Chapter 12

"You needn't say anything," Susie said slowly, and there was no more supplication in her voice. "I thought I knew you before, Smith, but I know you better now. When a white man is onery, he's meaner than an Injun, and that's the kind of a white man you are. I'll never forget this. I'll never forget that I've crawled to you, and you listened like a stone."

Smith answered in a voice that was not unkind--as he would have warned her of a sink-hole or a bad crossing:

"You can't buck me, Susie, and you'd better not try. You're game, but you're just a kid."

"Kids grow up sometimes;" and she turned away.

McArthur, strolling, while he enjoyed his pipe, came upon Susie lying face downward, her head pillowed on her arm, on a sand dune not far from the house. He thought she was asleep until she sat up and looked at him. Then he saw her swollen eyes.

"Why, Susie, are you ill?"

"Yes, I'm sick here." She laid her hand upon her heart.

He sat down beside her and stroked the streaked brown hair timidly.

"I'm sorry," he said gently.

She felt the sympathy in his touch, and was quick to respond to it.

"Oh, pardner," she said, "I just feel awful!"

"I'm sorry, Susie," he said again.

"Did _your_ mother ever go back on you, pardner?"

McArthur shook his head gravely.

"No, Susie."

"It's terrible. I can't tell you hardly how it is; but it's like everybody that you ever cared for in the world had died. It's like standin' over a quicksand and feelin' yourself goin' down. It's like the dreams when you wake up screamin' and you have to tell yourself over and over it isn't so--except that I have to tell myself over and over it _is_ so."

"Susie, I think you're wrong."

She shook her head sadly.

"I wish I was wrong, but I'm not."

"She worries when you are late getting home, or are not well."

"Yes, she's like that," she nodded. "Mother would fight for me like a bear with cubs if anybody would hurt me so she could see it, but the worst hurt--the kind that doesn't show--I guess she don't understand. Before now I could tell anybody that come on the ranch and wasn't nice to me to 'git,' and mother would back me up. Even yet I could tell you or Tubbs or Mr. Ralston to leave, and they'd have to go. But Smith?--no! He's come back to stay. And she'll let him stay, if she knows it will drive me away from home. Mother's Injun, and she can only read a little and write a little that my Dad taught her, and she wears blankets and moccasins, but I never was 'shamed of Mother before. If she marries Smith, what can I do? Where can I go? I could take my pack outfit and start out to hunt Dad's folks, but if Mother marries Smith, she'll need me after a while. Yet how can I stay? I feel sometimes like they was two of me--one was good and one was bad; and if Mother lets Smith turn me out, maybe all the bad in me would come to the top. But there's one thing I couldn't forget. Dad used to say to me lots of times when we were alone--oh, often he said it: 'Susie, girl, never forget you're a MacDonald!'"

McArthur turned quickly and looked at her.

"Did your father say that?"

Susie nodded.

"Just like that?"

"Yes; he always straightened himself and said it just like that."

McArthur was studying her face with a peculiar intentness, as if he were seeing her for the first time.

"What was his first name, Susie?"

"Donald."

"Donald MacDonald?"

"Yes; there was lots of MacDonalds up there in the north country."

"Have you a picture, Susie?"

A rifle-shot broke the stillness of the droning afternoon. Susie was on her feet the instant. There was another--then a fusillade!

"It's the Indians after Smith!" she cried. "They promised me they wouldn't! Come--stand up here where you can see."

McArthur took a place beside her on a knoll and watched the scene with horrified eyes. The Indians were grouped, with Bear Chief in advance.

"They're shootin' into the stable! They've got him cornered," Susie explained excitedly. "No--look! He's comin' out! He's goin' to make a run for it! He's headed for the house. He can run like a scared wolf!"

"Do they mean to kill him?" McArthur asked in a shocked voice.

"Sure they mean to kill him. Do you think that's target practice? But look where the dust flies up--they're striking all around him--behind him--beside him--everywhere but in him! They're so anxious that they're shootin' wild. Runnin' Rabbit ought to get him--he's a good shot! He _did_! No, he stumbled. He's charmed--that Smith. He's got a strong medicine."

"He's not too brave to run," said McArthur, but added: "I ran, myself, when they were after me."

"He'd better run," Susie replied. "But he's after his gun; he means to fight."

"He'll make it!" McArthur cried.

Susie's voice suddenly rang out in an ascending, staccato-like shriek.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Mother, go back!" but the cracking rifles drowned Susie's shrill cry of entreaty.

The Indian woman, with her hands high above her head, the palms open as if to stop the singing bullets, rushed from the house and stopped only when she had passed Smith and stood between him and danger. She stood erect, unflinching, and while the Indians' fire wavered Smith gained the doorway.

Gasping for breath, his short upper lip drawn back from his protruding teeth in the snarl of a ferocious animal, he snatched a rifle from the deer-horn gun-rack above the door.

The Indian woman was directly in line between him and his enemies.

"Get out of the way!" he yelled, but she did not hear him.

"The fool!" he snarled. "The fool! I'll have to crease her."

He lifted his rifle and deliberately shot her in the fleshy part of her arm near the shoulder. She whirled with the shock of it, and dropped.

XVIII

A BAD HOMBRE

The Indians ceased firing when the woman fell, and when Susie reached her mother Smith was helping her to her feet, and it was Smith who led her into the house and ripped her sleeve.

It was only a painful flesh-wound, but if the bullet had gone a few inches higher it would have shattered her shoulder. It was a shot which told Smith that he had lost none of his accuracy of aim.

He always carried a small roll of bandages in his hip-pocket, and with these he dressed the woman's arm with surprising skill.

"When you needs a bandage, you generally needs it bad," he explained.

He wondered if she knew that it was his shot which had struck her. If she did know, she said nothing, though her eyes, bright with pain, followed his every movement.

"Looks like somebody's squeaked," Smith said meaningly to Susie.

"Nobody's squeaked," she lied glibly. "They're mad, and they're suspicious, but they didn't see you."

"If they'd go after me like that on suspicion," said Smith dryly, "looks like they'd be plumb hos-tile if they was sure. Is this here war goin' to keep up, or has they had satisfaction?"

Through Susie, a kind of armistice was arranged between Smith and the Indians. It took much argument to induce them to defer their vengeance and let the law take its course.

"You'll only get in trouble," she urged, "and Mr. Ralston will see that Smith gets all that's comin' to him when he has enough proof. He's stole more than horses from me," she said bitterly, "and if I can wait and trust the white man to handle him as he thinks best, you can, too."

So the Indians reluctantly withdrew, but both Smith and Susie knew that their smouldering resentment was ready to break out again upon the slightest provocation.

Susie's assurance that the attack of the Indians was due only to suspicion did not convince Smith. He noticed that, with the exception of Yellow Bird, there was not a single Indian stopping at the ranch, and Yellow Bird not only refused to be drawn into friendly conversation, but distinctly avoided him.

Smith knew that he was now upon dangerous ground, yet, with his unfaltering faith in himself and his luck, he continued to walk with a firm tread. If he could make one good turn and get the Indian woman's stake, he told himself, then he and Dora could look for a more healthful clime.

The Schoolmarm never had appeared more trim, more self-respecting, more desirable, than when in her clean, white shirt-waist and well-cut skirt she stepped forward to greet him with a friendly, outstretched hand. His heart beat wildly as he took it.

"I was afraid you had gone 'for keeps,'" she said.

"Were you _afraid_?" he asked eagerly.

"Not exactly afraid, to be more explicit, but I should have been sorry." She smiled up into his face with her frank, ingenuous smile.

"Why?"

"You were getting along so well with your lessons. Besides, I should have thought it unfriendly of you to go without saying good-by."

"Unfriendly?" Smith laughed shortly. "Me unfriendly! Why, girl, you're like a mountain to me. When I'm tired and hot and all give out, I raises my eyes and sees you there above me--quiet and cool and comfortable, like--and I takes a fresh grip."

"I'm glad I help you," Dora replied gently. "I want to."

"I'm in the way of makin' a stake now," Smith went on, "and when I gets it"--he hesitated--"well, when I gets it I aims to let you know."

When Dora went into the house, to her own room, Smith stepped into the living-room, where the Indian woman sat by the window.

"You like dat white woman better den me?" she burst out as he entered.

"Prairie Flower," he replied wearily, "if I had a dollar for every time I've answered that question, I wouldn't be lookin' for no stake to buy cattle with."

"De white woman couldn't give you no stake."

He made no reply to her taunt. He was thinking. The words of a cowpuncher came back to him as he sat and regarded with unseeing eyes the Indian woman. The cowpuncher had said: "When a feller rides the range month in and month out, and don't see nobody but other punchers and Injuns, some Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes begins to look kind of good to him when he rides into camp and she smiles as if she was glad he had come. He gits used to seein' her sittin' on an antelope hide, beadin' moccasins, and the country where they wear pointed-toed shoes and sit in chairs gits farther and farther away. And after awhile he tells himself that he don't mind smoke and the smell of buckskin, and a tepee is a better home nor none, and that he thinks as much of this here Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes as he could think of any woman, and he wonders when the priest could come. And while he's studyin' it over, some white girl cuts across his trail, and, with the sight of her, Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes looks like a dirty two-spot in a clean deck." The cowpuncher's words came back to Smith as though they had been said only yesterday.

"Why don't you say what you think?" the woman asked, uneasy under his long stare.

"No," said Smith, rousing himself; "the Schoolmarm couldn't give me no stake; and money talks."

"When you want your money?"

"Quick."

"How much you want?"

"How much you got?" he asked bluntly. He was sure of her, and he was in no mood to finesse.

"Eight--nine thousand."

"If I'm goin' to do anything with cattle this year, I want to get at it."

"I give you de little paper MacDonald call check. I know how to write check," she said with pride.

Smith shook his head. A check was evidence.

"It's better for you to go to the bank and get the cash yourself. Meeteetse can hitch up and take you. It won't bother your arm none, for you ain't bad hurt. Nine thousand is quite a wad to get without givin' notice, and I doubt if you gets it, but draw all you can. Take a flour-sack along and put the stuff in it; then when you gets home, pass it over to me first chance. Don't let 'em load you down with silver--I hates to pack silver on horseback."

To all of which instructions the woman agreed.

That she might avoid Susie's questions, she did not start the next morning until Susie was well on her way to school. Then, dressed in her gaudiest skirt, her widest brass-studded belt, her best and hottest blanket, she was ready for the long drive.

Smith put a fresh bandage on her arm, and praised the scrawling signature on the check which she had filled out after laborious and oft-repeated efforts. He made sure that she had the flour-sack, and that the check was pinned securely inside her capacious pocket, before he helped her in the wagon. He had been all attention that morning, and her eyes were liquid with gratitude and devotion as she and Meeteetse drove away. She turned before they were out of sight, and her face brightened when she saw Smith still looking after them. She thought comfortably of the fast approaching day when she would be envied by the women who had married only "bloods" or "breeds."

Smith, as it happened, was remarking contemptuously to Tubbs, as he nodded after the disappearing wagon:

"Don't that look like a reg'lar Injun outfit? One old white horse and a spotted buzzard-head; harness wired up with Mormon beeswax; a lopsided spring seat; one side-board gone and no paint on the wagon."

"You'd think Meeteetse'd think more of hisself than to go ridin' around with a blanket-squaw."

"He _said_ he was out of tobacer, but he probably aims to get drunk."

"More'n likely," Tubbs agreed. "Meeteetse's gittin' to be a reg'lar squawman anyhow, hangin' around Injuns so much and runnin' with 'em. He believes in signs and dreams, and he ain't washed his neck for six weeks."

"Associatin' too much with Injuns will spile a good man. Tubbs," Smith went on solemnly, "you ain't the feller you was when you come."

"I knows it," Tubbs agreed plaintively. "I hain't half the gumption I had."

"It hurts me to see a bright mind like yours goin' to seed, and there's nothin'll do harm to a feller quicker nor associatin' with them as ain't his equal. Tubbs, like you was my own brother, I says that bug-hunter ain't no man for you to run with."

"He ain't vicious and the likes o' that," said Tubbs, in mild defense of his employer.

"What's 'vicious' anyhow?" demanded Smith. "Who's goin' to say what's vicious and what ain't? I says it's vicious to lie like he does about them idjot skulls and ham-bones he digs out and brings home, makin' out that they might be pieces of fellers what could use one of them cotton-woods for a walkin' stick and et animals the size of that meat-house at a meal."

"He never said jest that."

"He might as well. What I'm aimin' at is that it's demoralizin' to get interested in things like that and spend your life diggin' up the dead. It's too tame for a feller of any spirit."

"It's nowise dang'rous," Tubbs admitted.

"If I thought you was my kind, Tubbs, I'd give you a chance. I'd let you in on a deal that'd be the makin' of you."

"All I needs is a chanct," Tubbs declared eagerly.

"I believe you," Smith replied, with flattering emphasis.

A disturbing thought made Tubbs inquire anxiously:

"This here chanct your speakin' of--it ain't work, is it?--real right-down work?"

"Not degradin' work, like pitchin' hay or plowin'."

"I hates low-down work, where you gits out and sweats."

"I see where you're right. There's no call for a man of your sand and _sabe_ to do day's work. Let them as hasn't neither and is afraid to take chances pitch hay and do plowin' for wages."

Tubbs looked a little startled.

"What kind of chances?"

Smith looked at Tubbs before he lowered his voice and asked:

"Wasn't you ever on the rustle none?"

Tubbs reflected.

"Onct back east, in I-o-wa, I rustled me a set of underwear off'n a clothes-line."

Smith eyed Tubbs in genuine disgust. He had all the contempt for a petty-larceny thief that the skilled safe-breaker has for the common purse-snatcher. The line between pilfering and legitimate stealing was very clear in his mind. He said merely,

"Tubbs, I believe you're a bad _hombre_."

"They _is_ worse, I s'pose," said Tubbs modestly, "but I've been pretty rank in my time."

"Can you ride? Can you rope? Can you cut out a steer and burn a brand? Would you get buck-ague in a pinch and quit me if it came to a show-down? Are you a stayer?"

"Try me," said Tubbs, swelling.

"Shake," said Smith. "I wisht we'd got acquainted sooner."

"And mebby I kin tell you somethin' about brands," Tubbs went on boastfully.

"More'n likely."

"I kin take a wet blanket and a piece of copper wire and put an addition to an old brand so it'll last till you kin git the stock off'n your hands. I've never done it, but I've see it done."

"I've heard tell of somethin' like that," Smith replied dryly.

"Er you kin draw out a brand so you never would know nothin' was there. You take a chunk of green cottonwood, and saw it off square; then you bile it and bile it, and when it's hot through, you slaps it on the brand, and when you lifts it up after while the brand is drawed out."

"Did you dream that, Tubbs?"

"I b'leeve it'll work," declared Tubbs stoutly.

"Maybe it would work in I-o-wa," said Smith, "but I doubts if it would work here. Any way," he added conciliatingly, "we'll give it a try."

"And this chanct--it's tolable safe?"

"Same as if you was home in bed. When I says 'ready,' will you come?"

"Watch my smoke," answered Tubbs.

Smith's eyes followed Tubbs's hulking figure as he shambled off, and his face was full of derision.

"Say"--he addressed the world in general--"you show me a man from I-o-wa or Nebrasky and I'll show you a son-of-a-gun."

Tubbs was putty in the hands of Smith, who could play upon his vanity and ignorance to any degree--though he believed that beyond a certain point Tubbs was an arrant coward. But Smith had a theory regarding the management of cowards. He believed that on the same principle that one uses a whip on a scared horse--to make it more afraid of that which is behind than of that which is ahead--he could by threats and intimidations force Tubbs to do his bidding if the occasion arose. Tubbs's mental calibre was 22-short; but Smith needed help, and Tubbs seemed the most pliable material at hand. That Tubbs had pledged himself to something the nature of which he knew only vaguely, was in itself sufficient to receive Smith's contempt. He had learned from observation that little dependence can be placed upon those who accept responsibilities too readily and lightly, but he was confident that he could utilize Tubbs as long as he should need him, and after that--Smith shrugged his shoulders--what was an I-o-wan more or less?

Altogether, he felt well satisfied with what he had accomplished in the short while since his return.

When Susie came home from school, Smith was looking through the corral-fence at a few ponies which Ralston had bought and driven in, to give color to his story.

"See anything there you'd like?" she inquired, with significant emphasis.

"I'd buy the bunch if I was goin' to set me some bear-traps." Smith could see nothing to praise in anything which belonged to Ralston.

Susie missed her mother immediately upon going into the house, and in their sleeping-room she saw every sign of a hurried departure.

"Where's mother gone?" she asked Ling.

"Town."

"To town? To see a doctor about her arm?"

"Beads."

"Beads?"

"Blue beads, gleen beads. She no have enough beads for finish moccasin."

"When's she comin' home?"

"She come 'night."

Forty miles over a rough road, with her bandaged arm, for beads! It did not sound reasonable to Susie, but since Smith was accounted for, and her mother would return that night, there seemed no cause for worry. Susie could not remember ever before having come home without finding her mother somewhere in the house, and now, as she fidgeted about, she realized how much she would miss her if that which she most feared should transpire to separate them.

She walked to the door, and while she stood idly kicking her heel against the door-sill she saw Ralston, who was passing, stoop and pick up a scrap of paper which had been caught between two small stones. She observed that he examined it with interest, but while he stood with his lips pursed in a half-whistle a puff of wind flirted it from his fingers. He pursued it as though it had value, and Susie, who was not above curiosity, joined in the chase.

It lodged in one of the giant sage-brushes which grew some little distance away on the outer edge of the dooryard, and into this brush Ralston reached and carefully drew it forth. He looked at it again, lest his eyes had deceived him, then he passed it to Susie, who stared blankly from the scrap of paper to him.

XIX

WHEN THE CLOUDS PLAYED WOLF

The Indian woman was restless; she had been so from the time they had lost sight of the town, but her restlessness had increased as the daylight faded and night fell.

"You're goin' to bust this seat in if you don't quit jammin' around," Meeteetse Ed warned her peevishly.

Meeteetse was irritable, a state due largely to the waning exhilaration of a short and unsatisfactory spree.

The woman clucked at the horses, and, to the great annoyance of her driver, reached for the reins and slapped them on the back.

"They're about played out," he growled. "Forty miles is a awful trip for these buzzard-heads to make in a day. We orter have put up some'eres overnight."

"I could have stayed with Little Coyote's woman."

"We orter have done it, too. Look at them cayuses stumblin' along! Say, we won't git in before 'leven or twelve at this gait, and I'm so hungry I don't know where I'm goin' to sleep to-night."

"Little Coyote's woman gifted me some sa'vis berries."

"Aw, sa'vis berries! I can't go sa'vis berries," growled Meeteetse. "They're too sweet. The only way they're fit to eat is to dry 'em and pound 'em up with jerked elk--then they ain't bad eatin'. I've et 'most ev'ry thing in my day. I've et wolf, and dog, and old mountain billy-goat, and bull-snakes, and grasshoppers, so you kin see I ain't finnicky, but I can't stummick sa'vis berries." He asked querulously: "What's ailin' of you?"

The Indian woman, who had been studying the black clouds as they drifted across the sky to dim the starlight, said in a half-whisper:

"The clouds no look good to me. They look like enemies playin' wolf. I feel as if somethin' goin' happen."

The bare suggestion of the supernatural was sufficient to alarm Meeteetse. He asked in a startled voice:

"How do you feel?"

"I feel sad. My heart drags down to de ground, and it seem like de dark hide somethin'."

Meeteetse elongated his neck and peered fearfully into the darkness.

"What do you think it hides?" he asked in a husky whisper.

She shook her head.

"I don't know, but I have de bad feelin'."

"I forgot to sleep with my feet crossed last night," said Meeteetse, "and I dreamed horrible dreams all night long. Maybe they was warnin's. I can't think of anything much that could happen to us though," he went on, having forgotten some of his ill-nature in his alarm for his personal safety. "These here horses ain't goin' to run away--I wisht they would, fer 't would git us quite a piece on our road. We ain't no enemies worth mentionin', and we ain't worth stealin', so I don't hardly think your feelin' means any wrong for us. More'n likely it's jest somebody dead."

This thought, slightly consoling to Meeteetse, did not seem to comfort the Indian woman, who continued to squirm on the rickety seat and to strain her eyes into the darkness.

"If anybody ud come along and want to mix with me--say, do you see that fist? If ever I hit anybody with that fist, they'll have to have it dug out of 'em. I don't row often, but when I does--oh, lordy! lordy! I jest raves and caves. I was home on a visit onct, and my old-maid aunt gits a notion of pickin' on me. Say, I ups and runs her all over the house with an axe! I'm more er less a dang'rous character when I'm on the peck. Is that feelin' workin off of you any?" he inquired anxiously.

"It comes stronger," she answered, and her grip tightened on the flour-sack she held under her blanket.