The Plow-Woman Part 44

"I knew it," said Fraser. "But I wanted you to get it first hand."

"You knew?"

"Yes, sir. And I hope you'll be easy on Kippis. He and Blakely have been helping me keep tab on Matthews to prevent the very thing that's happened."

An hour later, a second group of men gathered in the captain's front room. These were the troopers for whom the commanding officer had asked.

With them came Squaw Charley, quaking in his tatters, flinching at every look. As Oliver appeared, the wretched Indian was half-dragged, half-pushed before him.

The examination was short. The sentries who had tramped the high board walk vouched for The Squaw's constant presence in the stockade throughout the whole of the required time. The guards at the sliding-panel lent corroboration. From sun-up till taps of the previous day, Charley had fleshed at the hide of an elk, the scarred fury, Afraid-of-a-Fawn, hanging over him the while. Both nights, from taps on, he had watched outside the lodge occupied by the hag and an Indian girl.

Captain Oliver crossed to the bend to tell Dallas his results. "Matthews has witnesses who know where he was every minute of the time," he said.

"Undoubtedly he had no active part in this affair."

"He knows about it, though," she answered.

"That would be hard to prove."

Before he went, the captain proposed certain defensive improvements for the shack. She accepted them gratefully. Later, a carpenter nailed thick cleats across the warped door, and the post blacksmith put heavy lashes of iron over the eyes of the shack.

At nightfall, a detachment landed on the east bank, divided, and went on a scout in opposite directions. It was only part of Oliver's plan of guarding, for he did one thing more--spoke plainly to Matthews in regard to the bend.

"I advise you to relinquish all claim to the Lancaster place," he said.

"I shall allow no warring on girls."

Matthews gave his promise.

During the first few days that followed, Marylyn's heart beat pendulum-like between grief and dread. It was grief when, in a moment of forgetfulness, she found that she had set the table for three; or when, missing her father sorely--for in the past year he had been much with her--she spoke of him to Dallas. At such times, with sweet impartiality, she mourned him as sincerely as she had mourned her mother. But at night, when the detachment came back from its scouting, she felt a terrible dread--dread least the hunt had been successful, and the troopers should ride across the prairie to the shack door, bearing something solemnly home.

Those first days past, however, the sharp edge of her sorrow, together with her fears, wore gradually away. She had the elastic spirit of eighteen. And she was impatient of this new heartache, which possessed none of the romantic qualities of the old. A doubt of her father's death, fostered by Dallas, grew until it became a conviction. He had been taken away, or he had fled; he would return. Meanwhile, though nothing could have induced her to leave the shack after dark, it fretted her sorely, that, in the daytime, she was not permitted to go as far as the grove.

That restriction was the only hards.h.i.+p that the elder girl allowed the younger to bear. Dallas believed that their father had come to mortal harm. But she never shared that belief with Marylyn.

"We got to keep a stiff upper lip, baby sister," she would say, with an encouraging pat. And her smile was always hopeful and cheering.

Mrs. Oliver came daily, and spent her time with Marylyn. She did not feel that Dallas needed buoying--Dallas, quiet, self-poised, and staunch. Yet, all the while, the elder girl was growing wan under the strain. For, having given generously of her strength, there was no one from whom, in turn, she might take. And so her thoughts came often to be of the one who had faithfully watched over them, how faithfully, shown by the fact that catastrophe had followed swift upon his leaving. And in her heart she cried out for him.

The tragedy on the bend furnished a nine days' wonder for Brannon. But the garrison felt little grief over it. Lancaster had earned their dislike by insults open and veiled, and by his determination to cut his family off from every friendly influence. The enlisted men were even inclined to treat his disappearance facetiously. When they heard about the pole, they declared that in his fright over it, he had fired a shot, cut a finger, broken a crutch--and "lit out." One wag announced that the section-boss was mired in some alkali mud-hole; another, that he had been bitten by a polecat; a third composed some doggerel lines in which Lancaster was described as having gone "over the range." Notwithstanding this, the troopers had deep sympathy for the bereaved girls.

Oliver, never too popular, they scored roundly for his treatment of Matthews, and vowed to the latter that he had ample grounds for walking off and leaving the whole "shooting-match." But Matthews gently chided them, reminding them that any moment an interpreter might be badly needed. Furthermore, he said, he would disregard the unfairness shown him, for he knew his duty.

Brannon was still asking Who? and Why? and How? in the Lancaster affair when Squaw Charley discovered and showed to Captain Oliver the testimony that had in some way escaped the scout. Under a willow clump on the beach before Shanty Town, was a well-defined mark in the sand, V-shaped, long, and quite deep. It was the mark left by the prow of a boat that had been pulled out of the water and hidden at the river's edge. It was almost certain proof of the route taken, going and coming, by Lancaster's a.s.sailant.

But no absolute facts were unearthed. As the days slipped by, this cruel one became apparent: the section-boss, with his wild outbursts of anger, his implacable hatreds, his suspicions, and his tantrums of jealousy--was gone.

CHAPTER XXVI

BACKSLIDING

Across the sky, a pale s.h.i.+ning ribbon, stretched the Milky Way. The braves in the stockade were watching it, their faces reverently upturned. They sat before their lodges in silent knots of two or three; or stood apart here and there, shrouded in summer sheets of dressed cow skin, and motionless as statues. When they moved, it was to draw heavily upon a pipestone bowl and waft the incense of kinnikinick toward the glimmering strip overhead--the sacred road that leads the Sioux to the Happy Hunting Grounds.

One moon had pa.s.sed since the signal smoke arose on Medicine Mountain.

In that time, though they had fasted and prayed, not a crumb of hope had come to feed their languis.h.i.+ng spirits. Truly, it seemed as if the pied buffalo were bringing them more than a generous share of ill-luck. The interpreter told them only evil news: That all but sixty of the pony soldiers had gone to hunt and kill Indians. As for the distant peak, from it had curled up no news at all!

They gambled no more. They spoke no more of the captive white women. The four condemned brooded in their wigwams, with eyes gloomy, with hair unkempt. Among the squaws, hot discontent was working. They greeted even those who brought them rations with black looks and menacing gestures.

And all--warriors as well as squaws--got up with the sun and paced along the log walls like prisoned animals, wearing a deep rut into the earth.

Throughout the winter they had been contented enough with their lot. In no other winter had they enjoyed such freedom from labour and care, such health, comfort, and abundant food. But now--the gra.s.s was grazing high.

The new leaves were opening. The willows were in bud. The wild fowl were back, and nesting by river and slough. In lonely ravines, the antelope kids were bleating--proof that it was the killing season of the p.r.o.ng-horn. And here the village was yet shut in a pen--like pigs!

Soon--it might be any day--the four chiefs would be dragged out to die by the rope. If the rest were sent away, would it not be to some reservation? And if, by chance, they got free? Their ponies were gone.

Where could they get others? Then it would be late in the summer, perhaps. On what would their women and children live? There would be no dried meat for pemmican; no caches of roots or berries; no packed fish; no smoked tongue; no backfat--nothing. And all would go hungry.

The post saw how terrible was the ferment among the hostage crew. And following David Bond's last visit to the stockade, had used extra precautions. The officers' families never entered the sliding-panel now, but climbed a ladder and viewed the Indians from the safe height of the board walk. An armed escort went with the rations on issue days. The sentry beats were halved, and the number of watchers thus doubled. And every night a detail entered and rigidly searched each lodge, to see that no brave was trying, after the fas.h.i.+on of the badger, to burrow a way out. Squaw Charley alone was exempt from any new ruling, for he came and went when he chose.

Yet he had changed in no less degree than his brothers, though in a different way. The word from Medicine Mountain had been a blow to quiver under. For months the outcast whose loyalty The Plow-Woman boasted, had been slipping from his old-time fealty to her, made false by his dream of winning back his rank. In a moment he had seen his chance for honour wiped out. Before him again there lay only woman's work, curses, beatings, and a life with the dogs--even worse: to see her whom he coveted going to Standing Buffalo!

He could bear the curses and the cruelty. He could sit quiet under the ridicule that outraged the childish vanity of his kind. He could thirst.

He could starve. But, returning to the roof one night, he had prowled yearningly past her lodge. And had come upon her and her new lover, standing cheek to cheek, close wrapped in a single blanket.

And so this night, while the warriors watched the sacred track upon the sky, he made his way to the river. For there he meant to plead the G.o.d of David Bond, that He send him a chance for valour--a chance to slay.

Out in the starlight, therefore, he fell upon his knees.

But before his simple mind had framed his pet.i.tion, there entered a thought that puzzled and alarmed. He pondered upon it. The G.o.d of David Bond was a G.o.d of Peace, Who frowned in awful anger upon fighting and bloodshed. The preacher had said so. Had taught "Thou shalt not kill!"

Had taught that no answers were vouchsafed to wicked prayers; but punishments, instead. _How then could a prayer of that kind be sent to Him!_

The outcast was dismayed.

Then came a happier idea. The G.o.d of David Bond being a G.o.d of peace, why trouble His ear? Why not pray this one prayer for blood to the Great Spirit he had served before--the Great Spirit who marked out the destinies of the Dakotas, who was ever strongest in times of war?

Hurriedly The Squaw got to his feet and ran to the edge of the bank, where there were climbing lengths of grapevine. Degraded, he might not use tobacco for a rite. But the Great Spirit would understand. In the dark, his hands felt for and found a dry stalk. He snapped off a finger-length of it.

A second to take flint and steel from his buckskin pouch. Another to light the bit of vine. Then----

But he did not sit upon the ground with crossed legs. Neither did he pull upon the vine. He let it go out, instead. And sank hesitatingly to his knees. For, again, he had remembered!

David Bond had said: "The red man's G.o.d is poor and stingy. He lets his people want and starve. He lets enemies triumph over them, and destroy.

But the G.o.d of the white man is rich and good. See how generously He gives to those who serve Him! Yet--lest you anger Him--have none other.

Because He is a jealous G.o.d!"

He might not pray to either then! He lifted despairing eyes--and saw above him, divinely luminous, that sacred path, glittering white with the hastening spirits of the dead.

He put a ragged sleeve across his eyes to shut out the sight. It brought a picture he longed to forget--the terrible picture of his downfall:

It was a spring day, and the Uncapapas, to make ready for battle, were dancing the great sun-dance. He was the chief Moon Dog then, haughty as any, brave as the next, given to warfare and the shedding of blood. In the great tent, it was he who led.