The Plow-Woman Part 59

But the trumpet interfered.

Close to the Throat was a group that had neither eyes nor ears for the capture. Here was the warrior, Red Moon, calm-faced, bearing his agony bravely, choking back even a murmur of pain. Over him were Lounsbury and Dallas, bent for a final look and word.

"Dear old fellow," murmured Lounsbury. "You gave 'em a good fight to-day. You saved her."

The surgeon was beside them now, hastily examining. The shaft was not in the wound; it had fallen. But the poisoned barb remained. He shook his head.

"No use, John," he whispered, and tiptoed away.

Lounsbury leaned farther down. "Charley," he said, "you're going now, old man. Say good-by to us."

The Indian moved one hand feebly.

Lounsbury understood. He lifted and shook it gently. "Brave Red Moon,"

he said.

The savagery was all gone from the Indian's eyes; they were wonderfully soft and un-Indian in their expression. He seemed, all at once, to be thinking of something far off. And his look was adoring.

Dallas could not speak to him, but she, too, shook him gently by the hand.

He settled his head upon Lounsbury's arm, as a child might have done.

Then he looked up at Dallas. "Friend--friend," he whispered softly, smiled, and with the touch of the sun on his upturned face, he slept.

CHAPTER XL

SOME ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

Lounsbury was stretched in the hammock on Captain Oliver's gallery, his bandaged head on a pillow, his left arm resting in a sling. Leaping about, almost upon him, and imperilling the stout ropes that swung the hammock, were five of the captain's seven.

Twenty-four hours were gone since, having lashed four Indian dead among the branches of the burial trees, troopers, Sioux, and rescued had returned to a post that was half in ashes. Now, guards tramped the high board walk as before, keeping strict watch of their sulky prisoners; the ramshackle ferry-boat, dragged away from the bar that had halted her, was tied up at her landing again; across the upper end of the parade, grey tents had replaced the barracks; while, farther on, teams and sc.r.a.pers were clearing away smoking ruins and dumping them into the river; squaws were thatching the roofs of the scouts' shanties; and hammers were ringing on new structures for Clothes-Pin Row. With cool enterprise, Brannon was hastening toward recovery.

There was other mending that was less rapid: In the stockade, where one nursed an arrow, another a bullet, wound; in the garrison hospital, where Kippis and a comrade stumped about on swathed feet; and on the Oliver gallery, where Lounsbury lay, his face not the usual fulness, and a trifle white.

The storekeeper, however, was lending entertainment, as hospitality and his popularity demanded.

"The idea of you little apes asking for stories," he was saying to his audience, "when such popping good ones are happening right under your nose!"

Felicia was the youngest of the seven. She gave back at him, prancing up and down insistently. "But we don't want stories of things around here,"

she cried wilfully. "We want lords and ladies, and you _gim_ 'em to us."

"Lords and ladies," sniffed Lounsbury. "Well, Felicia, stop that jumping-jack business and I'll begin."

A chorus of delight--then, the five disposed themselves, the boys (there were two) astride the storekeeper; the girls draping the swinging net at either side.

"Once upon a time," commenced Lounsbury, "in the middle of a gre-a-a-t, wi-i-i-de, fla-a-a-t country----"

"Now," interrupted James, who came next to Felicia. His inflection was rising and suspicious.

"Now," chimed in the others. They, too, did not fancy such familiar topography.

"Look here," said the narrator, "don't get it into your precious noddles that this Territory's the only flat country under the sun. There are other spots upon this green earth where you can see hundreds of miles in any direction."

"Go on, then, go on!"

"Well, this was such a place--great, wide, flat place. The lord lived there. He was called the Lord Harry--got his name from the way he acted; he was always making forced marches----"

Again suspicion, which Lounsbury ignored.

"And violent demands. Oo! my s.h.i.+n!" (This to James, whose heels were curled up under him.) "Violent demands, I said. And so he had the cheek--um--the impudence to love, to _love_----" He shut his eyes in silent rhapsody.

"What uz her name?"

"Ah!" Lounsbury threw up his well hand helplessly. "_No_ name was splendid enough for her--not one. But he called her--for want of a better, mind you--he called her the Rose of the South."

"Bully! bully!" accompanied by the clapping of hands.

The door from the entry opened. Dallas came slowly out.

"Go on," urged Felicia, "'Rose of the South?'"

But Lounsbury was looking at Dallas. "Rose of the South," he repeated, a queer tremor running around his mouth; "as far south as--as Texas."

Dallas seemed about to turn.

Lounsbury hurried to put the well hand behind his ear. "Felicia," he said, "didn't I hear your mother call?"

Felicia rocked herself from foot to foot. "Oh, you go _on_," she said overbearingly, "or you might fall out of the hammock."

But the spell was broken. Her sisters had pounced upon Dallas. The boys, getting a whiff from regions down the hall, had made off. She followed, with backward demands for "the rest of it" later on, and carried the last of the five with her.

Lounsbury sat up and put out his hand. The fun was gone from his eyes.

"Dallas, you've had your talk," he said quietly, but with a hint of anxiety. "I know it's all right; it's _got_ to be."

She came part way to him, and stood where morning-glory vines climbed a lattice. "Marylyn's just been telling me," she answered. She raised her head, very intent upon the flagstaff. The light through the vines touched the outline of her face--a firm outline, cut by a flying wisp of hair.

"Dear?" he questioned.

She glanced down at him, smiling through tears. "All the time, they liked each other," she said happily. "He calls her Marylyn, and she calls him Robert."

He got up and went to her. "When I saw him there in the road by that cottonwood bunch, lugging her along so careful, looking so scared--and the way he held her on Buckskin!" He caught her hand.

"There's one thing that hurts," she answered. "That it kept you out there watching, and I didn't even go to you--but I--I----"