Chapter 4

She found him a difficult person with whom to converse. They seemed to have no common meeting-ground, yet, while he constantly startled and shocked, he also fascinated her. In one of those illuminating flashes to which the Schoolmarm was subject, she saw herself as Smith's guiding-star, leading him to the triumphant finish of the career which she believed his unique but strong personality made possible.

It was Smith's turn to look at her. Did she think he had told her of his life? The unexpected dimple deepened in Smith's cheek, and as he laughed the Schoolmarm, again noting the effect of it, could not in her heart believe that he was as black as he had painted himself.

"I wisht our trails had crossed sooner, but, anyhow, I'm on the square with you, girl. And if ever you ketch me 'talkin' crooked,' as the Injuns say, I'll give you my whole outfit--horse, saddle, blankets, guns, even my dog-gone shirt. Excuse me."

The Schoolmarm glowed. Her woman's influence for good was having its effect! This was a step in the right direction--a long step. He would be "on the square" with her--she liked the way he phrased it. Already her mind was busy with air-castles for Smith, which would have made that person stare, had he known of them. An inkling of their nature may be had from her question:

"Would you like to study, to learn from books, if you had the opportunity?"

"I learned my letters spellin' out the brands on cattle," he said frankly, "and that, with bein' able to write my name on the business end of a check, and common, everyday words, has always been enough to see me through."

"But when one has naturally a good mind, like yours, don't you think it is almost wicked not to use it?"

"I got a mind all right," Smith replied complacently. "I'm kind of a head-worker in my way, but steady thinkin' makes me sicker nor a pup. I got a headache for two days spellin' out a description of myself that the sheriff of Choteau County spread around the country on handbills. It was plumb insultin', as I figgered it out, callin' attention to my eyes and ears and busted thumb. I sent word to him that I felt hos-tile over it. Sheriffs'll go too far if you don't tell 'em where to get off at once in awhile."

The Schoolmarm ignored the handbill episode and went on:

"Besides, a lack of education is such a handicap in business."

"The worst handicap I has to complain of," said Smith grimly, "is the habit people has got into of sending money-orders through the mail, instead of the cash. It keeps money out of circulation, besides bein' discouragin' and puttin' many a hard-workin' hold-up on the bum."

"But," she persisted, the real meaning of Smith's observations entirely escaping her, "even the rudiments of an education would be such a help to you, opening up many avenues that now are closed to you. What I want to say is this: that if you intend to stop for a time at the ranch, I will be glad to teach you. Susie and I have an extra session in the evening, and I will be delighted to have you join us."

It had not dawned upon Smith that she had questioned him with this end in view. He looked at her fixedly, then, from the depths of his experience, he said:

"Girl, you must like me some."

Dora flushed hotly.

"I am interested," she replied.

"That'll do for now;" and Smith wondered if the lump in his throat was going to choke him. "Will I join that night-school of yours? _Will_ I? Watch me! Say," he burst out with a kind of boyish impulsiveness, "if ever you see me doin' anything I oughtn't, like settin' down when I ought to stand up, or standin' up when I ought to set down, will you just rope me and take a turn around a snubbin'-post and jerk me off my feet?"

"We'll get along famously if you really want to improve yourself!" exclaimed the Schoolmarm, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. "If you really and truly want to learn."

"Really and truly I do," Smith echoed, feeling at the moment that he would have done dressmaking or taken in washing, had she bid him.

Once more the world looked big, alluring, and as full of untried possibilities as when he had "quit the flat" at thirteen.

"Have you noticed me doin' anything that isn't manners?" he asked in humble anxiety. "Don't be afraid of hurtin' my feelin's," he urged, "for I ain't none."

"If you honestly want me to tell you things, I will; but it seems so--so queer upon such a very short acquaintance."

"Shucks! What's the use of wastin' time pretendin' to get acquainted, when you're acquainted as soon as you look at each other? What's the use of sashayin' around the bush when you meet up with somebody you like? You just cut loose on me, girl."

"It's only a little thing, in a way, and not in itself important perhaps; yet it would be, too, if circumstances should take you into the world. It might make a bad impression upon strangers."

Smith looked slightly alarmed. He wondered if she suspected anything about White Antelope. At the moment, he could think of nothing else he had done within the last twenty-four hours, which might prejudice strangers.

"I noticed at the table," the Schoolmarm went on in some embarrassment, "that you held your fork as though you were afraid it would get away from you. Like this"--she illustrated with her fist.

"Like a ranch-hand holdin' onto a pitch-fork," Smith suggested, relieved.

"Something," she laughed. "It should be like this. Anyway," she declared encouragingly, "you don't eat with your knife."

Smith beamed.

"Did you notice that?"

"Naturally, in a land of sword-swallowers, I would;" the Schoolmarm made a wry face.

"Once I run with a high-stepper from Bowlin' Green, Kentucky, and she told me better nor that," he explained. "She said nothin' give a feller away like his habit of handlin' tools at the table. She was a lady all right, but she got the dope habit and threw the lamp at me. The way I quit her didn't trouble _me_. None of 'em ever had any holt on me when it come to a show-down; but you, girl, _you_----"

"Look!"

Her sharp exclamation interrupted him, and, following her gesture, he saw a flying horseman in the distance, riding as for his life, while behind him two other riders quirted their horses in hot pursuit.

"Is it a race--for fun?"

"I don't think it," Smith replied dryly, noting the direction from which they came. "It looks like business."

He knew that the two behind were Indians. He could tell by the way they used their quirts and sat their horses. Neither was there any mistaking the bug-hunter on his ewe-necked sorrel, which, displaying unexpected bursts of speed, was keeping in the lead and heading straight for the ranch-house. With one hand McArthur was clinging to the saddle-horn, and with the other was clinging quite as tightly to what at a distance appeared to be a carbine.

"He's pulled his gun--why don't he use it?" Smith quickened his horse's gait.

He knew that the Indians had learned White Antelope's fate. That was a lucky swap Smith had made that morning. He congratulated himself that he had not "taken chances." He wondered how effective McArthur's denial would prove in the face of the evidence furnished by the saddle-blanket. Personally, Smith regarded the bug-hunter's chances as slim.

"They'll get him in the corral," he observed.

"Oh, it's Mr. McArthur!" Dora cried in distress.

Smith looked at her in quick jealousy.

"Well, what of it?" In her excitement, the gruffness of his tone passed unobserved.

"Come," she urged. "The Indians are angry, and he may need us."

Hatless, breathless, pale, McArthur rolled out of his saddle and thrust a long, bleached bone into Tubbs's hand.

"Keep it!" he gasped. "Protect it! It may be--I don't say it is, but it _may_ be--a portion of the paroccipital bone of an Ichthyopterygian!" Then he turned and faced his pursuers.

Infuriated, they rode straight at him, but he did not flinch, and the horses swerved of their own accord.

Susie had run from the house, and her mother had followed, expectancy upon her stolid face, for, like Smith, she had guessed the situation.

The Indians circled, and, returning, pointed accusing fingers at McArthur.

"He kill White Antelope!"

By this time, the grub-liners had reached the corral, among them four Indians, all friends of the dead man. Their faces darkened.

"White Antelope is dead in a gulch!" cried his accusers. "He is shot to pieces--here, there, everywhere!"

A murmur of angry amazement arose. White Antelope, the kindly, peaceable Cree, who had not an enemy on the reservation!

"This is dreadful!" declared McArthur. "Believe me"--he turned to them all--"I had but found the corpse myself when these men rode up. The Indian was cold; he certainly had been dead for hours. Besides," he demanded, "what possible motive could I have?"

"Them as likes lettin' blood don't need a motive." The sneering voice was Smith's.

"But you, sir, met us on the hill. You know the direction from which we came."

"It's easy enough to circle."

"But why should I go back?" cried McArthur.

"They say there's that that draws folks back for another look."

Smith's insinuations, the stand he took, had its effect upon the Indians, who, hot for revenge, needed only this to confirm their suspicions. One of the Indians on horseback began to uncoil his rawhide saddle-rope. All save McArthur understood the significance of the action. They meant to tie him hand and foot and take him to the Agency, with blows and insults plentiful en route.

They edged closer to him, every savage instinct uppermost, their faces dark and menacing. McArthur, his eyes sweeping the circle, felt that he had not one friend, not one, in the motley, threatening crowd fast closing in upon him; for Tubbs, hearing himself indirectly included in the accusation, had discreetly, and with perceptible haste, withdrawn.

The Indian swung from his saddle, rope in hand, and advanced upon McArthur with unmistakable purpose; but he did not reach the little scientist, for Susie darted from the circle, her flashing gray eyes looking more curiously at variance than ever with her tawny skin.

"No, no, Running Rabbit!" She pushed him gently backward with her finger-tips upon his chest.

There was a murmur of protest from the crowd, and it seemed to sting her like a spur. Susie was not accustomed to disapproval. She turned to where the murmurs came loudest--from the white grub-liners, who were eager for excitement.

"Who are you," she cried, "that you should be so quick to accuse this stranger? You, Arkansaw Red, that skipped from Kansas for killin' a nigger! You, Jim Padden, that shot a sheep-herder in cold blood! You, Banjo Johnson, that's hidin' out this minute! Don't you all be so darned anxious to hang another man, when there's a rope waitin' somewhere for your own necks!

"And lemme tell you"--she took a step toward them. "The man that lifts a finger to take this bug-hunter to the Agency can take his blankets along at the same time, for there'll never be a bunk or a seat at the table for him on this ranch as long as he lives. Where's your proof against this bug-hunter? You can't drag a man off without something against him--just because you want to _hang_ somebody!"

Some sound from Smith attracted her attention; she wheeled upon him, and, with her thin arm outstretched as she pointed at him in scorn, she cried shrilly:

"Why, I'd sooner think _you_ did it, than him!"

There was not so much as the flicker of an eyelid from Smith.

"I know you'd _sooner_ think I did it than him," he said, playing upon the word. "You'd like to see _me_ get my neck stretched."

His bravado, his very insolence, was his protection.

"And maybe I'll have the chanst!" she retorted furiously.

Turning from him to the Indians, her voice dropped, the harsh language taking on the soft accent of the squaws as she spoke to them in their own tongue. Like many half-breeds, Susie seldom admitted that she either understood or could speak the Indian language. She had an amusing fashion of referring even to her relatives as "those Injuns"; but now, with hands outstretched, she pleaded:

"We are all Indians together in this--friends of White Antelope! Our hearts are down; they are heavy--so. You all know that he came from the great Cree country with my father, and he has told us many times stories of the big north woods, where they hunted and trapped. You know how he watched me when I was little, and sat with his hand upon my head when I had the big fever. He was like no one else to me except my father. He was wise and good.

"I could kill with my own hand the man who killed White Antelope. I want his blood as much as you. I'd like to see a stake driven through his black heart on White Antelope's grave. But let us not be too quick because the hate is hot in us. My heart tells me that the white man talks straight. Let us wait--wait until we find the right one, and when we do we will punish in our own way. You hear? _In our own way!_"

Smith understood something of her plea, and for the second time he paid her courage tribute.

"She's a game kid all right," he said to himself, and a half-formed plan for utilizing her gameness began to take definite shape.

That she had won, he knew before Running Rabbit recoiled his rope. After a moment's talk among themselves, the Indians went to hitch the horses to the wagon, to bring White Antelope's body home.

Smith was well aware that he had only to point to the saddle blanket, the barest edge of which showed beneath the leather skirts of McArthur's saddle, to make Susie's impassioned defense in vain. Why he did not, he was not himself sure. Perhaps it was because he liked the feeling of power, of knowing that he held the life of the despised bug-hunter in the hollow of his hand; or perhaps it was because it would serve his purpose better to make the accusation later. One thing was certain, however, and that was that he had not held his tongue through any consideration for McArthur.

VI

THE GREAT SECRET

It was the day they buried White Antelope that Smith approached Yellow Bird, a Piegan, who was among the Indians paying visits of indefinite length to the MacDonald ranch. "Eddie" Yellow Bird, he was called at the Blackfoot mission where he had learned to read and write--though he would never have been suspected of these accomplishments, since to all appearances he was a "blanket Indian."

Smith spoke the Piegan tongue almost as fluently as his own, so he and Yellow Bird quickly became _compadres_, relating to each other stories of their prowess, of horses they had run off, of cattle they had stolen, and hinting, Indian fashion, with significant intonations and pauses, at crimes of greater magnitude.

"How is your heart to-day, friend? Is it strong?"

"Weak," replied Yellow Bird jestingly, touching his breast with a fluttering hand.

"It would be stronger if you had red meat in your stomach," Smith suggested significantly.

"The bacon is not for Indians," agreed Yellow Bird.

"But the woman would have no cattle left if she killed only her own beef."

"Many people stop here--strangers and friends," Yellow Bird admitted.

"There is plenty on the range." Smith looked toward the Bar C ranch.

"He is a dog on the trail, that white man, when his cattle are stolen," Yellow Bird replied doubtfully.

"I've killed dogs--me, Smith--when they got in my way. Yellow Bird, are you a woman, that you are afraid?"

"Wolf Robe, who stole only a calf, sits like this"--Yellow Bird looked at Smith sullenly through his spread fingers.

"You have talked with the forked tongue, Yellow Bird. You are not a Piegan buck of the great Blackfoot nation; you are a woman. Your fathers killed men; _you_ are afraid to kill cattle." Smith turned from him contemptuously.

"My heart is as strong as yours. I am ready."

It was dusk when Smith returned and held out a blood-stained flour sack to the squaw.

"Liver. A two-year ole."

The squaw's eyes sparkled. Ah, this was as it should be! Her man provided for her; he brought her meat to eat. He was clever and brave, for it was other men's meat he brought her to eat. MacDonald had killed only his own cattle, and secretly it had shamed her, for she mistook his honesty for lack of courage. To steal was legitimate; it was brave; something to be told among friends at night, and laughed over. Susie, she had observed with regret, was honest, like her father. She patted the back of Smith's hand, and looked at him with dog-like, adoring eyes as they stood in the log meat-house, where fresh quarters hung.

"I'd do more nor this for you, Prairie Flower;" and, laying his hand upon her shoulder, he pressed it with his finger-tips.

"Say, but that's great liver!" Tubbs reached half the length of the table and helped himself a third time. "That'd make a man fight his grandmother. Who butchered it?"

"Me," Smith answered.

"It tastes like slow elk," said Susie.

"Maybe you oughtn't to eat it till you're showed the hide," Smith suggested.

"Maybe I oughtn't," Susie retorted. "I didn't see any fresh hide a-hangin' on the fence. We _always_ hangs _our_ hides."

"I _never_ hangs _my_ hides. I cuts 'em up in strips and braids 'em into throw-ropes. It's safer."

The grub-liners laughed at the inference which Smith so coolly implied.

The finding of White Antelope's body, and its subsequent burial, had delayed the opening of Dora's night-school, so Smith, for reasons of his own, had spent much of his time in the bunk-house, covertly studying the grub-liners, who passed the hours exchanging harrowing experiences of their varied careers.

A strong friendship had sprung up between Susie and McArthur. While Susie liked and greatly admired the Schoolmarm, she never yet had opened her heart to her. Beyond their actual school-work, they seemed to have little in common; and it was a real disappointment and regret to the Schoolmarm that, for some reason which she could not reach, she had never been able to break through the curious reserve of the little half-breed, who, superficially, seemed so transparently frank. Each time that she made the attempt, she found herself repulsed--gently, even tactfully, but repulsed.

Dora Marshall did not suspect that these rebuffs were due to an error of her own. In the beginning, when Susie had questioned her naively of the outside world, she had permitted amusement to show in her face and manner. She never fully recognized the fact that while Susie to all appearances, intents, and purposes was Anglo-Saxon, an equal quantity of Indian blood flowed in her veins, and that this blood, with its accompanying traits and characteristics, must be reckoned with.

As a matter of fact, Susie was suspicious, unforgiving, with all the Indians' sensitiveness to and fear of ridicule. She meant never again to entertain the Schoolmarm by her ignorant questions, although she yearned with all a young girl's yearning for some one in whom to confide--some one with whom she could discuss the future which she often questioned and secretly dreaded.

With real adroitness Susie had tested McArthur, searching his face for the glimmer of amusement which would have destroyed irredeemably any chance of real comradeship between them. But invariably McArthur had answered her questions gravely; and when her tears had fallen fast and hot at White Antelope's grave, she had known, with an intuition both savage and childish, that his sympathy was sincere. She had felt, too, the genuineness of his interest when, later, she had repeated to him many of the stories White Antelope had told her of the days when he and her father had trapped and hunted together in the big woods to the north.

So to-night, when the living-room was deserted by all save her mother, at work on her rugs in the corner, Susie confided to him her Great Secret, and McArthur, some way, felt strangely flattered by the confidence. He had no desire to laugh; indeed, there were times when the tears were perilously close to the surface. He had been a shy, lonely student, and quite as lonely as a man, yet through the promptings of a heart sympathetic and kind and with the fine instinct of gentle birth, he understood the bizarre little half-breed in a way which surprised himself.

There was a settee on one side of the room, made of elk-horns and interwoven buckskin thongs, and it was there, in the whisper which makes a secret doubly alluring, that Susie told him of her plans; but first she brought from some hiding-place outside a long pasteboard box, carefully wrapped and tied.

McArthur, puffing on the briar-wood pipe which he was seldom without, waited with interest, but without showing curiosity, for he felt that, in a way, this was a critical moment in their friendship.

"If you didn't see me here on the reservation, would you know I was Injun?" Susie demanded, facing him.

McArthur regarded her critically.

"You have certain characteristics--your rather high cheek-bones, for instance--and your skin has a peculiar tint."

"I got an awful complexion on me," Susie agreed, "but I'm goin' to fix that."

"Then, your movements and gestures----"

"That's from talkin' signs, maybe. I can talk signs so fast that the full-bloods themselves have to ask me to slow up. But, now, if you saw me with my hair frizzled--all curled up, like, and pegged down on top of my head--and a red silk dress on me with a long skirt, and shiny shoes coming to a point, and a white hat with birds and flowers staked out on it, and maybe kid gloves on my hands--would you know right off it was me? Would you say, 'Why, there's that Susie MacDonald--that breed young un from the reservation'?"

"No," declared McArthur firmly; "I certainly never should say, 'Why, there's that Susie MacDonald--that breed young un from the reservation.' As a matter of fact," he went on gravely, "I should probably say, 'What a pity that a young lady so intelligent and high-spirited should frizz her hair'!"

"Would you?" insisted Susie delightedly.

"Undoubtedly," McArthur replied, with satisfying emphasis.

"And how long do you think it would take me to stop slingin' the buckskin and learn to talk like you?--to say big words without bitin' my tongue and gettin' red in the face?"

"Do I use large words frequently?" McArthur asked in real surprise.

"Whoppers!" said Susie.

"I do it unconsciously." McArthur's tone was apologetic.

"Sure, I know it."

"I shrink from appearing pedantic," said McArthur, half to himself.

"So do I," Susie declared mischievously. "I don't know what it is, but I shrink from it. Do you think I could learn big words?"

"Of course." McArthur wondered where all these questions led.

"Did you ever notice that I'm kind of polite sometimes?"

"Frequently."

"That I say 'If you please' and 'Thank you,' and did you notice the other morning when I asked Old Man Rulison how his ribs was getting along that Arkansaw Red kicked in, and said I was sorry the accident happened?"

McArthur nodded.

"Well, I didn't mean it." She giggled. "That was just my manners that I was practisin' on him. He was onery, and only got what was comin' to him; but if you're goin' to be polite, seems like you dassn't tell the truth. But Miss Marshall says that 'Thank you,' 'If you please,' and 'Good morning, how's your ribs?' are kind of pass-words out in the world that help you along."

"Yes, Susie; that's true."

"So I'm tryin' to catch onto all I can, because"--her eyes dilated, and she lowered her voice--"I'm goin' out in the world pretty soon."

"To school?"

She shook her head.

"I'm goin' to hunt up Dad's relations; and when I find 'em, I don't want 'em to be ashamed of me, and of him for marryin' into the Injuns."

"They need never be ashamed of you, Susie."