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