Johnny Buffalo was on the warpath. Figuratively speaking, he was brandishing the tomahawk over the tribe of Cramer. The gods he worshiped had been blasphemed, the altar upon which he laid the gifts of his soul had been defiled.
In other words, Johnny Buffalo had lain in his bed and listened while Young Jess and his father jibed at Johnny Buffalo’s two idols, in whose veins flowed the blood of his beloved sergeant. The blood of the Kings might not be made a mockery while Johnny Buffalo could lift one arm to fight. When Rawley returned to him, he was discovered out of his bed, braced against a table and trying unsuccessfully to load the old King rifle which he had first used to kill Mohaves on that day, fifty years ago, when King, of the Mounted, received the shot that changed his whole life.
The old Indian was shaking with weakness, but his eyes blazed with the war spirit of his tribe.
“They are dogs of Pahutes!” he exclaimed, when Rawley entered the room. “They would drag the virtue of good men in the mud. They shall retract. They shall know the truth! Or I shall kill.”
With three long steps Rawley was beside him, his hand on the rifle barrel, touching the trembling, sinewy hand of Johnny Buffalo. But the old man would not yield the gun. His eyes neither softened nor lowered themselves before the steadfast blue eyes that were the heritage of the Kings.
“You better get back to bed,” Rawley warned him, half-laughing. “If Peter comes and finds you up, there’ll be the devil and all to pay. I guess we won’t massacre anybody, Johnny,—at least not to-night.”
“I heard the half-breed make a mock of Peter and of you. I heard him say that Peter is your father. When he said that, he laughed. His laugh was evil. Now he shall kneel upon his knees and beg the forgiveness of Peter and of you. He shall say that he spoke a lie from his black heart that would like to see others vile, because he is vile. If he does not say that he lied, I shall kill him. And that half-breed cousin, Anita, shall own her sin and her son. It is not good that Peter should be thought the son of that old vulture, when we know that he is the son of my sergeant. He is not your father. He is your uncle. I will tell them so, and we will see then if they laugh!”
If unshakable dignity can rave, then Johnny Buffalo was raving. Rawley tried again to take the rifle gently from the Indian’s grasp; but the brown fingers seemed to have grown fast to the barrel. Rawley hated to do it, but his word had been given to Peter and this unforeseen uprising must be quelled; he therefore took Johnny Buffalo firmly by the shot shoulder. The old man wilted in his grasp. Rawley leaned the rifle against the table and helped Johnny Buffalo back to his bed.
Subdued but knowing no surrender, Johnny Buffalo lay glaring up at Rawley, even while his lips were twisted with pain. With a singularly motherly motion, Rawley adjusted the pillows and smoothed the sheet.
“That’s a nice way to act—start out gunning for my adopted family the minute I get one!” he scolded with mock severity. “Can’t leave you a minute but you jump the reservation and go on the warpath. And here I thought you were civilized!”
He grinned, but in Johnny Buffalo’s eyes the fire did not die. His thin, old lips would not soften to a smile. The immobility of his face reminded Rawley of what his Uncle Peter had just said about Indians: that it is impossible to pry an idea out of their minds, once it is firmly fixed there. Nevertheless, he sat down beside the bed and repeated to Johnny Buffalo all that Peter had said concerning Young Jess’s charge. He was wise enough, however, to refrain from any attempt to rouse sympathy in Johnny’s heart for that pathetic culprit, Anita. Rather, he flattered himself by declaring that Peter was pleased because the tribe of Cramer believed him Rawley’s father, and he emphasized the need of protecting Peter’s influence over the two men, and his and Nevada’s interest in the river gold. The mocking laughter of Young Jess, he declared, was not worthy a second thought.
It took Rawley just three hours to bring about an unconditional surrender to Peter’s wishes in the matter. Even so, Rawley went to his own bed fagged but feeling that he had done pretty well, considering Johnny Buffalo’s first intention. But as an indemnity to the old man’s pride, Rawley had faithfully promised that he would get their camp outfit up from its hiding place on the morrow, and that he would pitch their tent as far as was practicable from the tribe of Cramer. Johnny Buffalo, it appeared, would not attempt to hold himself responsible for what might happen if he were compelled to listen to further inanities from Gladys, or to hear the voices of Old Jess or Young Jess or Anita. Nevada he very kindly excepted from the general condemnation of the tribe. And Peter, of course, was a King. He therefore could do no wrong,—in the eyes of Johnny Buffalo.
It was a secret relief to Rawley that the change could be placed in the form of a concession to the Indian’s pride. His own pride was demanding that he should move under his own canvas roof and eat the bread—so to speak—of his own buying. He had never felt quite right about taking Nevada’s cabin. He happened to know that their occupancy had forced her to many little makeshifts. Then the jibe of Old Jess had made his position as a guest intolerable, in spite of the quick championship of Nevada and Peter. He had felt obliged to consider, however, Johnny Buffalo’s welfare. The old man was not recovering as quickly as he should. Rawley had felt constrained to stay on his account; but now it seemed likely that a change to their own tent would really be beneficial. He had not dreamed that Johnny Buffalo’s Indian pride had been daily martyred by the presence of Anita and Gladys.
“The scion of chiefs,” Johnny Buffalo had declaimed bitterly, “should not be forced to become a companion of the squaws. Anita knows the etiquette of our tribe. Yet she would humiliate me by forcing me to listen to her chatter. Bah! I am not a squaw, nor a lover of squaws. Take me to our camp, my son. There I need not submit to the indignity of their presence.”
So the next morning, when Peter stopped by the porch for a minute on his way to work, Rawley told him honestly what it was that he and Johnny Buffalo had burned a light so late the night before to discuss. Peter seemed to understand and offered the burros and Nevada for his service. Rawley grinned over the manner in which Peter had made the offer, but he made no comment. The burros and Nevada would be very acceptable, he said.
“I had a talk with Nevada last night,” Peter added. “You’ll find she’s all over her temper. And she knows all the good camping places between here and El Dorado. You couldn’t stay down there in the canyon; it’s too hot. There are places, like this basin, where the breeze strikes most of the day. I want you close. I’ll have Nevada show you a place down the river, on one of my claims. I don’t suppose you’ll object to camping on my land, will you?”
Rawley would not, and he said so. And after breakfast he started out with Nevada, following the two burros which went nipping down the river under empty packsaddles. There seemed to be certain advantages in becoming a cousin of Nevada, Rawley discovered. Their chaperonage had been practically abandoned; they were accompanied by the burros and only one dog. The trailing cloud of young Cramers were sharply called off by Aunt Gladys, and Nevada drove the other dogs back with rather accurately aimed stones. Anita, for some reason which Rawley was not sufficiently acute to fathom, failed altogether to put in an appearance. It was the first time since Rawley came into the basin that Nevada prepared to set off without her grandmother.
Nevada, in her high-laced boots, khaki breeches and white shirt open at the throat, walked with her easy stride down the faint trail behind the burros. Rawley followed her, wondering man-fashion what thoughts she was thinking, how she felt about him, whether she was glad to be setting out like this with him for trail partner instead of her grandmother, and what she thought of him as a cousin.
He was not a particularly shy young man; there was too much of his grandfather in his make-up not to have had certain little romantic adventures of his own. He would have told you, with a bit of cynicism in his tone, that he knew girls and that they were all alike. But he was beginning to discover that he did not know Nevada Macalister. Now that he seemed to have become irrevocably her cousin by diplomacy and tribal belief, he was disposed to make what use he could of the relationship. But after half a mile of traveling with no more than an occasional monosyllable for Nevada’s contribution to the conversation, Rawley was compelled to admit to himself that the cousin business was not working as he would like to have it.
In view of her emotional outbreak last night, Rawley could not quite bring himself to the point of asking her outright how she liked her new cousin. But the question kept tickling his tongue, nevertheless. Then he reflected that Nevada was rather generously supplied with cousins, none of them definitely desirable. From that thought it was only a short jump to the next inevitable conclusion. Nevada, he decided, had placed him mentally alongside those other pestiferous cousins, the offspring of Gladys and Young Jess. Or if she had not, she was surely according him the same treatment.
As a romantic chapter in their acquaintance, the trip was a flat failure. Nevada was businesslike,—and aloof. Rawley’s faint hope that some unforeseen incident would occur to shock Nevada out of her insouciant mood died of inanition. The camp outfit they found exactly as it had been left, except that a rat had rashly decided to make a nest in a fold of the wrapped tent. This did not seem to interest Nevada in the slightest degree. She helped him with the packing and did not seem to care whether he hurt his newly healed arm or not. They returned as they had gone,—Nevada silent, following the burros that plodded sedately homeward under their loads, Rawley trailing after her in complete discouragement over the rebuffs his friendly overtures had received.
They did not so much as see a rattlesnake.