Chapter 5

"Honest? Honest, don't you think so?" She looked at him wistfully. "I'd try awful hard not to make breaks," she went on, "and make 'em feel like cachin' me in the cellar when they saw company comin'. It's just plumb awful to be lonesome here, like I am sometimes; to be homesick for something or somebody--for other kind of folks besides Injuns and grub-liners, and Schoolmarms that look at you as if you was a new, queer kind of bug, and laugh at you with their eyes.

"Dad's got kin, I know; for lots of times when I would go with him to hunt horses, he would say, 'I'll take you back to see them some time, Susie, girl.' But he never said where 'back' was, so I've got to find out myself. Wouldn't it be awful, though"--and her chin quivered--"if after I'd been on the trail for days and days, and my ponies were foot-sore, they wasn't glad to see me when I rode up to the house, but hinted around that horse-feed was short and grub was scarce, and they couldn't well winter me?"

"They wouldn't do that," said McArthur reassuringly. "Nobody named MacDonald would do that."

Susie began to untie the pasteboard box which contained her treasures.

"Nearly ever since Dad died, I've been getting ready to go. I don't mean that I would leave Mother for keeps--of course not; but after I've found 'em, maybe I can coax 'em to come and live with us. I used to ask White Antelope every question I could think of, but all he knew was that after they'd sold their furs to the Hudson Bay Company, they sometimes went to a lodge in Canada called Selkirk, where almost everybody there was named MacDonald or MacDougal or Mackenzie or Mac something. Lots of his friends there married Sioux and went to the Walla Walla valley, and maybe I'll have to go there to find somebody who knew him; but first I'll go to Selkirk.

"I'll take a good pack-outfit, and Running Rabbit to find trails and wrangle horses. See--I've got my trail all marked out on the map."

She unfolded a worn leaf from a school geography.

"It looks as if it was only a sleep or two away, but White Antelope said it was the big ride--maybe a hundred sleeps. And lookee"--she unfolded fashion plates of several periods. "I've even picked out the clothes I'll buy to put on when I get nearly to the ranch where they live. I can make camp, you know, and change my clothes, and then go walkin' down the road carryin' this here parasol and wearin' this here white hat and holdin' up this here long skirt like Teacher on Sunday.

"Won't they be surprised when they open the door and see me standin' on the door-step? I'll say, 'How do you do? I'm Susie MacDonald, your relation what's come to visit you.' I think this would be better than showin' up with Running Rabbit and the pack-outfit, until I'd kind of broke the news to 'em. I'd keep Running Rabbit cached in the brush till I sent for him.

"You see, I've thought about it so much that it seems like it was as good as done; but maybe when I start I won't find it so easy. I might have to ride clear to this Minnesota country, or beyond the big waters to the New York or Connecticut country, mightn't I?"

"You might," McArthur replied soberly.

"But I'd take a lot of jerked elk, and everybody says grub's easy to get if you have money, I'd start with about nine ponies in my string, so it looks like I ought to get through?"

She waited anxiously for McArthur to express his opinion.

He wondered how he could disillusionize her, shatter the dream which he could see had become a part of her life. Should he explain to her that when she had crossed the mountains and left behind her the deserts which constituted the only world she knew, and by which, with its people, she judged the country she meant to penetrate, she would find herself a bewildered little savage in a callous, complex civilization where she had no place--wondered at, gibed at, defeated of her purpose?

"Are you sure you have no other clues--no old letters, no photographs?"

She was about to answer when a tapping like the pecking of a snowbird on a window-sill was heard on the door.

Susie opened it.

In ludicrous contrast to the timid rap, a huge figure that all but filled it was framed in the doorway.

It was "Babe" from the Bar C ranch; "Baby" Britt, curly-haired, pink-cheeked, with one innocent blue eye dark from recent impact with a fist, which gave its owner the appearance of a dissipated cherub.

"Evenin'," he said tremulously, his eyes roving as though in search of some one.

"I lost a horse----" he began.

"Brown?" interrupted Susie, with suspicious interest. "With a star in the forehead?"

"Yes."

"One white stockin'?"

"Uh-huh."

"Roached mane?"

"Ye-ah."

"Kind of a rat-tail?"

"Yep."

"Left hip knocked down?"

"Babe" nodded.

"Saddle-sore?"

"That's it. Where did you see him?"

"I didn't see him."

"Aw-w-w," rumbled "Babe" in disgust.

"Teacher!"

Dora Marshall's door opened in response to Susie's lusty call.

"Have you seen a brown horse with a star in its forehead, roached mane----"

"Aw, g'wan, Susie!" In confusion, "Babe" began to remove his spurs, thereby serving notice upon the Schoolmarm that he had "come to set a spell."

So the Schoolmarm brought her needlework, and while she explained to Mr. Britt the exact shadings which she intended to give to each leaf and flower, that person sat with his entranced eyes upon her white hands, with their slender, tapering fingers--the smallest, the most beautiful hands, he firmly believed, in the whole world.

It was not easy to carry on a spirited conversation with Mr. Britt. At best, his range of topics was limited, and in his present frame of mind he was about as vivacious as a deaf mute. He was quite content to sit with the high heels of his cowboy boots--from which a faint odor of the stable emanated--hung over the rung of his chair, and to watch the Schoolmarm's hand plying the needle on that almost sacred sofa-pillow.

"Your work must be very interesting, Mr. Britt," suggested Dora.

"I dunno as 'tis," replied Mr. Britt.

"It's so--so picturesque."

Mr. Britt considered.

"I shouldn't say it was."

"But you like it?"

"Not by a high-kick!"

If there was one thing upon which Mr. Britt prided himself more than another, it was upon knowing how to temper his language to his company.

"Why do you stick to it, then?"

"Don't know how to do anything else."

"You don't get much time to read, do you?"

"Oh, yes; _P'lice Gazette_ comes reg'lar."

"But you have no church or social privileges?"

"What's that?"

"I say, you have no entertainment, no time or opportunity for amusement, have you?"

"Oh, my, yes," Mr. Britt declared heartily. "We has a game of stud poker nearly every Sunday mornin', and races in the afternoon."

"Ain't he sparklin'?" whispered Susie across the room to Dora, who pretended not to hear.

"You are fond of horses?" inquired the Schoolmarm, desperately.

"Oh, I has nothin' agin 'em." He qualified his statement by adding: "Leastways, unless they come from the Buffalo Basin country. Then I shore hates 'em." At last Mr. Britt was upon a subject upon which he could talk fluently and for an indefinite length of time. "You take that there Buffalo Basin stock," he went on earnestly, "and they're nothin' but inbred cayuse outlaws. They're treach'rous. Oneriest horses that ever wore hair. Can't gentle 'em--simply can't be done. They've piled me up more times than any horses that run. Sunfishers--the hull of 'em; rare up and fall over backwards. 'Tain't pleasant ridin' a horse like that. Wheel on you quicker'n a weasel; shy clean acrost the road at nothin'; kick--stand up and strike at you in the corral. It's irritatin'. Hard keepers, too. Maybe you've noticed that blue roan I'm ridin'. Well, sir, the way I've throwed feed into that horse is a scandal, and the more he eats the worse he looks. Besides, it spoils them Buffalo Basin buzzard-heads to eat. Give 'em three square meals, and you can't hardly ride 'em. They ain't stayers, neither; no bottom, seems-like. Forty miles, and that horse of mine is played out. What for a horse is that? Is that a horse? Not by a high-kick! Gimme a buckskin with a black line down his back, and zebra stripes on his legs--high back, square chest--say, then you got a _horse!_"

It was apparent enough that Mr. Britt had not commenced to exhaust the subject of the Buffalo Basin stock. As a matter of fact, he had barely started; but the sound of horses coming up the path, and a whoop outside, caused a suspension of his conversation.

Something heavy was thrown against the door, and when Susie opened it a roll of roped canvas rolled inside, while the lamplight fell upon the grinning faces of two Bar C cowpunchers.

"What's that?" The Schoolmarm looked wonderingly at the bundle.

"Aw-w-w!" Mr. Britt replied, in angry confusion. "It's my bed. I'll put a crimp in them two for this." He shouldered his blankets sheepishly and went out.

VII

CUPID "WINGS" A DEPUTY SHERIFF

Riding home next morning with his bed on a borrowed pack-horse, morose, his mind occupied with divers plans for punishing the cowpunchers who had spoiled his evening and made him ridiculous before the Schoolmarm, "Babe" came upon something in a gulch which caused him to rein his horse sharply and swing from the saddle.

With an ejaculation of surprise, he pulled a fresh hide from under a pile of rock, it having been partially uncovered by coyotes. The brand had been cut out, and with the sight of this significant find, the two cowpunchers, their obnoxious joke, even the Schoolmarm, were forgotten; for there was a new thief on the range, and a new thief meant excitement and adventure.

Colonel Tolman's deep-set eyes glittered when he heard the news. As Running Rabbit had said, on the trail of a cattle-thief he was as relentless as a bloodhound. He could not eat or sleep in peace until the man who had robbed him was behind the bars. The Colonel was an old-time Texas cattleman, and his herds had ranged from the Mexican border to the Alberta line. He had made and lost fortunes. Disease, droughts, and blizzards had cleaned him out at various times, and always he had taken his medicine without a whimper; but the loss of so much as a yearling calf by theft threw him into a rage that was like hysteria.

His hand shook as he sat down at his desk and wrote a note to the Stockmen's Association, asking for the services of their best detective. It meant four days of hard riding to deliver the note, but the Colonel put it into "Babe's" hand as if he were asking him to drop it in the mail-box around the corner.

"Go, and git back," were his laconic instructions, and he turned to pace the floor.

When "Babe" returned some eight days later, with the deputy sheriff, he found the Colonel striding to and fro, his wrath having in no wise abated. The cowboy wondered if his employer had been walking the floor all that time.

"My name is Ralston," said the tall young deputy, as he stood before the old cattleman.

"Ralston?" The Colonel rose on his toes a trifle to peer into his face.

"Not Dick Ralston's boy?"

The six-foot deputy smiled.

"The same, sir."

The Colonel's hand shot out in greeting.

"Anybody of that name is pretty near like kin to me. Many's the time your dad and I have eaten out of the same frying-pan."

"So I've heard him say."

"Does he know you're down here on this job?"

The young man shook his head soberly.

"No."

The Colonel looked at him keenly.

"Had a falling out?"

"No; scarcely that; but we couldn't agree exactly upon some things, so I struck out for myself when I came home from college."

"No future for you in this sleuthing business," commented the old man tersely. "Why didn't you go into cattle with your dad?"

"That's where we disagreed, sir. I wanted to buy sheep, and he goes straight into the air at the very word."

The Colonel laughed.

"I can believe that."

"Over there the range is going fast, and it's fight and scrap and quarrel all the time to keep the sheep off what little there is left; and then you ship and bottom drops out of the market as soon as your cattle are loaded. There's nothing in it; and while I don't like sheep any better than the Governor, there's no use in hanging on and going broke in cattle because of a prejudice."

"Dick's stubborn,"--the Colonel nodded knowingly--"and I don't believe he'll ever give in."

"No; I don't think he will, and I'm sorry for his sake, because he's getting too old to worry."

"Worry? Cattle's nothing but worry!--which reminds me of what you are here for."

"Have you any suspicions?"

"No. I don't believe I can help you any. The Injuns been good as pie since we sent Wolf Robe over the road. Don't hardly think it's Injuns. Don't know what to think. Might be some of these Mormon outfits going north. Might be some of these nesters off in the hills. Might be anybody!"

"Is he an old hand?"

"Looks like it. Cuts the brand out and buries the hide." The Colonel began pacing the floor. "Cattle-thieves are people that's got to be nipped in the bud _muy pronto_. There ought to be a lynching on every cattle-range once in seven years. It's the only way to hold 'em level. Down there on the Rio Grande we rode away and left fourteen of 'em swinging over the bluff. It's got to be done in all cattle countries, and since they've started in here--well, a hanging is overdue by two years." The Colonel ejected his words with the decisive click of a riot-gun.

So Dick Ralston, Jr., rode the range for the purpose of getting the lay of the country, and, on one pretext or another, visited the squalid homes of the nesters, but nowhere found anybody or anything in the least suspicious. He learned of the murder of White Antelope, and of the "queer-actin'" bug-hunter and his pal, who had been accused of it. It was rather generally believed that McArthur was a desperado of a new and original kind. While it was conceded that he seemed to have no way of disposing of the meat, and certainly could not kill a cow and eat it himself, it was nevertheless declared that he was "worth watching."

While the hangers-on at the MacDonald ranch were all known to have records, no particular suspicion had attached to them in this instance, because the squaw was known to kill her own beef, and no shadow of doubt had ever fallen upon the good name of the ranch.

The trapping of cattle-thieves is not the work of a day or a week, but sometimes of months; and when evidence of another stolen beef was found upon the range, Ralston realized that his efforts lay in that vicinity for some time to come. He decided to ride over to the MacDonald ranch that evening and have a look at the bad _hombre_ who masqueraded as a bug-hunter--bug-hunter, it should be explained, being a Western term for any stranger engaged in scientific pursuits.

While Ralston was riding over the lonely road in the moonlight, Dora was arranging the dining-room table for her night-school, which had been in session several evenings. Smith was studying grammar, of which branch of learning Dora had decided he stood most in need, while Susie groaned over compound fractions.

Tubbs, with his chair tilted against the wall, looked on with a tolerant smile. In the kitchen, paring a huge pan of potatoes for breakfast, Ling listened with such an intensity of interest to what was being said that his ears seemed fairly to quiver. From her bench in the living-room, the Indian woman braided rags and darted jealous glances at teacher and pupil. Smith, his hair looking like a bunch of tumble-weed in a high wind, hung over a book with a look of genuine misery upon his face.

"I didn't have any notion there was so much in the world I didn't know," he burst out. "I thought when I'd learnt that if you sprinkle your saddle-blanket you can hold the biggest steer that runs, without your saddle slippin', I'd learnt about all they was worth knowin'."

"It's tedious," Dora admitted.

"Tedious?" echoed Smith in loud pathos. "It's hell! Say, I can tie a fancy knot in a bridle-rein that can't be beat by any puncher in the country, but _darn_ me if I can see the difference between a adjective and one of these here adverbs! Once I thought I knowed something--me, Smith--but say, I don't know enough to make a mark in the road!"

Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he repeated:

"'I have had, you have had, he has had.'"

"If you would have had about six drinks, I think you could git that," observed Tubbs judicially, watching Smith's mental suffering with keen interest.

"Don't be discouraged," said Dora cheerfully, seating herself beside him. "Let's take a little review. Do you remember what I told you about this?"

She pointed to the letter _a_ marked with the long sound.

Smith ran both hands through his hair, while a wild, panic-stricken look came upon his face.

"Dog-gone me! I know it's a _a_, but I plumb forget how you called it."

Tubbs unhooked his toes from the chair-legs and walked around to look over Smith's shoulder.

"Smith, you got a great forgitter," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you use your head a little? That there is a Bar A. You ought to have knowed that. The Bar A stock run all over the Judith Basin."

"Don't you remember I told you that whenever you saw that mark over a letter you should give it the long sound?" explained Dora patiently.

"Like the _a_ in 'aig,'" elucidated Tubbs.

"Like the _a_ in 'snake,'" corrected the Schoolmarm.

"Or 'wake,' or 'skate,' or 'break,'" said Smith hopefully.

"Fine!" declared the Schoolmarm.

"I knowed that much myself," said Tubbs enviously.

"If you'll pardon me, Mr. Tubbs," said Dora, in some irritation, "there is no such word as 'knowed.'"

"Why don't you talk grammatical, Tubbs?" Smith demanded, with alacrity.

"I talks what I knows," said Tubbs, going back to his chair.

"Have you forgotten all I told you about adjectives?"

"Adjectives is words describin' things. They's two kinds, comparative and superlative," Smith replied promptly. He added. "Adjectives kind of stuck in my craw."

"Can you give me examples?" Dora felt encouraged.

"You got a horrible pretty hand," Smith replied, without hesitation. "'Horrible pretty' is a adjective describin' your hand."

Dora burst out laughing, and Tubbs, without knowing why, joined in heartily.

"Tubbs," continued Smith, glaring at that person, "has got the horriblest mug I ever seen, and if he opens it and laffs like that at me again, I aims to break his head. 'Horriblest' is a superlative adjective describin' Tubbs's mug."

To Smith's chagrin and Tubbs's delight, Dora explained that "horrible" was a word which could not be used in conjunction with "pretty," and that its superlative was not "horriblest."

Smith buried his head in his hands despondently.

"If I was where I could, I'd get drunk!"

"It's nothing to feel so badly about," said Dora comfortingly. "Let's go back to prepositions. Can you define a preposition?"

Smith screwed up his face and groped for words, but before he found them Tubbs broke in:

"A preposition is what a feller has to sell that nobody wants," he explained glibly. "They's copper prepositions, silver-lead prepositions, and onct I had a oil preposition up in the Swift Current country."

Smith reached inside his coat and pulled out the carved, ivory-handled six-shooter which he wore in a holster under his arm. He laid it on the table beside his grammar, and looked at Tubbs.

"Feller," he said, "I hates to make a gun-play before the Schoolmarm, but if you jump into this here game again, I aims to try a chunk of lead on you."

"If book-learnin' ud ever make me as peevish as it does you," declared Tubbs, rising hastily, "I hopes I never knows nothin'."

Tubbs slammed the door behind him as he went to seek more amiable company in the bunk-house.

Save for the Indian woman, Smith and Dora were now practically alone; for Ling had gone to bed, and Susie was oblivious to everything except fractions. Smith continued to struggle with prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs, but he found it difficult to concentrate his thoughts on them with Dora so close beside him. He knew that his slightest glance, every expression which crossed his face, was observed by the Indian woman; and although he did his utmost not to betray his feelings, he saw the sullen, jealous resentment rising within her.

She read aright the light in his eyes; besides, her intuitions were greater than his powers of concealment. When she could no longer endure the sight of Smith and the Schoolmarm sitting side by side, she laid down her work and slipped out into the star-lit night, closing the door softly behind her.

Smith's judgment told him that he should end the lesson and go after her, but the spell of love was upon him, overwhelming him, holding him fast in delicious thraldom. He had not the strength of will just then to break it.

Dora had been reading "Hiawatha" aloud each evening to Susie, Tubbs, and Smith, so when she finally closed the grammar, she asked if he would like to hear more of the Indian story, as he called it, to which he nodded assent.

Dora read well, with intelligence and sympathy; her trained voice was flexible. Then, too, she loved this greatest of American legends. It appealed to her audience as perhaps no other poem would have done. It was real to them, it was "life," their life in a little different environment and told in a musical rhythm which held them breathless, enchanted.

Dora had reached the story of "The Famine." She knew the refrain by heart, and the wail of old Nokomis was in her voice as she repeated from memory:

"Wahonowin! Wahonowin! Would that I had perished for you! Would that I were dead as you are! Wahonowin! Wahonowin!

"Then they buried Minnehaha; In the snow a grave they made her, In the forest deep and darksome, Underneath the moaning hemlocks; Clothed her in her richest garments, Wrapped her in her robes of ermine, Covered her with snow, like ermine; So they buried Minnehaha."

The pathos of the lines never failed to touch Dora anew. Her voice broke, and, pausing to recover herself, she glanced at Smith. There were tears in his eyes. The brutal chin was quivering like that of a tender-hearted child.

"The man that wrote that was a _chief_," he said huskily. "It hurts me here--in my neck." He rubbed the contracted muscles of his throat. "I'd feel like that, girl, if you should die."

He repeated softly, and choked:

"All my heart is buried with you, All my thoughts go onward with you!"

The impression which the poem made upon Smith was deep. It was a constant surprise to him also. The thoughts it expressed, the sensations it described, he had believed were entirely original with himself. He had not conceived it possible that any one else could feel toward a woman as he felt toward Dora. Therefore, when the poet put many of his heart-throbs into words, they startled him, as though, somehow, his own heart were photographed and held up to view.

Susie had finished her lesson, and, cramped from sitting, was walking about the living-room to rest herself, while this conversation was taking place. Her glance fell upon a gaudy vase on a shelf, and some thought came to her which made her laugh mischievously. She emptied the contents of the vase into the palm of her hand and, closing the other over it, tiptoed into the dining-room and stood behind Smith.

Dora and he, engrossed in conversation, paid no attention to her. She put her cupped palms close to Smith's ear and, shaking them vigorously, shouted:

"Snakes!"

The result was such as Susie had not anticipated.

With a shriek which was womanish in its shrillness, Smith sprang to his feet, all but upsetting the lamp in his violence. Unmixed horror was written upon his face.