The Price of the Prairie Part 8

Uncle Cam chuckled. He was built for chuckling, and we all laughed with him, except Mr. Dodd. I caught a sneer on his face in the moment.

Presently Father Le Claire and Jean Pahusca joined the group. I had not seen the latter since the day of O'mie's warning. Indian as he was, I could see a change in his impa.s.sive face. It made me turn cold, me, to whom fear was a stranger. Father Le Claire, too, was not like himself.

Self-possessed always, with his native French grace and his inward spiritual calm, this evening he seemed to be holding himself by a mighty grip, rather than by that habitual self-mastery that kept his life in poise.

I tell these impressions as a man, and I a.n.a.lyze them as a man, but, boy as I was, I felt them then with keenest power. Again the likeness of Indian and priest possessed me, but raised no query within me. In form, in gait and especially in the shape of the head and the black hair about their square foreheads they were as like as father and son. Just once I caught Jean's eye. The eye of a rattlesnake would have been more friendly. O'mie was right. The "good Indian" had vanished. What had come in his stead I was soon to know. But withal I could but admire the fine physique of this giant.

While the men were still full of the Union disaster, two hors.e.m.e.n came riding up to the tavern oak. Their horses were dripping wet. They had come up the trail from the southwest, where the draws were barely fordable. Strangers excited no comment in a town on the frontier. The trail was always full of them coming and going. We hardly noted that for ten days Springvale had not been without them.

"Come in, gentlemen," called Cam. "Here, Dollie, take care of these friends. O'mie, take their horses."

They pa.s.sed inside and the talk outside went eagerly on.

"Father Le Claire, how do the Injuns feel about this fracas now?"

inquired Tell Mapleson.

The priest spoke carefully.

"We always counsel peace. You know we do not belong to either faction."

His smile was irresistible, and the most partisan of us could not dislike him that he spoke for neither North nor South.

"But," Tell persisted, "how do the Injuns themselves feel?"

Tell seemed to have lost his usual insight, else he could have seen that quick, shrewd, penetrating glance of the good Father's reading him through and through.

"I have just come from the Mission," he said. "The Osages are always loyal to the Union. The Verdigris River was too high for me to hear from the villages in the southwest."

Tell was listening eagerly. So also were the two strangers who stood in the doorway now. If the priest noted this he gave no sign. Mr. Dodd spoke here for the first time.

"Well," he said in his pious intonation, "if the Osages are loyal, that clears Jean here. He's an Osage, isn't he?"

Jean made no reply; neither did Le Claire, and Tell Mapleson turned casually to the strangers, engaging them in conversation.

"We shall want our horses at four sharp in the morning," one of the two came out to say to Cam. "We have a long hard day before us."

"At your service," answered Cam. "O'mie, take the order in your head."

"Is that the biggest hostler you've got?" looking contemptuously at little O'mie standing beside me. "If you Kansas folks weren't such d.a.m.ned abolitionists you'd have some able-bodied n.i.g.g.e.rs to do your work right."

O'mie winked at me and gave a low whistle. Neither the wink nor the whistle was lost on the speaker, who frowned darkly at the boy.

Cam squinted up at the men good-naturedly. "Them horses dangerous?" he asked.

"Yes, they are," the stranger replied. "Can we have a room downstairs?

We want to go to bed early. We have had a hard day."

"You can begin to say your 'Now I lay me' right away in here if you like," and the landlord led the way into a room off the veranda. One of the two lingered outside in conversation with Mapleson for a brief time.

"Come, go home with me, O'mie," I said later, when the crowd began to thin out.

"Not me," he responded. "Didn't ye hear, 'four A. M. sharp'? It's me flat on me bed till the dewy morn an' three-thirty av it. Them's vicious horses. An' they'll be to curry clane airly. Phil," he added in a lower voice, "this town's a little overrun wid strangers wid no partic'lar business av their own, an' we don't need 'em in ours. For one private citizen, I don't like it. The biggest one of them two men in there's named Yeager, an' he's been here three toimes lately, stayin' only a few hours each toime."

O'mie looked so little to me this evening! I had hardly noted how the other boys had outgrown him.

"You're not very big for a horseman after all, my son, but you're grit clear through. You may do something yet the big fellows couldn't do," I said affectionately.

He was Irish to the bone, and never could entirely master his brogue, but we had no social caste lines, and Springvale took him at face value, knowing his worth.

At Marjie's gate I stopped to make sure everything was all right.

Somehow when I knew the Indian was in town I could never feel safe for her. She hurried out in response to my call.

"I'm so glad to see you to-night, Phil," she said, a little tremulously.

"I wish father were here. Do you think he is safe?"

She was leaning on the gate, looking eagerly into my eyes. The shadows of the May twilight were deepening around us, and Marjie's white face looked never so sweet to me as now, in her dependence on my a.s.surance.

"I'm sure Mr. Whately is all right. It is the bad news that gets here first. I'm so glad our folks weren't at Chancellorsville."

"But they may be in as dreadful a battle soon. Oh, Phil, I'm so--what?

lonesome and afraid to-night. I wish father could come home."

It was not like Marjie, who had been a dear brave girl, always cheering her dependent mother and hopefully expecting the best. To-night there swept over me anew that sense of the duty every man owes to the home. It was an intense feeling then. Later it was branded with fire into my consciousness. I put one of my big hands over her little white hand on the gate.

"Marjie," I said gently, "I promised your father I would let no harm come to you. Don't be afraid, little girl. You can trust me. Until he comes back I will take care of you."

The twilight was sweet and dewy and still. About the house the shadows were darkening. I opened the gate, and drawing her hand through my arm, I went up the walk with her.

"Is that the lilac that is so fragrant?" I caught a faint perfume in the air.

"Yes," sadly, "what there is of it." And then she laughed a little.

"That miserable O'mie came up here the day after we went to Red Range and persuaded mother to cut it all down except one straight stick of a bush. He told her it was dying, and that it needed pruning, and I don't know what. And you know mother. I was over at the Anderson's, and when I came home the whole clump was gone. I dreamed the other night that somebody was hiding in there. It was all dead in the middle. Do you remember when we played hide-and-seek in there?"

"I never forget anything you do, Marjie," I answered; "but I'm glad the bushes are thinned out."

She broke off some plumes of the perfumy blossoms.

"Take those to Aunt Candace. Tell her I sent them. Don't let her think you stole them," she was herself now, and her fear was gone.

"May I take something else to Aunt Candace, too, Marjie?"

"What else?" She looked up innocently into my face. We were at the door-step now.

"A good-night kiss, Marjie."

"I'll see her myself about that," she replied mischievously but confusedly, pus.h.i.+ng me away. I knew her cheek was flushed as my own, and I caught her hand and held it fast.

"Good-night, Phil." That sweet voice of hers I could not disobey. In a moment I was gone, happy and young and confident. I could have fought the whole Confederate army for the sake of this girl left in my care--my very own guardians.h.i.+p.