden he
+arose.
+
+"Come, Bess," he said.
+
+Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more, followed his
+lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But
+there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung
+from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the
+way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep,
+but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise
+there was no move. Look where one would within the building, there was
+no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the Indian led the way
+outside, made the circuit of the stable, paused at the south end where
+a chain hung loose from a peg driven into the wall. A moment he stood
+there, holding the light so the girl could see; then, impassive as
+before, he extinguished the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.
+
+They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke; then,
+detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.
+
+"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."
+
+They walked on so.
+
+"You wanted him to go?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.
+
+"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.
+
+For the second time there was no answer.
+
+"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.
+
+"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I thought
+I--understood."
+
+For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither
+stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the hand dropped.
+
+"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.
+
+Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his chest.
+That was all.
+
+The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.
+
+"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.
+
+"No, Bess."
+
+A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.
+
+"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.
+
+"No, Bess," repeated.
+
+"But still you're not coming?"
+
+"No."
+
+Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.
+
+"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She scarcely
+recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with me again?"
+
+"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that, Bess." A
+second halt. "Not until things between us are different, at least."
+
+"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped the casing
+of the door. "Oh, How! How!"
+
+No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a breath;
+just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl stood it, hoping
+against hope, praying for a miracle; then she could stand it no longer.
+Gropingly clutching at every object within reach, she made her way into
+the dark interior; flung herself full dressed onto the bed, her face
+buried desperately among the covers.
+
+All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth in front
+of the ranch house door; back and forth like an automaton, back and
+forth in a motion that seemed perpetual. Within the tiny low-ceiled
+room, in the fulness of time, the girl sobbed herself into a fitful
+sleep; but not once did the sentinel pause to rest, not once in those
+dragging hours before day did he relax. With the coming of the first
+trace of light he halted, and on silent moccasined feet stole within.
+But again he only remained for moments, and when he returned it was
+merely to stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before
+the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did everything, he
+rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into the darkness to the
+west.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague sense of
+depression and of impending evil. The door was open and the bright
+morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance stretched the open
+prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny brown island, her own
+dooryard, in the foreground. With dull listlessness, the girl propped
+herself up in bed and sat looking about her. Absently, aimlessly, her
+eyes passed from one familiar object to another. Without any definite
+conception of why or of where, she was conscious of an impression of
+change in the material world about her, a change that corresponded to
+the mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the
+sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering joy.
+Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message passed her by.
+Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a haunting memory of
+the past night and of what it had meant. As a traveller lost in this
+fog, she lay staring about, indecisive which way to move, idly waiting
+for light. Ordinarily action itself would have offered a solution of the
+problem, would have served at least as a diversion; but this morning she
+was strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no
+adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything more
+than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow higher and,
+lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her palm and lay with
+wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.
+
+Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The doorway faced
+south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had entered therein began
+moving to the left across the floor. Unconsciously, for the lack of
+anything better to do, she watched its advance. It fell upon a tiny
+shelf against the wall, littered with a collection of papers and
+magazines; and the reflected light from the white sheets glared in her
+eyes. It came to the supper table of the night before, the table she had
+not cleared, and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of
+her own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on;
+crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live thing,
+began climbing the wall beyond.
+
+Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched its
+advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its relentless
+stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny. Like a hostile
+alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in the tiny room for
+something definite, something it did not find. Fatuous as it may seem,
+the impression grew upon her, augmented until in its own turn it became
+a dominant influence. Her glance, heretofore absent, perfunctory, became
+intense. The glare was well above the floor by this time and climbing
+higher and higher. Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat
+up free in bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her
+fairly.
+
+The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light was
+mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from rough-fashioned wooden
+pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant wardrobe. At first glance
+there seemed to the girl nothing unusual revealed thereon, nothing
+significant; and, restlessly observant, the inspection advanced. Then,
+ere the mental picture could vanish, ere a new impression could take its
+place, in a flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came
+realisation complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute
+thereafter she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and
+wider, her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a
+minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of weariness
+and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place, and covered her
+face from sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+SACRIFICE
+
+A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the
+slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren
+dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition
+the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was
+perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long
+waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he
+had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully
+concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
+litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had
+grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the
+visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer
+present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had
+come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever
+rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.
+
+For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been
+invited to enter, yet he had entered--and the girl had spoken no word to
+prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a
+peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged,
+they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging
+intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the
+bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was
+present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids,
+whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour
+of putting the place to rights.
+
+"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that
+unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching.
+Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"
+
+The girl did not smile.
+
+"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were
+tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer--" She drew another
+chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.
+
+A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the
+whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had
+grown to assume in her presence took its place.
+
+"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm
+when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible
+offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
+
+"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of
+punishment?"
+
+The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the
+past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed
+plain.
+
+"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held
+me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
+
+"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that
+I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
+
+For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that
+the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to
+abandon at once.
+
+"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he
+objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all.
+Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
+
+"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to
+appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten
+immeasurably farther away from another."
+
+"Your husband you mean?"
+
+"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
+
+The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to
+each other not to know everything there is to know."
+
+"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The
+inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly--and she herself had
+chosen. "He's merely given me up."
+
+"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something
+else as well, something akin to exultation.
+
+"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
+
+"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
+
+Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old
+pride, broke forth.
+
+"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before
+this if he objected?" she flamed.
+
+"Bess!"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had
+died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean
+to."
+
+The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the
+last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon
+blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive,
+conscious conformity such as this--The thing was unbelievable,
+providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic
+moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a
+change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to
+permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he
+had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to
+avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not
+alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to
+himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not
+the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the
+girl--particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be
+gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He
+merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
+that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.
+
+"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"
+
+"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."
+
+"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any
+longer. It's intolerable for both of us."
+
+"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."
+
+Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had
+imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now
+that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He
+hardly knew how to begin.
+
+"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very
+dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided
+the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in
+keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any
+longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the
+responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that
+before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from
+this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad--at least leave for a
+time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we
+wish; but for the present--I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
+another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.
+
+"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we
+can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He
+cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've
+arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last
+week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses
+waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the
+ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before
+morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again,
+nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say,
+not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been
+enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
+the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at
+the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.
+Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.
+There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on
+her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows
+you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to
+live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess;
+happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"
+
+He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the
+dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat
+looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As
+she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.
+Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an
+evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden,
+within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
+instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than
+life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading,
+distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her
+ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn
+philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she
+had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full
+knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him
+so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
+wife--.
+
+The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face
+drew nearer.
+
+"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense.
+Will you go?"
+
+With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back
+until she was free.
+
+"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to
+think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes;
+but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must
+consent--"
+
+"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I
+can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you
+must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not
+insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"
+
+The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.
+
+"I can't now, as things are."
+
+"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"
+
+For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.
+
+The man came a step forward, and another.
+
+"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"
+
+"I have told you," said a low voice.
+
+Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human
+being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move
+or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he
+commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily,
+irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."
+
+"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent
+effort to be free. "You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but
+not wholly. Please let me go."
+
+Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the
+moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to
+escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out
+of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.
+
+But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His
+back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in.
+Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out
+the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same
+all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the
+doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first
+woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might
+have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.
+
+"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten
+you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and
+not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could
+no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you
+go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're
+mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--"
+
+The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible
+muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the
+shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside
+them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the
+invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent
+poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent
+passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder
+in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count,
+the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical
+spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction
+had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure,
+there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense,
+desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.
+
+"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips
+and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I
+guess. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the
+two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his
+presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once
+more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful,
+he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More
+maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that
+passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot
+blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
+his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband,
+tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward
+menacingly.
+
+"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps,
+not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word
+his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost,
+lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"
+
+From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that
+instant the room became deathly still.
+
+A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then,
+white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so,
+motionless:--for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was
+speaking.
+
+"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step
+the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the
+white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice,
+unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was
+even as before.
+
+"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said.
+"I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I
+expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may
+listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but
+now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a
+moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the
+old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they
+rested on the face of the girl.
+
+But for still another moment--he was as deliberate as nature herself,
+this man--he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more
+so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death.
+His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands,
+folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but
+look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath
+the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now,
+very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
+expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite
+in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in
+the low-pitched voice.
+
+"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a
+request to make--and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly,
+to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came
+because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had
+reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the
+folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned
+abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon
+for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to
+do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into
+it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the
+girl's recollection while memory lasted.
+
+"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on.
+"Things are as they are--and final. I don't judge you, I--understand.
+Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now
+I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At
+least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to
+tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he
+stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment,
+please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to
+say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.
+
+"I said I had a request to make. This is it--that you don't leave until
+you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have
+inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you
+will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned
+anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he
+halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise
+me this, Bess?" he asked.
+
+Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened
+through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent,
+and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever
+in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was
+no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A
+myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was
+gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed
+nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was
+expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.
+
+"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently.
+"I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall
+again."
+
+At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips
+were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.
+
+"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."
+
+Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality;
+but the girl did not break it, said no more--and forever the moment, her
+moment, vanished into the past.
+
+"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely
+different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room.
+"There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he
+explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."
+
+With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope
+satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly
+here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No
+one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence,
+except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the
+satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army
+greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap
+which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered
+in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
+there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small,
+and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood
+beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover
+and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes
+large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At
+last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and
+the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the
+last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from
+nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
+heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his
+burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out
+his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her
+very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but
+I don't, so I'll only say good-bye--and--I wish you happiness." Just a
+moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her
+hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.
+
+"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it--as you cared for me once.
+Don't make things any harder--make them impossible!" Desperately,
+without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door.
+Beside the entrance--for he was not watching these last minutes--stood
+the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted.
+Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant,
+wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did
+everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those
+words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
+grave.
+
+"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say.
+Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so,
+if you will. If you do not--" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace--"if
+you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not
+a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall
+know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times
+better, if you do as I say."
+
+Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then,
+similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there
+broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+REWARD
+
+The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch
+house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the
+supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The
+vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained
+likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
+powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried.
+Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking
+permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a
+convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the
+eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the
+house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking
+permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
+
+Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were
+eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one
+corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
+
+Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor,
+Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy
+queensware proceeded.
+
+"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his
+chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to,
+stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
+
+In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his
+work.
+
+Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete
+was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had
+filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on
+the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
+
+"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
+
+The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of
+cigars.
+
+"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
+
+Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter--for cigars were a rarity on
+the frontier--puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content.
+The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and
+washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a
+cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue,
+disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor
+introduced himself.
+
+"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the
+Centre."
+
+The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
+
+"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at
+last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now.
+You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up
+the two kids."
+
+It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
+
+"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you
+were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look
+reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other
+side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over
+here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
+
+The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he
+glanced up.
+
+"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and--" Hawkins
+laughed peculiarly--"made a fizzle of it."
+
+"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
+
+"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even
+heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with
+his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl
+went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud
+of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
+
+"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing
+the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they
+hit it off well together?"
+
+Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands
+fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
+
+"While the money lasted, yes."
+
+"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
+
+"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
+
+"And then--"
+
+"It's the old story."
+
+"They went to pieces?"
+
+"Craig left her--for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter
+and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he
+was supporting the other woman all the time."
+
+Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the
+cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the
+mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
+
+"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
+
+"Bess came back."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed
+by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes
+were blazing.
+
+"Yes, she was alone," he said.
+
+The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The
+blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
+
+"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
+
+"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday,
+just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
+
+The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
+
+"Back at the ranch--with the Indian?"
+
+Equally directly Manning returned the look.
+
+"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not
+there."
+
+"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
+
+Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
+
+"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came
+here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to
+tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
+
+Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the
+lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing.
+For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face
+incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
+
+"Know where he is? Of course I do--now." He leaned back in his chair.
+"To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here,
+or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
+
+He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
+
+"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last
+week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for
+me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We
+never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a
+sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the
+board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm
+with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a
+two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
+
+For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand
+on the chair arm loosened its grip.
+
+"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think
+we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two
+fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its
+mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the
+morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded
+things a bit on the way up."
+
+For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
+unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
+
+"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty
+miles, and there's plenty of time."
+
+Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old
+storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
+
+"Yes, there's plenty of time--after How Landor knows," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny
+dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a
+shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam.
+In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized
+pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little
+altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was
+very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near
+and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet,
+they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in
+flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
+been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was
+pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking
+mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho
+had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and
+grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were
+unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened,
+something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror
+they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this
+something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and
+invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the
+confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had
+been interrupted.
+
+Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late
+September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy
+brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish
+speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all
+the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as
+irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while
+time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within
+the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
+
+Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On
+soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing,
+he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than
+once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did
+not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within
+stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an
+Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that
+object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he
+peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
+instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its
+revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken
+prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely
+beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent
+human in their midst this autumn day.
+
+How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could
+have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last,
+interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great
+quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost
+before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had
+ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up
+beside the tent.
+
+Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched
+himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was
+waiting.
+
+They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat
+eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
+
+"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be
+enough around when I came."
+
+The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
+
+"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
+
+A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he
+dismounted.
+
+"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed
+abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before
+I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to
+dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind
+I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
+
+In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the
+flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
+
+Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew
+on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then,
+however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now
+at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was
+intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of
+a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old
+storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The
+message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
+begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with
+a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite
+care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man
+himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the
+sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the
+impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied,
+well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him
+at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a
+measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
+that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
+emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
+inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white
+he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an
+inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice,
+with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's
+sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence
+calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless
+savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken
+for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
+realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine
+punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal,
+with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that
+had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his
+interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances
+unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling
+suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a
+readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the
+dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came
+fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal--if the other wished;
+but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the
+decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit
+it afresh suggestively.
+
+"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not
+Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
+
+The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
+
+"I thought so," it said simply.
+
+Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight,
+the glow lit up his face.
+
+"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service--and
+I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
+
+Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless,
+smiling infinite.
+
+"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I
+should know."
+
+The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
+
+"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
+
+Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his
+heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved.
+Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe
+opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground--his
+long fingers locked across his knees.
+
+"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
+
+For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white
+man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit
+now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering
+outside the bowl onto his knee.
+
+"About a month ago"--the speaker cleared his throat raspingly--"on
+August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started
+from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It
+wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one
+was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp
+crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker.
+"It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
+
+Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
+
+"Go on, please," requested a voice.
+
+"Early yesterday morning"--again the narrator halted perforce, to clear
+his throat--"just before I left three men went through town on their way
+to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man
+who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water
+their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch
+house closing the bargain now."
+
+"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
+
+The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged
+when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted
+physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness
+and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set
+eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when
+telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was
+all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by
+request.
+
+"I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old
+formula.
+
+For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a
+match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the
+sound, came a question.
+
+"Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they
+looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the
+mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
+
+"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two
+days old."
+
+"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
+
+"Yes. Several weeks."
+
+"She returned alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to stay?"
+
+Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the
+inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the
+other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
+
+"Yes," answered Manning.
+
+"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
+
+"No, Craig had left her."
+
+Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither
+man noticed the change.
+
+"There was a reason?"
+
+"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
+
+The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as
+the sunlight without.
+
+"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
+
+"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
+
+"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had
+done? You mean to tell me this?"
+
+Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white
+man got to his feet, stood so silent.
+
+"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear
+against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
+
+"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
+
+"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the
+third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come.
+"There could be but one other way!"
+
+Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face
+opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the
+moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so
+was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big
+game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the
+expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the
+end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted,
+waiting, postponing the inevitable.
+
+"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
+repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
+
+To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow
+fell.
+
+"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE
+
+An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to the east
+whither he had taken his way not even a dot now indicated his former
+presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon the wheels of the old road
+waggon had temporarily blazed a trail had returned normally erect.
+Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over the parched earth, the storm had
+gathered and broken; and passed on as though it had not been. All about
+smiled the sunshine; sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing,
+heard nothing. On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned,
+swam and splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal
+breeze of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
+song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had nature, the
+serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her
+customary course. Man alone it is who changes to conform with the
+passing mood. Man alone it was amid this primitive setting who had
+altered now.
+
+For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming. Instead, his
+every action was that of one with a definite purpose. Yet even then he
+did not hurry. At first he seemed merely to be going about the ordinary
+routine of his life. Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself
+a generous meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for
+the first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
+unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or even
+touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward the tent and
+disappeared inside.
+
+For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to place; and
+when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing indeed. In his arms
+were several articles of clothing rolled into a bulky bundle. Without a
+halt he made his way back to the place where he had eaten. The fire
+which he had builded had burned low ere this; and, standing there beside
+it, he scraped away the ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until
+the glowing embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had
+opened with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which
+it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a
+battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A moment the
+Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely; then gently as
+though they were a lost child he was returning to its mother's arms he
+laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool is slow to catch ablaze and
+for the moment they lay there black against the brown earth; then of a
+sudden, like the first lifting of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column
+of blue went trailing upward. Second by second it grew until with a
+muffled explosion the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood
+watching; now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned
+to the tent.
+
+This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with an armful
+of books--and something more. The fire was crackling merrily now, and
+volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for the first time he
+hesitated. There was still something to destroy, something which he had
+gathered in the old felt hat from off his own head; yet he hesitated.
+Greedy as a hungry animal deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept
+sending out spurts of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he
+delayed. Like the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into
+passive waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid
+this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But this
+time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head glistening
+in the sunlight, he started away toward the now expectant broncho; and
+back of him the pathetic little gathering of useless trinkets, bearing
+indelibly the mark of a woman's handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with
+the ashes of the things which had gone before.
+
+Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking cayuse
+following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back; waiting
+impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a land where
+prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever leaves fire alive
+when out of his sight; and to this instinct the Indian was true. Minute
+after minute he waited; until the flame vanished and in its stead there
+lay a mass of blazing coals. Then with a practical hand he banked the
+whole with a layer of earth until, look where one would, not a dot of
+red was visible. The act was the last, the culmination of preparation.
+At its end, with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his
+head high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in anticipation. Well
+he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was there of a
+second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost ere the taking of
+the single leap that put the rider in his seat the little beast was
+away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing deep of the prairie air, the
+patter of his tiny hoofs a continuous song upon the close-cropped sod.
+As two human beings living side by side grow to know each other, so this
+dumb menial had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to
+the dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He did
+so now; and as time passed and the miles flowed monotonously beneath his
+galloping feet the relentless determination of the man himself was
+repeated in that undeviating pace.
+
+Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the dragging hours of
+the September afternoon it continued. Many a time before the little
+beast had followed the trail from sun to sun. As well as the rider knew
+his own endurance he knew the possibilities of his mount, knew that now
+he would not fail. He did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he
+check it. He spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual
+drouth of fall, and as time passed on the dust the pony raised collected
+upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he noticed
+it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the broncho grew
+darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on the diminutive
+beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was unconscious. Silent
+as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his place; his lithe body
+conforming involuntarily to the motion, to the play of muscles beneath
+his legs; yet as unconsciously as one breathes in sleep. Not until the
+sun was red in the west, until of its own accord the broncho had drawn
+up at the first bit of water they had met on the way--a shallow marshy
+pond--did he move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the
+man washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition,
+shook the dust from his clothing.
+
+For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by side the man
+and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved and ever southward.
+Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but the sky was clear as it
+had been during the day, and the man needed no guide but the stars to
+show him the way. As he moved the hand of the Indian remained on the
+broncho's neck; and bit by bit as the time passed he felt the moist hair
+grow stiff and dry. Then, and not until then, came the final move, the
+beginning of the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion,
+apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and again
+as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly, that instant
+the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent as before, a
+ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into the night and the
+solitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch had
+changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer had driven
+about the place. One by one the cowboys had given testimony of the
+fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At first resignedly
+complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had grown cumulatively
+impatient at the inevitably dragging inventory. Nothing but necessity
+absolute in the shape of an imminent foreclosure had brought him back to
+this land at all. Delay had followed delay until at last immediate
+action was imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in
+a fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since they
+had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had been upon him.
+The team that had brought them out could not move fast enough. The
+preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had been, nevertheless
+dragged interminably. Strive as he might to combat the impression, to
+ignore it, this land had of a sudden become to him a land of terror.
+Every object which met his eye called forth a recollection. Every minute
+that passed whispered a menace. In a measure it had been so a half year
+ago ere he had tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had
+occurred in that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented
+immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a minute
+since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had he been
+without a revolver at hand. All the previous night, despite the
+grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had bunked, a lamp had
+burned beside the bed; yet even then he could not sleep. Whether or no
+he felt contrition for the past, this man, he could not have told, he
+never paused to consider. All he knew was that he had a deathly fear of
+this silent waste and of a certain human who dwelt somewhere therein.
+Repugnant as consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing
+compared with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual
+experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of money,
+badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence. Now that he
+was here he must needs see the transaction through; he could not well do
+otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a close and the necessity of
+tarrying a second night became assured, the premonition of retribution,
+that had before lowered merely as a possibility, loomed into the
+proportions of certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink;
+not at stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but
+continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged glances
+of understanding.
+
+To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal was
+complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with tobacco smoke, by
+the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene lamp Craig had accomplished
+a sprawling signature and received in return a check on a Chicago bank.
+It was already late, and very soon the new owner, with a significant
+look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt
+"Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a thinly
+veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself, and Craig and
+his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes thereafter the two
+men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite his muddled brain, the
+former realised that the big Irishman was observing him with a
+concentration that was significant. Ever short of temper, the man's
+nerves were stretched to the jangling point this night, and the look
+irritated him. Responsive, he scowled prodigiously.
+
+"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"
+
+No answer; only, if possible, the look became more analytic than before.
+
+"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous staring that
+way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't you like my selling
+and putting you out of a job?"
+
+"No, it's not that," refuted the Hibernian. "There are plenty of other
+places I can get. I could stay right here for that matter if I wanted
+to--but I don't. I wouldn't live in this house any longer if my pay were
+doubled." As he spoke he had looked away. Now of a sudden his glance
+returned. "I meant to quit anyway, whether you sold or not."
+
+"Why so?" queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was repeated. "You
+seemed glad enough to come."
+
+"I was--then," shortly.
+
+"And why not now? Talk up, if you've any grievance. Don't sit there like
+a chimpanzee, hugging it."
+
+"You know why well enough," ignored the other. He passed a knotty hand
+through his shock of red whiskers absently. "I've expected the devil or
+worse here every night these last weeks."
+
+Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.
+
+"God," he satirised, "who'd ever imagined you were the superstitious
+sort! Weren't you ever in a place where anyone died before?"
+
+"I never was where a woman and her child were murdered," deliberately.
+
+Quick as thought Craig's red face whitened.
+
+"Damn you, O'Reilly," he challenged, "you're free with your tongue." He
+checked himself. "I don't wish to quarrel with you to-night, though," he
+conciliated.
+
+"Nor I with you," returned the other impassively. "I was merely telling
+you the truth. Besides, it's none of my affair; and even if it were, I'm
+thinking you'll pay for it dear enough before you're through."
+
+Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude
+supercilious.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean, O'Reilly? You keep suggesting things, but
+that is all. Talk plain if you know anything."
+
+"I don't know anything," impassively; "unless it is that I wouldn't be
+in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you've made out of this
+cursed business."
+
+Bit by bit Craig's face whitened. If anything the air of conciliation
+augmented.
+
+"You think circumstances weren't to blame?" he queried. "That, in other
+words, I've brought things about as they are deliberately?"
+
+"I don't think anything. I know what you've done--and what you've got to
+answer for."
+
+Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about him.
+
+The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he arose
+unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a jerk.
+
+"You're beastly hard on me," he commented, "but let that pass. It's
+probably the last time we'll ever see each other, and we may as well
+part friends." He was back in his place again with the flask before him,
+and with a propitiatory motion he extended the liquor toward the other
+man. "Come, let's forget it," he insinuated. "Have a drink with me."
+
+"Not a drop."
+
+"Not if I requested it?"
+
+"Not if you got down on your knees and begged."
+
+"All right." The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little laugh. "I'll
+have to spoil it all myself, then."
+
+The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down swallow
+after swallow. The hand of the drinker trembled uncontrollably, and a
+tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven chin to the starched linen
+beneath.
+
+"If you'll take a word of advice," commented the spectator at last,
+"you'll cut that--for the time being at least." He hesitated; then went
+on reluctantly. "I've been in your pay and I'll try to be square with
+you. If you've got an atom of presentiment you'll realise that this is
+no place for you to get into the shape you're getting." Again he halted,
+and again with an effort he gave the warning direct. "If I were you I
+wouldn't be at this ranch a second longer than it took me to leave; not
+as long as I had a broncho or a leg or a crutch to go on."
+
+Slowly and more slowly came the words. Then followed silence, with the
+two men staring each other face to face. Breaking it, the overseer
+arose.
+
+"I've said more than I intended already," he added, "and now I wash my
+hands of you. Do as you please. I'm going to bed."
+
+Preventing, of a sudden sobered, Craig was likewise on his feet.
+
+"In common decency, even if you're no friend of mine, don't go,
+O'Reilly," he pleaded. He had no thought of superiority now, no thought
+of malice; only of companionship and of protection. "I know what you
+mean. I'm no fool, and what you suggest is exactly what's been driving
+me insane these last two days. I'm going in the morning, as soon as it's
+daylight; the team is all ordered; but to-night, now--" instinctively he
+glanced at the window where recollection pictured the darkness
+without--"I haven't nerve to face it now. I'd go plumb mad out there
+alone."
+
+The Irishman shrugged in silence and attempted to pass.
+
+"Please don't go," repeated Craig swiftly. "I know I'm acting like a
+child, but this cursed country's to blame. Stay with me this last night.
+I couldn't sleep, and it's madness to be alone. See me through this and
+I swear you'll not regret it. I swear it!"
+
+Just for a second O'Reilly paused; then of a sudden his face flamed red
+through his untrimmed beard.
+
+"To hell with your money!" he blazed. "I wouldn't lift my finger for you
+if How Landor were to come this second." He checked himself and took a
+step forward meaningly. "Besides, I couldn't help you any if I would.
+God himself couldn't protect you now unless He performed a miracle. Out
+of my way. I tell you I'm done with you."
+
+Craig had not stirred. He did not now; and of a sudden the overseer
+turned to pass around. As he did so for the first time he faced the
+single window that looked north toward the second ranch house: the house
+which How Landor had builded to receive his bride. The curtain was still
+down, but to the Irishman's quick eye there rested upon it now a dull
+glow that was not a reflection of the light within. A second after he
+noticed the man halted, looking at it, speculating as to its meaning.
+Then of a sudden he realised; and in two steps he was across the room
+and simultaneously the obscuring shade shot up with a crash. Instantly
+following, startlingly unexpected, the red glow without sprang through
+the glass and filled the room.
+
+"Fire!" announced the observer involuntarily to the sleepers above. "The
+other ranch house is afire!" Then, as they were slow in awakening, the
+cry was repeated more loudly: "Fire! Fire!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A conflagration is the universal contagion, the one excitement that
+never palls. Forth into the night, forgetful of his companion, forgetful
+of all save the interest of the moment, rushed O'Reilly. Half dressed,
+hatless, working with buttons as they went, Parker, the new owner, and
+Mead, the lawyer, descended the rickety stairs like an avalanche and
+without pausing to more than look followed running in his wake. The
+unused ranch house was dry as cardboard and was burning fiercely. Though
+there was still no moon and the overseer had several minutes the start,
+against the light they could see his running figure distinctly. Standing
+in the living-room as they rushed through, white faced, hesitant, was
+Clayton Craig; but though he had spoken to them--they both recalled that
+fact afterward--neither had paused to listen or to answer. That he would
+not follow never occurred to them until minutes thereafter. Not until,
+panting, struggling for breath after the unusual effort, they had
+covered the intervening mile, and the heat of the already diminishing
+fire was on their faces, did they think of him at all. Even then it was
+not the first thought which occurred; for the moment they arrived
+O'Reilly, who was waiting, turned, facing them excitedly.
+
+"Do you see that?" he queried, pointing to a black band that surrounded
+the building in a complete circle.
+
+Parker nodded understandingly; but Mead, who was city bred, looked
+mystified. "What is it?" he returned.
+
+"A firebreak," explained the Irishman. "Someone didn't want the blaze to
+spread and scattered earth clear around the place, with a spade."
+Leaning over he picked up a clod and thumbed it significantly. "It
+hasn't been done a half hour. The dirt isn't even dry."
+
+Brief as the time had been, already the frail walls were settling to
+embers. There was nothing to do; and standing there the three men looked
+understandingly into each other's faces. The same thought stood clear on
+all; for all alike knew every detail of the story.
+
+"The Indian, How Landor," suggested Mead adequately.
+
+"Yes," corroborated Parker, "and I'm glad of it. I'm not squeamish, but
+the Lord knows I'd never have used the place myself."
+
+Of a sudden, O'Reilly, who had turned and was staring into the blaze,
+faced about. That second he had remembered.
+
+"Where's Craig?" he queried swiftly, glancing back the way they had
+come. "Didn't he follow?"
+
+Until that moment none of the three had thought of the other man. Now
+they realised that they were alone. But even then two of the trio did
+not understand.
+
+"Evidently he didn't start," said Mead. "He couldn't have missed the
+light if he did."
+
+"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left," added Parker.
+
+"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly. "As
+there's a Heaven and a Hell he's not standing there now, I'll wager!"
+
+Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of that meaning
+black band, the three spectators there beneath the stars stood staring
+at each other. It was O'Reilly again who broke the silence.
+
+"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's happened?"
+he interrogated unbelievingly.
+
+"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no doubt
+about that," said Mead.
+
+"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor, and he's
+been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone back there in the
+ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you see now? At last the
+Indian has found out!"
+
+For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home, not a man
+stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and started back into
+the night.
+
+"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We can't get
+there a second too quick."
+
+"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We couldn't get
+there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over before this, take my
+word for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back they were too
+late. As O'Reilly had anticipated, the ranch house was empty, deserted.
+Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the adjoining tool shed. Though
+they searched every nook, until a mouse could not have escaped
+detection, they found not a trace of him for whom they looked, nor a
+clue to his disappearance. Though they shouted his name until they were
+hoarse not an answer came back from the surrounding darkness. Within the
+ranch house itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a
+struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it had
+been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap and topcoat
+were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the stable every horse
+was within its own stall: every piece of saddlery was intact. While the
+three men were looking, attracted by the blaze, the distant cowboys one
+by one began drifting in; and when they had heard the tale joined in
+the search. All through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns,
+like giant fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a
+radius of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming
+of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches
+appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on the
+prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was assembled.
+Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of riders scoured the
+country for miles and miles. And once more, from all, the testimony was
+as before. There was not a clue to the disappearance, nor the semblance
+of a clue. As out of the darkness of night surrounding, a great horned
+owl swoops down upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the
+Indian had come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as
+well into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the
+ranchers dispersed--and the search was over.
+
+And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery unsurmountable. One
+morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly had gone, when the new
+master of the ranch arose it was to find a wicked-looking mouse-coloured
+cayuse standing motionless by the stable door. Upon him was neither
+saddle nor bridle nor mark of any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless
+waste he had been released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he
+had returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He
+could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out there
+amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to pass; but what it
+was only Nature and Nature's God, who alone were witness, could ever
+know.
+
+
+
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