Chapter 3

"Look at that dude," said Smith contemptuously, viewing the incident through the living-room window. "Queerin' hisself right along. No more _sabe_ than a cotton-tail rabbit. That's the worse thing he could do. Feller"--turning to Tubbs--"if you want to make a winnin' with a woman, you never want to fetch and carry for her."

"I knows it," acquiesced Tubbs. "Onct I was a reg'lar doormat fer one, and I only got stomped on fer it."

"I can wrangle Injuns to a fare-ye-well," Smith continued. "Over on the Blackfoot I was the most notorious Injun wrangler that ever jumped up; and, feller, on the square, I never run an errant for one in my life."

"It's wrong," agreed Tubbs.

"There's that dude tryin' to make a stand-in, and spilin' his own game all the time by talkin'. You can't say he talks, neither; he just opens his mouth and lets it say what it damn pleases. Is them real words he gets off, or does he make 'em up as he goes along?"

"Search me."

"I'll tip you off, feller: if ever you want to make a strong play at an Injun woman, you don't want to shoot off your mouth none. Keep still and move around just so, and pretty soon she'll throw you the sign. Did you ever notice a dog trottin' down the street, passin' everybody up till all to once it takes a sniff, turns around, and follers some feller off? That's an Injun woman."

"I never had no luck with squaws, and the likes o' that," Tubbs confessed. "They're turrible hands to git off together and poke fun at you."

As McArthur and the Indian woman came in from the kitchen, he was saying earnestly to her:

"I feel sure that here, madam, I should entirely recover my health. Besides, this locality seems to me such a fertile field for research that if you could possibly accommodate my man and me with board, you may not be conferring a favor only upon me, but indirectly, perhaps, upon the world of science. I have with me my own bath-tub and pneumatic mattress."

Tubbs, seeing the Indian woman's puzzled expression, explained:

"He means we'll sleep ourselves if you will eat us."

The woman nodded.

"Oh, you can stay. I no care."

Smith frowned; but McArthur, much pleased by her assent, told Tubbs to saddle a horse at once, that he might lose no time in beginning his investigations.

"If it were my good fortune to unearth a cranium of the Homo primogenus, I should be the happiest man in the world," declared McArthur, clasping his fingers in ecstasy at the thought of such unparalleled bliss.

"What did I tell you?" said Smith, accompanying Tubbs to the corral. "He's tryin' to win himself a home."

"Looks that way," Tubbs agreed. "These here bug-hunters is deep."

The saddle blanket which Tubbs pulled from their wagon and threw upon the ground, with McArthur's saddle, caught Smith's eye instantly, because of the similarity in color and markings to that which he had folded so carefully inside his own. This was newer, it had no disfiguring holes, or black stain in the corner.

"What's the use of takin' chances?" he asked himself as he looked it over.

While Tubbs was catching the horse in the corral, Smith deftly exchanged blankets, and Tubbs, to whom most saddle blankets looked alike, did not detect the difference.

Upon returning to the house, Smith found the Indian woman wiping breakfast dishes for the cook. She came into the living-room when he beckoned to her, with the towel in her hand. Taking it from her, he wadded it up and threw it back into the kitchen.

"Don't you know any better not to spoil a cook like that, woman?" he asked, smiling down upon her. "You never want to touch a dish for a cook. Row with 'em, work 'em over, keep 'em down--but don't humor 'em. You can't treat a cook like a real man. Ev'ry reg'lar cook has a screw loose or he wouldn't be a cook. Cookin' ain't no man's job. I never had no use for reg'lar cooks--me, Smith.

"All you women need ribbing up once in awhile," he added, as, laying his hand lightly on her arm, he let it slide its length until it touched her fingers. He gave them a gentle pressure and resumed his seat against the wall.

The woman's eyes glowed as she looked at him. His authoritative attitude appealed to her whose ancestors had dressed game, tanned hides, and dragged wood for their masters for countless generations. The growing passion in her eyes did not escape Smith.

In the long silence which followed he looked at her steadily; finally he said:

"Well, I guess I'll saddle up. You look 'just so' to me, woman--but I got to go."

She laid down the rags of her mat and "threw him the sign" for which he had waited. It said:

"My heart is high; it is good toward you. Talk to me--talk straight."

He shook his head sadly.

"No, no, Singing Bird; I am headed for the Mexican border--many, many sleeps from here."

She arose and walked to his side.

He felt a sudden and violent dislike for her flabby, swaying hips, her heavy step, as she moved toward him. He knew that the game was won, and won so easily it was a school-boy's play.

"Why you go?" she demanded, and the disappointment in her eyes was so intense as to resemble fear. "What you do dere?"

He looked at her through half-closed eyes.

"Did you ever hear of wet horses?"

She shook her head.

"I deals in wet horses--me, Smith."

The woman stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"Down there on the border," he explained, "you buy the horses on the Mexico side. You buy 'em when the Mexican boss is asleep in his 'dobe, so there's no kick about the price. You swim 'em across the Rio Grande and sell 'em to the Americano waitin' on the other side."

"You buy de wet horse?"

"No, by Gawd,--I wet 'em!"

"Why you steal?"

He looked at her contemptuously.

"Why does anybody steal? I need the dinero--me, Smith."

"You want money?"

He laughed.

"I always want money. I never had enough but once in my life, and then I had too much. Gold is hell to pack," he added reminiscently.

"I have de fine hay-ranch, white man, de best on de reservation. Two, four t'ousand dollars I have when de hay is sold. De ranch is big"--her arms swept the horizon to show its extent. "You stay here and make de bargain with de cattlemen, and I give you so much"--she measured a third of her hand with her forefinger. "If dat is not enough, I give you so much"--she measured the half of her hand with her forefinger. "If dat not enough, I give you all." She swept the palm of one hand with the other.

Smith dropped his eyelids, that she might not see the triumph shining beneath them.

"I must think, Prairie Flower."

"No, white man, you no think. You stay!"

Smith, who had arisen, slipped his arm about her ample waist. She pulled aside his Mackinaw coat and laid her head upon his breast.

"The white man's heart is strong," she said softly.

"It beats for you, Little Fawn;" and he ran out his tongue in derision.

All the morning she sat on the floor at his feet, braiding the rags for her mat, content to hear him speak occasionally, and to look often into his face with dog-like devotion. It was there Susie saw her when she returned from school earlier in the afternoon than usual, and was beckoned into the kitchen by Ling.

"He's makin' a mash," said Ling laconically, as he jerked his thumb toward the open door of the living-room.

All the girlish vivacity seemed to go out of Susie's face in her first swift glance. It hardened in mingled shame and anger.

"Mother," she said sharply, "you promised me that you wouldn't sit on the floor like an Injun."

"We're gettin' sociable," said Smith mockingly.

The woman glanced at Smith, and hesitated, but finally got up and seated herself on the bench.

"Why don't you try bein' 'sociable' with the Schoolmarm?" Susie sneered.

"Maybe I will."

"And _maybe_ you won't get passed up like a white chip!"

"Oh, I dunno. I've made some winnings."

"I can tell that by your eyes. You got 'em bloodshot, I reckon, hangin' over the fire in squaw camps. White men can't stand smoke like Injuns."

This needle-tongued girl jabbed the truth into him in a way which maddened him, but he said conciliatingly:

"We don't want to quarrel, kid."

"You mean _you_ don't." Susie slammed the door behind her.

The child's taunt reawakened his interest in the Schoolmarm. He thought of her riding home alone, and grew restless. Besides, the dulness began to bore him.

"I'll saddle up, Prairie Flower, and look over the ranch. When I come back I'll let you know if it's worth my while to stay."

Tubbs was sitting on the wagon-tongue, mending harness, when Smith went out,

"Aimin' to quit the flat?" inquired Tubbs.

"Feller, didn't that habit of askin' questions ever git you in trouble?"

"Well I guess _so_," Tubbs replied candidly. "See that scar under my eye?"

"I'd invite you along to tell me about it," said Smith sardonically, "only, the fact is, feller, I'm goin' down the road to make medicine with the Schoolmarm."

Tubbs's eyes widened.

"Gosh!" he ejaculated enviously. "I wisht I had your gall."

Before Smith swung into the saddle he pulled out a heavy silver watch attached to a hair watch-chain.

"Just the right time," he nodded.

"Huh?"

"I say, if it was only two o'clock, or three, I wouldn't go."

"You wouldn't? I'll tell you about me: I'd go if it was twelve o'clock at night and twenty below zero to ride home with that lady."

"Feller," said Smith, in a paternal tone, "you never want to make a break at a woman before four o'clock in the afternoon. You might just as well go and lay down under a bush in the shade from a little after daylight until about this time. You wouldn't hunt deer or elk in the middle of the day, would you? No, nor women--all same kind of huntin'. They'll turn you down sure; white or red--no difference."

"Is that so?" said Tubbs, in the awed voice of one who sits at the feet of a master.

"When the moon's out and the lamps are lit, they'll empty their sack and tell you the story of their lives. I don't want to toot my horn none, but I've wrangled around some. I've hunted big game and humans. Their habits, feller, is much the same."

While Smith was galloping down the road toward the school-house, Susie was returning from a survey of the surrounding country, which was to be had from a knoll near the house.

"Mother," she said abruptly, "I feel queer here." She laid both hands on her flat, childish breast and hunched her shoulders. "I feel like something is goin' to happen."

"What happen, you think?" her mother asked listlessly.

"It's something about White Antelope, I know."

The woman looked up quickly.

"He go visit Bear Chief, maybe." There was an odd note in her voice.

"He wouldn't go away and stay like this without telling you or me. He never did before. He knows I would worry; besides, he didn't take a horse, and he never would walk ten miles when there are horses to ride. His gun isn't here, so he must have gone hunting, but he wouldn't stay all night hunting rabbits; and he couldn't be lost, when he knows the country as well as you or me."

"He go to visit," the Indian woman insisted doggedly.

"If he isn't home to-morrow, I'm goin' to hunt him, but I know something's wrong."

V

SMITH MAKES MEDICINE WITH THE SCHOOLMARM

Once out of sight of the house, Smith let his horse take its own gait, while he viewed the surrounding country with the thoughtful consideration of a prospective purchaser. As he gazed, its possibilities grew upon him. If water was to be found somewhere in the Bad Lands the location of the ranch was ideal for--certain purposes.

The Bar C cattle-range bounded the reservation on the west; the MacDonald ranch, as it was still called, after the astute Scotch squawman who had built it, was close to the reservation line; and beyond the sheltering Bad Lands to the northeast was a ranch where lived certain friendly persons with whom he had had most satisfactory business relations in the past.

A plan began to take definite shape in his active brain, but the head of a sleepy white pony appearing above the next rise temporarily changed the course of his thoughts, and with his recognition of its rider life took on an added zest.

Dora Marshall, engrossed in thought, did not see Smith until he pulled his hat-brim in salutation and said:

"You're a thinker, I take it."

"I find my work here absorbing," she replied, coloring under his steady look.

He turned his horse and swung it into the road beside her.

"I was just millin' around and thought I'd ride down the road and meet you." Further than this brief explanation, he did not seem to feel it incumbent upon him to make conversation. Apparently entirely at his ease in the silence which followed, he turned his head often and stared at her with a frank interest which he made no effort to conceal. Finally he shifted his weight to one stirrup and, turning in his saddle so that he faced her, he asked bluntly:

"That look in your eyes--that look as if you hadn't nothin' to hide--is it true? Is it natural, as you might say, or do you just put it on?"

Her astonished expression led him to explain.

"It's like lookin' down deep into water that's so clear you can see the sand shinin' in the bottom; one of these places where there's no mud or black spots; nothin' you can't see or understand. _Sabe_ what I mean?"

Since she did not answer, he continued:

"I've met up with women before now that had that same look, but only at first. It didn't last; they could put it on and take it off like they did their hats."

"I don't know that I am quite sure what you mean," the girl replied, embarrassed by the personal nature of his questions and comments; "but if you mean to imply that I affect this or that expression, for a purpose, you misjudge me."

"I was just askin'," said Smith.

"I think I am always honest of purpose," the girl went on slowly, "and when one is that, I think it shows in one's eyes. To be sure, I often fall short of my intentions. I mean to do right, and almost as frequently do wrong."

"You do?" He eyed her with quick intentness.

"Yes, don't you? Don't all of us?"

"I does what I aims to do," he replied ambiguously.

So she--this girl with eyes like two deep springs--did wrong--frequently. He pondered the admission for a long time. Smith's exact ideas of right and wrong would have been difficult to define; the dividing line, if there were any, was so vague that it had never served as the slightest restraint. "To do what you aim to do, and make a clean get-away"--that was the successful life.

He had seen things, it is true; there had been incidents and situations which had repelled him, but why, he had never asked himself. There was one situation in particular to which his mind frequently reverted, as it did now. He had known worse women than the one who had figured in it, but for some reason this single scene was impressed upon his mind with a vividness which seemed never to grow less.

He saw a woman seated at an old-fashioned organ in a country parlor. There was a rag-carpet on the floor--he remembered how springy it was with the freshly laid straw underneath it. Her husband held a lamp that she might see the notes, while his other hand was upon her shoulder, his adoring eyes upon her silly face. He, Smith, was rocking in the blue plush chair for which the fool with the calloused hands had done extra work that he might give it to the woman upon her birthday. Each time that she screeched the refrain, "Love, I will love you always," she lifted her chin to sing it to the man beaming down upon her, while upstairs her trunk was packed to desert him.

Smith always remembered with satisfaction that he had left her in Red Lodge with only the price of a telegram to her husband, in her shabby purse.

"I like your style, girl." His eyes swept Dora Marshall's figure as he spoke.

There was a difference in his tone, a familiarity in his glance, which sent the color flying to the Schoolmarm's cheeks.

"I think we could hit it off--you and me--if we got sociable."

He leaned toward her and laid his gloved hand upon hers as it rested on the saddle-horn.

The pupils of her eyes dilated until they all but covered the iris as she turned them, blazing, upon Smith.

"Just what do you mean by that?"

There was no mistaking the genuineness nor the nature of the emotion which made her voice vibrate. But Smith considered. Was she deeper--"slicker," as he phrased it to himself--than he had thought, or had he really misunderstood her? Surprising as was the feeling, he hoped some way, that it was the latter. He looked at her again before he answered gently:

"I didn't mean to make you hot none, Miss. I'm ignorant in handlin' words. I only meant to say that I hoped you and me would be good friends."

His explanation cleared her face instantly.

"I am sorry if I misunderstood you; but one or two unpleasant experiences in this country have made me quick--too quick, perhaps--to take offense."

"There's lots just lookin' for game like you. No better nor brutes," said Smith virtuously, entirely sincere in his sudden indignation against these licentious characters.

Yes, the Schoolmarm had rebuffed him, as Susie had prophesied, but the effect of it upon him was such as neither he nor she had reckoned. As they rode along a swift, overpowering infatuation for Dora Marshall grew upon him. He felt something like a flame rising within him, burning him, bewildering him with its intensity. She seemed all at once to possess every attribute of the angels, from mere prettiness her face took on a radiant beauty which dazzled him, and when she spoke her lightest word held him breathless. As the mountain towers above the foothills, so, of a sudden, she towered above all other women. He had known sensations--all, he had believed, that it was possible to experience; but this one, strange, overwhelming, dazed him with its violence.

Love frequently comes like this to people in the wilds, to those who have few interests and much time to think. The emotional side of their natures has been held in check until a trifle is sometimes sufficient to loose a torrent which nothing can then divert or check.

She asked him to loop her latigo, which was trailing, and his hand shook as he fumbled with the leather strap.

"Gawd!" he swore in bewilderment as he returned to his own horse, wiping his forehead with the back of his gauntlet, "what feelin' is this workin' on me? Am I gettin' locoed, me--Smith?"

"I'm glad I've found a friend like you," said the Schoolmarm impulsively. "One needs friends in a country like this."

"A friend!" It sounded like a jest to Smith. "A friend!" he repeated with an odd laugh. Then he raised his hand, as one takes an oath, and whatever of whiteness was left in Smith's soul illumined his face as he added: "Yes, to a killin' finish."

If Smith had met Dora among many, the result might have been the same in the end, but here, in the isolation, she seemed from the first the centre of everything, the alpha and omega of the universe, and his passion for her was as great as though it were the growth of many months instead of less than twenty-four hours. The depth, the breadth, of it could not quickly be determined, nor the lengths to which it would take him. It was something new to be reckoned with. To what extent it would control him, neither Smith nor any one else could have told. He knew only that it now seemed the most real, the most sincere, the best thing which had ever come into his life.

Dora Marshall knew nothing of men like Smith, or of natures like those of the men of the mountains and ranges, who paid her homage. Her knowledge of life and people was drawn from the limited experiences of a small, Middle West town, together with a year at a Middle West co-ed college, and as a result of the latter the Schoolmarm cherished a fine belief in her worldly wisdom, whereas, in a measure, her lack of it was one of her charms. Susie, in her way, was wiser.

The Schoolmarm's attitude toward her daily life was the natural outcome of a romantic nature and an imaginative mind. She saw herself as the heroine of an absorbing story, the living of which story she enjoyed to the utmost, while every incident and every person contributed to its interest. Quite unconsciously, with unintentional egotism, the Schoolmarm had a way of standing off and viewing herself, as it were, through the rosy glow of romance. Yet she was not a complex character--this Schoolmarm. She had no soaring ambitions, though her ideals for herself and for others were of the best. To do her duty, to help those about her, to win and retain the liking of her half-savage little pupils, were her chief desires.

She had her share of the vanity of her sex, and of its natural liking for admiration and attention, yet in the freedom of her unique environment she never overstepped the bounds of the proprieties as she knew them, or violated in the slightest degree the conventionalities to which she had been accustomed in her rather narrow home life. It was this reserve which inspired awe in the men with whom she came in contact, used as they were to the greater camaraderie of Western women.

In her unsophistication, her provincial innocence, Dora Marshall was exactly the sort to misunderstand and to be misunderstood, a combination sometimes quite as dangerous in its results, and as provocative of trouble, as the intrigues of a designing woman.

"I reckon you think I'm kind of a mounted bum, a grub-liner, or something like that," said Smith after a time.

"To be frank, I _have_ wondered who you are."

"Have you? Have you, honest?" asked Smith delightedly.

"Well--you're different, you know. I can't explain just how, but you are not like the others who come and go at the ranch."

"No," Smith replied with some irony; "I'm not like that there Tubbs." He added laconically, "I'm no angel, me--Smith."

The Schoolmarm laughed. Smith's denial was so obviously superfluous.

"There was a time when I'd do 'most any old thing," he went on, unmindful of her amusement. "It was only a few years ago that there was no law north of Cheyenne, and a feller got what he wanted with his gun. I got my share. I come from a country where they sleep between sheets, but I got a lickin' that wasn't comin' to me, and I quit the flat when I was thirteen. I've been out amongst 'em since."

The desire to reform somebody, which lies dormant in every woman's bosom, began to stir in the Schoolmarm's.

"But you--you wouldn't 'do any old thing' now, would you?"

Smith hesitated, and a variety of expressions succeeded one another upon his face. It was an awkward moment, for, under the uplifting influence of the feeling which possessed him, he had an odd desire to tell this girl only the truth.

"I wouldn't do some of the things I used to do," he replied evasively.

The Schoolmarm beamed encouragement.

"I'm glad of that."

"I used to kill Injuns for fifty dollars a head, but I wouldn't do it now," he said virtuously, adding: "I'd get my neck stretched."

"You've killed people--Indians--for money!" The Schoolmarm looked at him, wide-eyed with horror.

"They was clutterin' up the range," Smith explained patiently, "and the cattlemen needed it for their stock. I'd 'a' killed 'em for nothin', but when 'twas offered, I might as well get the bounty."

The Schoolmarm scarcely knew what to say; his explanation seemed so entirely satisfactory to himself.

"I'm glad those dreadful days have gone."

"They're gone all right," Smith answered sourly. "They make dum near as much fuss over an Injun as a white man now, and what with jumpin' up deputies at every turn in the road, 'tain't safe. Why, I heard a judge say a while back that killin' an Injun was pure murder."

"I appreciate your confidence--your telling me of your life," said the Schoolmarm, in lieu of something better.