CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE QUEEN OE THE STARS.

When Lieutenant Avery went down in the midst of the yelling horde a brave leaped from his pony and seized the hair of the young soldier, while another clutched the long tresses of the unconscious woman. But the eager ones were halted by an elder chief. Both prisoners must be taken to the Indian village, he told them, to trade for prisoners held by the pony soldiers. If the young officer was dead, he was brave, and the white men would give a live war prisoner for the body, but it must not be mutilated.

The lieutenant was not dead, and before the party had traversed many miles he was raving in delirium.

The bride remained blissfully unconscious.

As the sun hung low in the western sky it shone upon the Indian party and its prisoners passing near the sacred mountain, and they paused to leave the first antelope shot during the trip to insure good luck for the remainder.

A voice from the top of the rock in their own tongue asked the Indians concerning their prisoners. They told her of the long chase and capture, after a fight in which ten braves had been killed and several horses. They paid a tribute to the valor of the prisoner and the beauty of the woman.

The queen of the stars then pointed to the setting sun, which was going down blood red, and said:

“The god of day blushes for the Cheyennes who make war on women.”

She sang beautifully in an unknown tongue to them, and then ordered them to ride on and leave the prisoners beside the antelope.

The red warriors obeyed without demur and rode on sadly, bearing their dead, and with no trophy of the chase.

The bride had recovered and was moaning over her delirious and apparently dying husband. He was shot and cut in many places, while she had escaped without a scratch.

Suddenly a rock near her slid aside, and two women came forth--the fair being who had addressed the war party, and an elderly one. They at once set about removing the wounded man to the interior of the mountain. They also dragged the antelope within, and the surprised Mrs. Dorothy Avery found herself behind the wall of solid rock, and in the most marvelous place she had ever seen or ever expected to see.

The first care of the three women was to dress the numerous wounds of the lieutenant. All night long three pairs of tender hands worked over him, and when the sun arose it lighted the interior of the mountain, and reflected on the tepee where the young soldier was sleeping quietly.

To make other incidents of this narrative clear, it is necessary to give some little description of this home in the interior of a mountain which any one might imagine, but few be fortunate enough to see.

To begin with, the mountain, which appeared to be a solid, square-sided, flat-topped rock from the plain, was hollow. The great interior cavity sank to a level with the river two miles away, and the water in a clear pool along the edge of the south wall arose and fell with that in the river. The whole bottom seemed made up of rich loam and where not cultivated in vegetables, corn, herbs, and flowers, was clothed with green and luxuriant grass.

Down here, walled in by walls many rods thick, impenetrable alike to heat and cold, the temperature was pleasingly equable. It was never hot, yet vegetation thrived, mostly on reflection of the sun’s rays. It was never very cold, for the falling snow melted before it touched the soil. There were no high winds, and blizzards and cyclones were never felt.

On the north side of the interior was a massive pile of rocks of all sizes, as if they had been poured there from some gigantic measure. On these it was possible to ascend to the very top of the mountain.

The entrance was by way of what apparently had been in some other age the bed of a river, and the small outer opening led into a crevasse where the girl’s first disappearance had so puzzled the Indians. The moving aside of a small rock revealed the opening, which was nearly filled with loose stones of all sizes. Once on the inside and the key rock in place, others could be piled upon it until it was safe from attacks.

The girl, while a prisoner, had accidentally discovered the opening and had explored it alone without telling even her friend, the white woman prisoner. Later, when they had the opportunity, the woman was told and they laid plans to escape.

Stores of provision and seed were hidden there by the child on secret trips. Then she had conceived the plan of playing upon the superstitions of the red people. Her ruse was successful, due almost wholly to her sweet voice, and the fact that she had remarkable artistic talent.

For ten years the couple had lived there, neither caring greatly to find their way back to civilization. The woman’s entire family had been murdered when she was made prisoner; the girl had been so young when captured that she knew nothing of her people or their fate.

Thus they had lived on together very happily.

These women had found solace in raising vegetables and flowers, for water was always plentiful in the pool and of good quality. The younger had gone much among the Indians, but the elder had never left the walled-in space and only on rare occasions had she climbed the rocks to the top, to view the world beyond. She had learned, during her captivity, many of the Indian methods of treating the sick and wounded, and, discarding the fanatical and appeals to the elements, the use of prayer-sticks, etc., she was skilled in the selection of herbs, and raised them in the beautiful little garden which thrived nearly all the year.

For several days at least two of the women always hung over the cot of the wounded lieutenant, while the other slept. With cool water, fans, and aperient drinks, they kept the fever down, and at the end of a week Lieutenant Avery was on the road to recovery.

And then began as strange a life as a soldier probably ever enjoyed, for Lieutenant Avery did enjoy it. Indeed, how could he help it? With his bride ever at his side and his every wish anticipated, who can blame him if his period of convalescence was somewhat prolonged. At times little pangs of conscience pricked the young officer, who felt that the small force at the old fort needed him in these troublous times. But he was soon enticed to wait yet a little while until he was stronger, and his numerous wounds should give him less of pain and weakness.

Later the strength of the young man began to come back and with it a desire for activity. He busied himself in the garden and improved the crude tools of wood which they used in the cultivation of the soil. He enlarged the area cultivated, and, with the ever-present Dot and the other young woman almost constantly with them, they watched the growth of every flower and bud.

At evening the quartette spent many happy hours, the lieutenant and his wife telling the others about the wonders of the great outer world, and in turn enjoying the tales of the red-skinned people and their manners and customs.

The Cheyennes had given the child prisoner the name of Little Moonbeam, but the woman, who said her name was Mrs. Sherley, called the girl Mona, the name of one of her own dead daughters.

The Indians had accepted the name Mona as the white man’s short for Moonbeam and had not objected to Mrs. Sherley’s adoption of it. Thus the girl was called Mona, and the Averys immediately affixed Sherley for a surname, in honor of the motherly soul who had been robbed of all that was dear to her.

At the top of the mountain in some of the clear, moonlit evenings, Mona sang in her marvelous voice to the others, and Mrs. Dot, with tears in eyes, said it was no wonder the simple red folk worshiped the girl. They were songs of the old frontier days, and hymns that had been taught her by Mrs. Sherley; and to these the girl had added some of the mythical verse of the Indians, for which she had improvised quaint and weird airs that lent rare enchantment to them, especially to the savages themselves.

The lieutenant and his wife never appeared at the top of the butte until after the keen eyes of Mona had carefully swept the horizon and every part of the plain for signs of Indians. She did not wish to dispel any part of her power over these people of the plains, and wished that the departure of the couple should be as secret as if their lives depended upon it.

In spite of the happy years the girl had spent here, the coming of this young couple had opened up new vistas which she had begun to try and understand. Their stories of the beautiful world beyond, with its love and its tears, awakened new emotions. The love of this girl called Dot, and near her own age, for her handsome warrior husband was a revelation to this physically marvelous flower of femininity. She began to question herself if in the world beyond the plains there was not such love in store for her.

Oh, the mysteries and miracles of the tender emotions! How soft and insidious their grasp, yet how tenacious. In a few short weeks the life of this child of nature had been taught the pangs and aspirations of the world.

With the coming of Lieutenant and Mrs. Avery, Mona had experienced her first desires for education--that something, acquired from books and teachers which controls the world. She never tired of the fascinating relation of college incidents by Dot, or of Lieutenant Avery’s laughable experiences in the great university.

But how could she attain them? In this strange place “the world,” which, it seemed to her, was just beyond the skyline, she understood that everything was attained by money--how could she first obtain the money?

Already Mona was spending sleepless nights, never known before, because of this, her first touch with civilization. As yet she had said nothing to Mrs. Sherley or her new-found friends, but she could not long hide her troubles.