CHAPTER XVII
SACRIFICE
A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.
For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been invited to enter, yet he had entered—and the girl had spoken no word to prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged, they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids, whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour of putting the place to rights.
"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching. Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"
The girl did not smile.
"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer—" She drew another chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.
A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had grown to assume in her presence took its place.
"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of punishment?"
The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed plain.
"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to abandon at once.
"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all. Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten immeasurably farther away from another."
"Your husband you mean?"
"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to each other not to know everything there is to know."
"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly—and she herself had chosen. "He's merely given me up."
"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something else as well, something akin to exultation.
"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old pride, broke forth.
"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before this if he objected?" she flamed.
"Bess!"
"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean to."
The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive, conscious conformity such as this—The thing was unbelievable, providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he
had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the girl—particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.
"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"
"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."
"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any longer. It's intolerable for both of us."
"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."
Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He hardly knew how to begin.
"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad—at least leave for a time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we wish; but for the present—I can't stand this uncertainty another week, another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.
"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again, nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say, not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides, the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone. Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them. There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess; happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"
He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed. Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden, within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading, distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a wife—.
The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face drew nearer.
"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense. Will you go?"
With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back until she was free.
"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes; but to-day, now—I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must consent—"
"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"
The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.
"I can't now, as things are."
"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"
For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.
The man came a step forward, and another.
"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"
"I have told you," said a low voice.
Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily, irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."
"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent effort to be free. "You must not, we must not—yet. I'm bad, I know, but not wholly. Please let me go."
Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out of doors. Had he done so, had he seen—.
But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in. Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.
"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine—"
The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.
While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count, the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure, there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense, desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.
"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I guess. What are you going to do about it?"
The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful, he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband, tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward menacingly.
"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps, not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost, lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"
From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that instant the room became deathly still.
A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then, white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so, motionless:—for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was speaking.
"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice, unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was even as before.
"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said. "I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they rested on the face of the girl.
But for still another moment—he was as deliberate as nature herself, this man—he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death. His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands, folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now, very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in the low-pitched voice.
"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a request to make—and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly, to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the girl's recollection while memory lasted.
"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on. "Things are as they are—and final. I don't judge you, I—understand. Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment, please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.
"I said I had a request to make. This is it—that you don't leave until you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise me this, Bess?" he asked.
Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent, and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.
"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently. "I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall again."
At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.
"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."
Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality; but the girl did not break it, said no more—and forever the moment, her moment, vanished into the past,
"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room. "There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."
With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence, except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small, and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out his hand.
"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but I don't, so I'll only say good-bye—and—I wish you happiness." Just a moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.
"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it—as you cared for me once. Don't make things any harder—make them impossible!" Desperately, without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door. Beside the entrance—for he was not watching these last minutes—stood the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted. Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant, wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his grave.
"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say. Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so, if you will. If you do not—" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace—"if you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times better, if you do as I say."
Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then, similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.
CHAPTER XVIII
REWARD
The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried. Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor, Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy queensware proceeded.
"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to, stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his work.
Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of cigars.
"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter—for cigars were a rarity on the frontier—puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content. The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue, disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor introduced himself.
"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the Centre."
The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now. You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up the two kids."
It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he glanced up.
"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and—" Hawkins laughed peculiarly—"made a fizzle of it."
"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
"Yes."
Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they hit it off well together?"
Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
"While the money lasted, yes."
"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
"And then—"
"It's the old story."
"They went to pieces?"
"Craig left her—for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he was supporting the other woman all the time."
Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
"Bess came back."
"Alone?"
Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes were blazing.
"Yes, she was alone," he said.
The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday, just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
"Back at the ranch—with the Indian?"
Equally directly Manning returned the look.
"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not there."
"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing. For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
"Know where he is? Of course I do—now." He leaned back in his chair. "To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here, or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand on the chair arm loosened its grip.
"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded things a bit on the way up."
For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly, unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty miles, and there's plenty of time."
Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
"Yes, there's plenty of time—after How Landor knows," he said.
In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam. In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet, they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened, something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had been interrupted.
Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing, he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent human in their midst this autumn day.
How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last, interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up beside the tent.
Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was waiting.
They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be enough around when I came."
The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he dismounted.
"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then, however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied, well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this, that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice, with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal, with wh ose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal—if the other wished; but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit it afresh suggestively.
"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
"I thought so," it said simply.
Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight, the glow lit up his face.
"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service—and I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless, smiling infinite.
"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I should know."
The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved. Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground—his long fingers locked across his knees.
"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering outside the bowl onto his knee.
"About a month ago"—the speaker cleared his throat raspingly—"on August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker. "It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
"Go on, please," requested a voice.
"Early yesterday morning"—again the narrator halted perforce, to clear his throat—"just before I left three men went through town on their way to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch house closing the bargain now."
"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by request.
"I have nothing more to say—unless you wish," he repeated in the old formula.
For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the sound, came a question.
"Why,"—the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they looked immovably into those of his companion,—"why, please, was not the mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two days old."
"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
"Yes. Several weeks."
"She returned alone?"
"Yes."
"And to stay?"
Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
"Yes," answered Manning.
"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
"No, Craig had left her."
Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither man noticed the change.
"There was a reason?"
"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as the sunlight without.
"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had done? You mean to tell me this?"
Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white man got to his feet, stood so silent.
"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come. "There could be but one other way!"
Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted, waiting, postponing the inevitable.
"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly, repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow fell.
"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."