CHAPTER XXIX

A MAID’S MISTAKE

DIMINISHED but undaunted, the great herd swept north once more into the wide, sweet, unknown world. The mingled grasslands and narrow timber tracts which lay between the heads of the water courses made for cattle drovers a land of plenty where man had not yet come. In every hollow the wild deer sprang away, the head of every draw contained its flocks of great wild turkeys. On the grassy flats were uncounted coveys of the prairie grouse. The air was enlivened with the wild calls of the giant sickle-billed curfew; and from above came the mysterious, baffling liquid tremolo of the upland plover, honey sweet to hear. Glossy green parakeets showed in the timber mottes, meadow larks made gay the air with their metallic clankings, mixed with the broken strains of melody all their own. There was life, motion, all the time in the wild landscape.

The vegetable world also was rich, richer than our Government had thought when in ignorance it gave this domain to the savages in a treaty which, like all our treaties, later was to be repealed. Fruits began to appear, few of them yet ripening; wild grapes, plums. They crossed one strip of sand dunes which ran through the grassy knolls, and found an astonishing growth of dwarfed grapevines, showing not more than a foot or so above the sand, but promising fruit of great size.

In the timbered valleys there was an admirable growth of elms, cottonwoods, black walnuts. Haws and persimmons, not yet ripe, young acorns of the oak trees, showed what the fall mast would be. The black bears and the deer even now were hunting mushrooms. Abundance of food was there for every species. The spotted wildcat made no unusual sight. Now and then a panther passed ghostlike from one covert to the next. A rich land and a contented, indolent, assured. The white men had not yet come. Nor was there even here either weed or bee.

Though really near the eastern edge of their range of that day, distant bands of the buffalo still showed; and adding yet keener zest to an enlivened landscape, frequent bands of wild horses passed in their easy drifting over the grasslands, or stood at gaze in superb confidence in their own speed. It was the open country, the free country, of the old West. In it these men were as much adventurers as had been the sailors of Columbus or Cabot, Leif Ericson or Magellan. It had taken three Army expeditions and a half century of time to find the head of the Red River, which made the drovers’ Rubicon. Young in the youth of their world, they exulted as they rode.

Colonel Sandy Griswold quit the saddle for the jolting cart seat to which Nabours had banished Taisie Lockhart. The wilderness makes swift friendships.

“My dear,” said the soldier to the girl one day as they rode, joltingly along. “I wouldn’t ask anything better than just to ride along this way with you forever. You are by no means painful to the naked eye, and within sixty days you will be rich. Abilene is not a dream, although it is just beginning. Two railroads are going west across the lower Plains now. They are going to make a cattle market at Abilene and you are in on the ground floor. Rich? Are you going to support a husband? You could, you know.”

“I think I’ll buy myself some clothes the first thing I’ll do,” said Taisie, slowly smiling, “if there is such a thing as women’s clothes at Abilene.”

“There you go! Woman’s first instinct. Tell me”—suddenly—“where is that tall young man—you know which one I mean. You don’t know where he is?”

“I think he’s back behind to-day. He’s not regularly on the herd—now.”

“You don’t know very much, do you, my dear? You’d let a brave, square man ride on the drag?”

“Please don’t, I beg of you! I don’t really know why you mention him. My men all are splendid.”

But he went on relentlessly.

“Yes; and I suppose you know that your men are riding his horses—that you are eating his food yourself? Did you know that he staked you for this drive—that he is going to make your fortune for you? No, you never knew that. But that’s true.”

“Oh, don’t tell me such things!” broke out Taisie in swift consternation. “I never knew that! Of course I never knew it! I’d never have gone a foot! Oh, this is an awful thing!”

“Yes, my dear; there are awful things that a woman can do to a man, too. Now that it is too late it would be quite like a woman for you to love him. You ought to have trusted him in the first place. You can’t fool with a man like that. He’s cold iron.”

“He didn’t—he wouldn’t—don’t you think—do you suppose—why, what can I do? I’ve been unjust. Yes, I know that now!”

“Well, I wouldn’t climb down out of this cart right now anyhow,” said Colonel Griswold calmly.

“But I can’t go on this way. What shall I do? Rich? No, I’m a pauper! And I’ve not a soul in all the world to go to.”

“Oh, yes, you have, my dear! Observe me beat on my chest. I, Sandy Griswold, will save this maiden in distress! But it’s always best to get the truth, the first thing. Well, you’ve got it now. You never would have learned it unless I had told you. That young man would rather cut his throat than tell you what I have told you. He never dreamed I would. But I thought it right.”

“But I can’t go on this way!”

“You have got to go on in this way, my dear. There is nothing else for you to do. When that man says he is through he is through. He’s got the chief ingredients of a bad man. But there never was a bad man who didn’t have good things about him. That sort of a man can’t alter a decision. He thinks once, acts once, is done once and for all, and when he’s done he’s done. I can’t help you with him. But what a splendid pair of human beings you have spoiled!”

“A fine prospect you give me, sir! Oh, you are comforting!” said Taisie Lockhart bitterly.

“It will be very hard for a girl like you not to marry some man. It is a very terrible thing to marry the wrong man, my dear. It’s a very terrible thing to let a man think you meant to marry him when you didn’t. It’s the worst when a man wants to marry and can’t—because he can’t forgive an insult to his honor. It is lucky you are not a man.”

“Ah, less lucky that I am woman! I shall choke at the thought of eating his bread!”

“Oh, no, you won’t. That’s melodrama, my dear. If you don’t like his flour eat some of mine.

“No, keep your eyes closed and your mouth closed, too, until you get to Abilene. I may meet you or send for you up there myself. That’s what the Army’s for—we’re organized to help damsels in distress. That you are in distress I know very well indeed. While there’s a sack of flour or an ambulance mule left—well, we’ll see.”

At the encampment of the last night below the Washita, Taisie Lockhart might well have felt a sense of security. There were two troops of cavalry and all her own men bivouacked about her. But she could not sleep.

Soon after dark that night Dan McMasters, asking no consent and giving no notification, quietly rose and caught up his night horse. He disappeared in the darkness headed toward the ford. He said no word of good-by to any one, and was not missed by any one—save by one unhappy girl who had lacked his coming all these days. She was sure she hated him—when she reasoned. When she did not reason she felt her veins run hot with love of him. He had kissed her. Their arms had encircled one another. Ah, obligations?