Where the Trail Divides Part 2

The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown of earth that filled the s.p.a.ces between--like the longitudinal stripes of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough gra.s.s, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it, stretching northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod corn: the ears already formed, the ground whitened from the lavishly scattered pollen of the frayed ta.s.sels. In the dooryard itself was a dug well with a mound of weed-covered clay by its side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over its mouth. It was deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away the long, sultry afternoons.

Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The single horse Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured, was breaking sod far to the west on the bank of the Jim River. Not a live thing other than human moved about the place. With them into this land of silence had come a mongrel collie. For a solitary month he had stood guard; then one night, somewhere in the distance, in the east where flowed the Big Sioux, had sounded the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately nearer and more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild they never knew, nor ever filled his place.

Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that afternoon of late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he had seen; elaborately careful likewise to carry out the family programme as usual.

"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.

Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent corroboration.

"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to all fours and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.

"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the doorway as only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun and the dust; climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly about his neck, down the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the pillow and the patchwork quilt with a deftness born of experience.

"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.

"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.

"Sing! I can't sing, kid."

"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"

"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."

"Please, papa; pretty please!"

The man succ.u.mbed, as he knew from the first he would do, braced himself in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he knew of the song again and again--his voice rough and unmusical as that of a crow, echoing and re-echoing in the narrow s.p.a.ce--bent over at last, touched his bearded lips softly to the winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an irresistible catch in his breath, silently to the surface, sent one swift glance sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the cabin.

Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer shotgun, and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy beside the door.

"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he overhauled the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not deceived. This done, notwithstanding the fact that the sun still beat scorchingly hot thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit his pipe, drew his weather-stained sombrero low over his face, through half-closed eyes inspected the lower lands all about, impa.s.sively silent awaited the coming of the inevitable. Of a sudden there was a touch on his shoulder, and, involuntarily starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret Rowland.

The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.

"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen something."

In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more brightly as Rowland drew hard.

"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"

The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded reluctant corroboration.

"Yes," he said.

"You--saw them?"

Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as well, after all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of the rise before them. "They waylaid Mueller there."

"And you--"

"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all he--Margaret!"

"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous suggestion!"

"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the quiver of her body against his, the involuntary catch of her breath. "Forgive me, Margaret."

"You're not to blame. Perhaps--Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"

Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above the scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very breath of prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or a blade of gra.s.s. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had done Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea: "Water! Water! Give us drink!"

Silent now, the storm over, side by side sat the man and the woman; like children awed by the sudden realisation of their helplessness, their hands clasped in mute sympathy, mute understanding. Usually at this time of day with nothing to do they slept; but neither thought of sleep now.

As pa.s.sed the slow time and the sun sank lower and lower, came the hour of supper; but likewise hunger pa.s.sed them by. Something very like fascination held them there on the doorstep, gazing out, out at motionless impa.s.sive nature, at the seemingly innocent earth that nevertheless concealed so certain a menace, at the patch of sod corn again in cycle growing darker as the broad leaves unfolded in preparation for the dew of evening. Out, out they looked, out, out--.

"Sam!"

"Yes."

"You saw, too?"

An answering pressure of the hand.

"The eyes of him, only the eyes--out there at the edge of the corn!"

"It's the third time, Margaret." Despite the man's effort his breath tightened. "They're all about: a score at least--I don't know how many.

The tall gra.s.s there to the east is alive--"

"Sam! They're there again--the eyes! Oh, I'm afraid--Sam--baby!"

"Hus.h.!.+ Leave her where she is. Don't seem afraid. It's our only chance.

Let them make the first move." Again the hand pressure so tight that, although she made no sound, the blood left the woman's fingers. "Tell me you forgive me, Margaret; before anything happens. I'm a criminal to have stayed here,--I see it now, a criminal!"

"Don't!"

"But I must. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me."

"I love you, Sam."

Again in the expanse of gra.s.s to the east there was motion; not in a single spot but in a dozen places. No living being was visible, not a sound broke the stillness of evening; simply here and there it stirred, and became motionless, and stirred again.

"And--Margaret. If worst comes to worst they mustn't take either of us alive. The last one--I can't say it. You understand."

"Yes, I understand. The last load--But maybe--"

"It's useless to deceive ourselves. They wouldn't come this way if--Margaret, in G.o.d's name--"

"But baby, Sam!" Of a sudden she was struggling fiercely beneath the grip that kept her back. "I must have her, must see her again; must, must--"

"Margaret!"