Sergeant Silk the Prairie Scout Part 16

"I say, Maple Leaf," Percy Rapson declared with boyish frankness, "you're lookin' awfully charmin' at this moment, standin' there peelin'

those apples with the light of the settin' sun on you! I don't think you ever realise how good-lookin' you are. If I were an artist, I should want to paint a picture of you; only you should be dressed in fringed and beaded buckskins, and wear a feathered head-dress like a war-chief's daughter. Of course, I should never be able to do you justice, but your portrait would look rippin' fine on the top of a chocolate box."

The Indian girl's naturally ruddy cheeks took on a deeper tinge, which was not wholly due to the rosy glow from the western sky.

"Maple Leaf is glad that you are not an artist," she responded with dignity and a slightly contemptuous curl of her lip.

Percy stood near to her in the kitchen at Rattlesnake Ranch. He had one of a litter of bull pups on the dresser beside him, and was tempting the fat, ungainly animal to take more nourishment than it needed from a saucer of milk. He looked at the girl very closely and his eyes lingered, not for the first time, upon a curious scar in the smooth skin of her right temple. It was a long, very straight scar, that ran into the midst of the ebony black hair above her ear.

"Maple Leaf!" he said, after a considerable pause.

"Well?" She glanced aside at him.

"I've often wanted to ask you," he went on. "How did you get that wound on your temple? It's like the cut of a knife. It must have been a good deal more than a scratch to leave a mark like that. How was it done?"

Maple Leaf continued with her work of peeling and quartering apples.

She had turned her back to him.

"Don't you want to tell me?" he asked. "Indians are usually proud of their wounds. At least, the men are, the chiefs and warriors and braves.

I don't know about the women. Perhaps you got yours in some childish accident?"

"I have never told any one," she answered. And then, after a pause, she added: "And I am not going to. It is my secret. It is no business of yours."

Percy laughed awkwardly, feeling the rebuff, and took up his wriggling bull pup.

"All right," he said, knowing by experience that Maple Leaf was like the rest of her race and that wild horses couldn't drag from her anything that she did not wish to tell. "You can keep your secret, for all I care. But I could easily find out if I wanted, you know. I could even ask Sergeant Silk. I daresay Silk knows. There isn't much that he doesn't know about you and every one else on the Rattlesnake patrol."

She turned sharply and her dark eyes flashed. But only for an instant.

"You had better not ask Sergeant Silk," she said in a slow, level voice, which had in it something of warning. "He knows. Yes, he knows.

But he would not tell you."

She watched him go out into the back garden towards the shed which he used as a kennel. When he was out of sight, she put forth her hand to the plate rack and drew a small square of looking-gla.s.s from behind a cracked dish.

Propping the mirror against the shelf, she drew aside the strands of black hair from above her ear in such a way that the scar was revealed more clearly, running upward and backward from her temple.

"Yes," she nodded with a smile of satisfaction at her own reflection, "it is still there. It will always be there. Maple Leaf is not sorry.

She is glad. It helps her to remember."

She put the mirror back in its hiding-place and went to the door and looked out across the ripening cornfields and the more distant prairie to the blue foothills behind which the sun was sinking.

It was just such an evening as this, she reflected. And she recalled one by one the incidents of the adventure in which she had taken so prominent a part.

It had happened that her father, The Moose That Walks, and her brother, Rippling Water, had been absent many days from Mrs. Medlicott's ranch, where they lived and worked. The crops were not yet ready for harvesting, and there was not much for them to do on the farm lands, whereas the beaver were plentiful on the creeks and in their best condition; so the father and son had gone trapping on the head waters of the Bow River.

They had left word at the ranch that if they did not return within a stated time it would mean that they were having good luck, and that Maple Leaf was to go to them with some further supplies of the white man's food--tea, sugar, flour, with rifle cartridges, not forgetting tobacco.

So Maple Leaf had filled her saddle-bags, mounted her pony, and gone off on the trail alone to the trappers' dug-out on far-away b.u.t.terfly Creek.

It was a long and lonesome journey among the mountains, occupying two days; but she had the Indians' instinct for finding her way through unfamiliar places, and she reached her destination without adventure.

It was as she had expected. The Moose That Walks and Rippling Water had met with good luck. Their traps had yielded a rich harvest. Some hundreds of beautiful beaver skins had been dried and packed, and there were more to be taken. Now that fresh supplies of food and tobacco had come, it would be possible to continue trapping with success for many days.

"It is good medicine," said The Moose That Walks. "We will sleep seven more sleeps and then return with many beaver skins to our white friends.

With the sun's rising you will go back, my daughter, for it is not well that you should be away when there is work to be done."

"And, say!" added Rippling Water, observing that she had come unarmed with any other weapon than the knife in her belt. "Don't you reckon that you'd be some wiser to carry a loaded gun along with you? You might need it, see? There's no knowing."

He offered her his own revolver, but the girl shook her head decisively.

"What d'you suppose I could want with a loaded gun?" she objected.

"n.o.body's going to touch me. There's no road-agents to rob me, even if I was worth robbing; and there's no grizzly bears or hungry wolves prowling around, this time of year. No, Rip. I'm safe enough. Don't you worry."

She had no fear, because she knew of no possible danger, and she started on her backward journey as confident of her personal safety as if she were riding among the familiar cornfields and orchards of Rattlesnake Ranch instead of in the gloomy wilds of the Rocky Mountains.

She had abundance of food and a good, sure-footed horse. She knew the landmarks and could not well go astray. In the noon-day heat she would halt at the side of some shady creek to rest; at night she would seek out some friendly shelter where she could build a fire, and, wrapping her blanket about her, sleep as comfortably and securely as in her little room under the roof at the Medlicott homestead.

Leaving the mountains behind, she crossed a belt of old sand-drift overgrown with pine. Beyond that, for a score of miles or so, there was no bush, but only a swell of golden gra.s.s rolling away to violet distances.

Late in the afternoon she came to Emerald Canon, where, sunk three hundred feet below the plains, there was a chain of pools and an acre or so of green meadow starred with the ashes of old camp fires.

In this secluded canon Maple Leaf hobbled her broncho and made camp for the night within sound of a high cascade of water, which fell noisily into a pool darkened by overhanging trees.

She shared her solitude with a family of little foxes at play on a gra.s.sy knoll and with a crane, which stood on one leg at the water's edge.

She watched the crane, wondering how long it would remain motionless in that position, and as she watched, a waft of smoke from her fire drifted towards the bird, which rose into the air and flapped lazily away into the blue gloom.

Suddenly as she followed its flight the girl's quick eyes were drawn upward to the rim of the shadowed canon, where a waving line of ripened gra.s.s glowed orange against the sky, and she became aware of a filmy cloud of dust, which rose from the high plain beyond.

She clasped her fingers tightly, drew back into the shadow, and crouched there, listening, watching.

The dust cloud thickened, and above the deep murmur of the waterfall she caught the unmistakable sound of the tramping of horses and the rumble of wagon wheels.

She thought of Indians and of the need of concealing her fire, lest they should discover her and perhaps steal her pony.

Earlier in the day she had come upon the marks of horses' hoofs in the prairie dust. The horses had not all been shod, and she had known by this that their riders were Indians. She began to wish that she had taken the loaded gun which Rippling Water had offered her. But her anxiety quickly left her.

Presently a mounted man came out upon the edge of the ravine. The sunlight shone warmly upon his chestnut horse and flamed upon his scarlet tunic. He had come to a halt not half-a-mile away from her, and he was looking down towards the drifting mist of her wood fire. For a moment he glanced back over his shoulder, then moved onward in her direction, followed, after a while, by some twenty riders, each with a carbine poised across the horn of his stock saddle. They were a troop of the North-West Mounted Police.

At a word of command the riders dismounted to lead their horses, while behind them there appeared five wagons, each with a driver and an off man. A pair of troopers in the rear waited for the dust to settle before they followed down the breakneck hill into the hollow of the canon.

Maple Leaf watched them winding down the rocky slopes. Some wore suits of brown canvas, some were dressed in fringed deer-skin with grey flannel s.h.i.+rts or old red jackets, with long boots, sombrero hats, belts glittering with bra.s.s cartridges, and big revolvers at their sides.

Hard-featured, weather-beaten, dusty, great big men they were, all having the same clear, far-searching eyes, the same pride of bearing, and the same swaggering gallantry and wild grace in their masterly horsemans.h.i.+p.

The trooper who had first appeared in sight waited for a while and spoke to the officer in command, then went on in advance of his companions.

Even at a distance as he approached, Maple Leaf made out that he had a sergeant's triple chevron on the arm of his dusty red tunic. When he reached the level ground he vaulted into his saddle and rode across the long gra.s.s straight for the trees where her fire still burned smokily.