Chapter XI.

On a clear, serene Sabbath following the picnic, Miss Estill and Hugh rode up to Squire Moreland's, excusing the call on that holy day by saying that they were too busy to spare one day of six; and after dinner at that hospitable home, they walked up to Colonel Warlow's, being accompanied by Grace, Ralph, and Scott.

They paused at the great latticed and arched gate to glance into the yard, which was inclosed by a low stone wall, over which the grapes and wild-roses clambered in heavy clusters of tangled foliage. Two gaudy peacocks were sunning their glittering plumage on the grass plat in front of the long stone dwelling resting so cool under the great elm--that same historical tree which had served as place of refuge during the "flood"--drooping low over the quaint gables, dormer windows, and chimneys wreathed by the transplanted wild vines which festooned the rough walls.

The colonel was asleep in a hammock, which was slung in the latticed porch, and his placid wife sat near, reading the Bible, as she rocked softly in the easy-chair. Clifford, clad in a cool white suit, was reading also; but I fear the work, in which he was so absorbed that he had not seen the approaching guests, was not of such a sacred nature as befitted the Lord's-day. Maud and Bob, swinging in a swing which was fastened to the limbs of the great elm, were likewise perusing the pages of some entertaining book, which Maud dropped with a little feminine squeak of delight as she saw her friends; then she flew down the path, and greeted the new-comers with unfeigned pleasure.

As she kissed Miss Estill and Grace in true girlish fashion, Rob, the handsome rogue, came forward and gravely offered to salute the ladies in the same manner; but his cordial advances were declined with thanks, whereupon he turned to the young men of the party and kissed them effusively, amid their merry peals of laughter at his sly way of ridiculing the feminine mode of greeting.

Mrs. Marlow said in her low, sweet voice, as she led the guests into the house, after they had been presented in due form by Clifford,--

"It is very kind of you, hunting us up this lonesome afternoon."

"We should have done so long before this if we had known what very agreeable neighbors lived so near," replied young Estill.

"You will smile, possibly, at our thinking twelve miles a neighborly distance, Mrs. Warlow, but I assure you it seems only a trifle when we remember that for years we have considered the people of Abilene and Lawrence our neighbors," said Miss Estill as she sank into an easy-chair, after Maud had relieved her of the jaunty black hat with its drooping white plume.

"We will freely forgive you, Miss Estill, if you will atone for your past neglect," said Mrs. Warlow, with a pleased smile. "The lack of society has been the greatest privation attending our Western life, and but for the unvarying kindness and sympathy of Squire Moreland's family, I fear we should have found it quite monotonous."

The room where they were seated was a wide, many-windowed apartment, with cool lace curtains sweeping the dark, rich carpet. The walls were graced by a few pictures and portraits, and on the brackets of walnut and mahogany were vases of wild-flowers. A wide bay-window at one end was half screened by the curtains of lace, and through their filmy meshes could be seen the cherished geraniums and fuchsias that were so dear to Maud as a memento of the old Missouri home. A great beveled mirror, framed in heavy gilt moulding, reached from the mantel to the ceiling; and strangest sight in this Western land was a wide fire-place; but instead of the glowing coals and crackling flames which one always associates with the hearth-stone, there were banks of blooming plants. The rich old piano and Maud's guitar occupied one corner, and a low, velvet divan the other, on each side of the mantel. It was a room which, Miss Estill and her brother perceived, was redolent with the refinement and harmony of the family, as simply elegant and devoid of sham and pretense as its owners.

Miss Estill gave a sigh of gratification as her glance swept the apartment, and rested out on the shady, well-kept lawn, where the hum of bees and songs of wild-birds seemed so wholly in keeping with the tone of happiness and industry which pervaded the Warlow household.

"How strange it seems that you have been here so short a time! It is almost like enchantment--this evolving such a perfect home from the wild, lonesome prairies and tangled woodland, where the wolf and buffalo roamed unmolested not two short years ago."

"We have to thank nature for the trees and flowers, the vines also, Miss Estill; but you see we had little else to occupy our time but the improvements of our new home; though I believe we can truly say that we have not been idle the past year," replied Clifford.

"It is wonderful what a change your taste and energy have made in that brief time. We can not blame our Eastern friends, who never have beheld a wide, desolate prairie transformed into such a charming home-land as this in a short year, if they do vilify the average Kansan, and tax him with boastfulness and other vices not akin to truth."

At request of her guests, Maud was soon seated at the rich, mellow-toned piano, and the strains of "The Bridge" floated out through the open windows, as her sweet contralto rose, freighted with the heart-throbs and regret which thrill through the melody of that pathetic song.

"Ah! Tennyson never had heard this sad, weird poem when he gave the title 'Lord of Human Tears' to Victor Hugo, or our own Longfellow would have won it," said Miss Estill with a sigh.

"Yes; Longfellow is the poet that seems nearest in all our moments of retrospection. I never stand at the crossing of the old Santa Fe and Abilene Trails, on that hill yonder, without his lines recurring,--

'Like an odor of brine from the ocean, Comes the thought of other years;'--

and I must tell you, Miss Estill, that whenever I meet you I feel that same remembrance, vague and evanescent, of a time when you and I were very happy, and were all--at least we were very great friends. But it is so shadowy and indistinct that I can not grasp its meaning. It is like the memory of some half-forgotten dream or the dim recollections of a former life," replied young Warlow, in a low tone, as the pulsing waves of music, the "Blue Danube," throbbed through the vines and lace curtains of the bay-window where they sat.

"If you were less thrifty, Mr. Warlow, I would suspect you were too fond of poetry to be practical. But I should not throw sarcastic stones at your glass house, for it has been no longer than a month ago that mamma scolded me roundly for forgetting the yeast in my batch of light bread. I had to lay all the blame at the 'open door' of the 'Moated Grange,' which I had been reading. Poor Mariana might well have said, after looking on my leaden loaves:--

'I am aweary, aweary,-- I would that I were dead!'"

While Clifford was making some laughing reply to this bucket of poetical cold water, he and Miss Estill were summoned to the piano, where our young friends were floundering hopelessly through the intricacies of a glee, in which Grace's alto would persist in getting all tangled up with Hugh's baritone, and the cat-calls of Rob's bastard bass and Scott's frantic tenor only served to heighten the confusion, that finally collapsed in subdued shrieks of laughter. But when Miss Estill's dainty fingers rippled over the guitar, and their voices blended with varying degrees of melody as its twanging notes mingled with the mellow tones of the piano, then something like harmony prevailed again. Yet she and Clifford would still exchange amused glances whenever Rob gave vent to a more pronounced caterwaul than usual, or Scott's gosling tenor squawked a wild note of alarm.

"Miss Estill, I am longing to hear you render a Spanish solo; for I never can help the picture of a Castilian maiden playing amid the courts of the Alhambra, rising whenever you take the guitar," said young Warlow, in a low tone.

"My broken Spanish would soon dispel the illusion," she replied, with a soft blush; "but I will give you, instead, a poor translation of a Mexican song;" and in a voice rich with melody and feeling, she sang:--

"There blooms no rose upon the plain, But costs the night a thousand tears,"--

while the guitar rained a shower of soft-dripping music, veined with a thrill of sadness. As her bosom rose and fell with the sweet strains, the ruby heart which clasped the ruff at her slender throat flashed rays of crimson and rose in the stray sunbeams that glinted through the room.

Clifford remained rapt in a reverie as the dreamy music, with a low minor ripple, died away, and the listeners sat in silence a moment, paying a mute tribute to the graceful singer who now was idly toying with the guitar.

One white arm was half revealed by the wide-flowing sleeve, with its fall of creamy lace; a cluster of fuchsias drooped among the waves of her hair, and the wide ruff gave a graceful finish to the close-fitting riding-habit of black velvet which she wore.

Young Warlow was aroused by his mother saying:--

"Miss Estill, the colonel, my husband."

He turned quickly, and saw his father standing in the doorway, staring as if he had seen a sheeted ghost. Yes; it was undeniable that the courtly and urbane colonel was positively staring with a white face at the beautiful guest, and as he came forward he said, in an agitated voice:--

"Ivarene? No--no--impossible! Pardon, Miss Estill; but your face reminds me so strongly of a dear, kind friend, 'who passed over the dark river long years ago,' that I was quite unnerved;" and as he held her slender hand he looked hungrily into the blue eyes that were regarding him with a look of shy wonder. When Hugh was presented, the colonel glanced keenly from the blonde, hazel-eyed young man back to the creole face of the young lady, and he again murmured brokenly, and in an incredulous tone, "Brother and sister? Strange--mystery!" and in the hearts of that group for many a day echoed and re-echoed his words: "Mystery, mystery!"

A constraint seemed to fall immediately upon the inmates of the room, and Maud, perceiving the traces of social frost in the atmosphere, suggested that they should take a look at her flowers; and the guests rose and followed in a confused group out into the flower-garden, that was surrounded with a low stone wall.

The paths, which divided the small plat into four subdivisions, were interrupted at their intersection by a circular path, where a succession of terraces of the same figure rose to the height of half a dozen feet, the whole forming a circular mound, crowned by a tiny latticed arbor, which was reached by a flight of white stone steps, flanked by vases of the same alabaster-like material.

The terraces were sodded with the dainty, short buffalo-grass, and each offset was planted with a profusion of flowers, now beginning to unfold their blossoms. This unique ornament was the work of Clifford and Robbie, who had in their "idle" moments thus transformed the unsightly pile of earth, which had resulted from excavating the cellar, into a "hanging garden to please Maud," and she felt justly proud of the compliments which the guests bestowed on the attractive feature of her trim garden, with its wealth of lilies, roses, and gladioluses.

Although the group had emerged from the house in a confused manner, it was remarkable how soon order was restored, and the young people paired off into couples after the law of affinity--Maud and Ralph, Grace and Hugh, leaving Clifford and Miss Estill to either mate with Rob and Scott, or to choose each other for partners in the ramble; and it is also strange how quickly they chose the latter alternative, and sauntered away with appalling _sang-froid_, leaving those youths to their own resources without even the ghost of an apology. But the youngsters had ample revenge for this heartless, cold neglect, when, a few moments later, Rob was seen leaning on Scott's arm in a languishing manner, with a hollyhock perched daintily just above his nose, in semblance of a most coquettish hat, his bob-tailed coat embellished with an enormous petticoat of rhubarb-leaves, while Scott alternately cast admiring glances upon his frail "lady," or fanned the mock beauty with a catalpa-leaf fully half a yard broad.

And while Maud and Grace regarded their manoeuvres with furtive scorn and ill-concealed disgust, this precious pair sauntered conspicuously after their friends, who could see "Miss Rob" mince along with exaggerated airs and graces, often pausing to sniff of the enormous water-pot, carried in imitation of a lady's scent-bottle.

Finally the party eluded the persecution of this devoted couple by going back into the house, and ascending to the "Crows' Nest" in the top of the old elm; and as Maud recounted the thrilling adventure of the "flood," she felt certain that Rob was too well acquainted with his paternal discipline to venture upon any nonsense about the house. But half an hour later, as they were strolling down to the boat, the party, in turning an abrupt curve in the path, surprised the infatuated Scott on his knees kissing the hand of the shy he-damsel, who, with affected modesty, was hiding her face in the dainty fan and the last view our friends caught of them while rowing up the river, the fascinating Rob was sinking into the outstretched arms of his ostentatious lover.

Clifford rowed up the winding stream, which, although only a few feet deep, was here several rods in width. As they passed along, an old beaver, which had built a dam below, stuck its snout up through the tangled grass that trailed into the water; then, after gazing a moment at the intruders, it sank quietly from sight.

The pleasant ride suggested a boating song, and a concert followed, which scared many a gray old musk-rat to his den, and the frightened wild-fowls scurried with whizzing wings out from the dark, sedgy nooks, shaded by the elms and willows, as the unwonted sounds floated out over the water.

Our friends walked up to Clifford's dwelling, after landing and mooring the boat to a tree, and while they rested on the pale ashen-green buffalo-grass in the shadow of a mighty elm that smothered the gables of the stone cottage with its wide-spread branches, Clifford pointed out the stone wall, which was half concealed by the vines, where his father had so narrowly escaped death a quarter of a century before; and as they sat, he told of the terrible tragedy that had here been enacted, which explained why Maud had so tenderly trained the roses over the ruined wall--the wall that had sheltered their father on that tragic night.

At the close of the mournful story Miss Estill exclaimed:--

"Oh, what a cruel fate. Poor, ill-starred Ivarene! It was that unfortunate bride that I so strangely resemble. But how mysterious that it should be so! Now I do not wonder at your father's agitation at meeting one who reminded him of his lost friend and benefactress. That was why he gazed so pathetically into my eyes:--I recalled the days of his youth, his lost fortune, and the tragic fate of his dear friends."

Hugh Estill said:--

"Oh, this is not the first time I have heard the particulars of that tragedy. It was often talked of in the days of my boyhood; but I was a child at the time when it was still fresh in the memory of the few settlers in the upper valley of the Cottonwood. It was fully ten years after the event that I heard the version from one of our herders, who said it was whispered that white men were engaged in the massacre. Father was unnecessarily irritated, I thought, when I repeated what the fellow said, and he went so far as to discharge him, and forbade me ever mentioning the subject again."

"Your parents were living on your ranch at that time?" said Clifford, in a strange eager tone of inquiry.

"Yes; we have lived on the same place for the past twenty-seven years, and both Mora and myself were born on the old ranch," replied Hugh.

After remaining rapt in silence a moment, Miss Estill said, as she and Clifford stood apart from the others, while he stooped to gather a spray of the sensitive-plant:--

"What is this strange, haunting sense of danger and grief that always assails me on this spot? It is like the dim remembrance of some tragic event connected with my own life--a half-forgotten night-mare, as it were--the very elusiveness of which is distressing to me. I feel that same sensation now which I mentioned having always felt on this spot, when you told me how strangely you were affected when passing Antelope Butte."

"I often experience that peculiar sentiment here, also, Miss Estill,--a kind of perception or impression of some dire calamity with which not only myself, but you likewise, have been connected here," Clifford replied with troubled face.

"I am afraid we shall mould if we stay in this gloomy shade any longer," cried Grace, springing up with a little shiver; but the bright look which young Estill beamed upon her showed plainly that he, at least, was in no danger of such a blighting fate.

It was a beautiful scene that burst upon their view as they emerged from under the low, sweeping boughs, and stood in the sunlight south of the gothic cottage. Around the knoll, on which they were standing, purled and gurgled the stream, fringed by feathery willows and stately elms, and, after half embracing the hill in its tortuous folds, winding away down the widening valley. Where the timber, which skirted the serpentine river, grew in groves of deepest green, there the stream had expanded into placid lakelets, which flashed like silver in the slanting sunbeams.

On the south, in the smooth, level valley, were fields of ripening grain,--wheat of coppery red or creamy gold, silvery sheen of rye and oats, set in a frame of emerald where the wild prairies came sheer up to the clear-cut fields, that were _innocent_ of fence or hedge. Then their vision roamed out to the north, where the rolling hills melted away on the dim horizon.

As they stood silently gazing on the tranquil landscape, the bell in the latticed belfry of the Warlow homestead rang out in mellow clang, and Maud said:--

"Let's return, for it is the supper-bell. I do hope, though, that mother has prepared something more substantial for her guests than Clifford has done for us this afternoon."

"Why, have we not reveled in mystery?" cried Grace.

"And feasted on landscape?" said Miss Estill.

"And did he not hospitably entertain us with legend, mellow and old?" chimed Ralph.

"Sorry that I could not have treated you to fresher puns," retorted Clifford, laughingly.

On rowing down the tranquil stream, and coming once more into the shady yard of the Warlows, our young friends found the tea-table spread under the boughs of the ever-serviceable elm, and Rob and Scott busy assisting Mrs. Warlow with the evening meal.

As with deft fingers Maud culled choice bouquets from her garden, and decked the table, she felt a thrill of pardonable pride in the snowy damask, the crystal and silver that glittered with the polish of good housewifery, and the tempting, dainty dishes which her mother had, with true Western hospitality, prepared in honor of the guests.

Ah, hungry reader, I wish that you could have been there also; for my mouth vainly waters, even yet, at the remembrance of asparagus and green peas, spring-chicken smothered in cream (which I hasten to explain was not the fowl of boarding-house memory and tradition, with which the frosts of December had "monkeyed;" no barn-yard champion was it, with cotton-like breast and sinewy limb, but a tender daughter of the May-time, that had perished on the threshold of a bright young pullethood), and frosty lemon-pie, just tinged with bronze, flanked by the crimson moulds of plum-jelly.

An hour later, in the gloomy twilight, as the guests were taking leave, Miss Estill said:--

"Your son has told me of the old tragedy that has saddened your life, Colonel; but it is very strange that I should resemble that ill-fated Mexican bride."

"Ah, Miss Estill, every hour you recall the memory of my lost friends; just such a daughter might have blessed them, _if they had lived_," he replied, with a sigh, as he searched the young face with his wistful blue eyes.

"It is only a chance resemblance, of course--a mere coincidence," she replied, in a tone of uneasiness. "My parents were living here at the time of the massacre; but I never have heard of the dreadful occurrence until to-day," she added.

"I would like very much to meet your father, and talk over the early history of this country," said the colonel, eagerly. "I sometimes find myself hoping that they might have escaped," he continued, in a half-musing tone, like one whose mind is wholly engrossed by an overmastering subject. She overlooked his incoherence, knowing well that he referred to Bruce and Ivarene. "Since I have been here on the scene of the tragedy, the thought often recurs that I took it for granted that they perished, and have trusted too readily to circumstantial evidence in confirmation of that belief."

"How strange it is that no trace of that enormous treasure of gold and gems was ever obtained!" she replied. "But, then, the horde of Cheyennes, which Hugh said to-day were reported as having been led by white men, found it an easy task enough, no doubt, to carry away even that great amount of coin after their murderous work."

"Ah! it is all a strange, dark mystery," he replied; "and to-day it is more impenetrable than ever. But if I could see your father he might remember."

Here the colonel paused abruptly, and threw up one hand with an involuntary start, and Miss Estill saw by the faint light that he was ashen pale. But as the others were now passing out through the gate, she reluctantly shook hands with the colonel, who, she saw, was trembling with repressed emotion; and then she took leave of the other members of the family, vaguely wondering why the courtly old gentleman should be so affected by events which had occurred more than a quarter of a century before.

When, an hour later, Clifford returned from Squire Moreland's, whither he had accompanied Miss Estill, he was accosted by Rob in the following vein:--

"What's up, Cliff?"

"Up where?" replied his brother, evasively.

"On the porch, if you have eyes for anything less attractive than a young lady with a mop of blue hair," said the indignant Rob.

"Oh--father and mother! Why, I can't see anything strange in our parents sitting on the porch," replied his brother, in a tone of feigned indifference.

"Well, but they have had their heads together and been plotting for an hour; but Maud keeps up such an everlasting racket with her singing and dish-clattering that I can't hear a word they say. That girl positively is noisier than a fire-engine. Now, just listen at that!" as Maud's voice sang in sweet crescendo:--

"Stars are shining, Mollie darling." (Crash, rattle.)

_Mrs. Warlow._--"Do you think it possible that they were saved?"

_Maud_ (diminuendo).--

"Through the mystic veil of night." (Rinkety-clink.)

_Colonel._--"She may be their daughter, who survived." (Splatter.)

_Maud_ (piano).--

"No one listens but the flowers, As they hang their heads in shame." (Klinkety-klink.)

_Rob._--

"Yes, Miss Maud, you noisy magpie. I hang ditto and the same."

_Clifford._--"If you don't keep quiet, I'll--" (Klutter-terattle-tering.)

_Coffee-mill_, etc.--"Kr-rrrrr-r-rrr (Mollie) r-r-r (dar) rrrr-r-rrrr."

_Colonel._--"She is the very image of Ivarene; and I am almost converted to Bruce's strange creed when I see them."

_Maud_ (at the well).--"Ke-pump, ke-pump, ke-pump!"

_Colonel._--"I saw them together to-day. I was perfectly bewildered; for they are the very picture of Bruce and Ivarene on their wedding-day."

_Maud._--

"Mollie, fairest, sweetest, dearest! Look up, darling, tell me this--"

_Rob._--

"Miss Maud Warlow, you're a bull-frog, And I'd like to have a hook in your nose."

But, as his rhyme ended with such an ignominious fizzle, he hurried away with a snort of disgust. Clifford lingered a moment, hoping to hear more; but his parents rose soon after, and entered the house; so, in a thoughtful mood, he went about his farm duties.

Out in the wheat a quail called "Bob White," while down in the pasture a flock of prairie-chickens or grouse disturbed the twilight calm with their melancholy "ku-boom;" but, as the evening faded into night, the quiet of early slumber brooded over the Warlow household.