Part 21

"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!" he growled at Frosty. He snapped the lash of his black-snake whip, making the bays dance to the hindrance of Frosty's task. His eye caught the new dance hall.

"She's been worth while, if she never does another thing," he commented to himself, and then realized that he had said it, not because he believed it, but because he wanted to keep his courage up. What was this dread of the intangible? He could not understand it. "Getting too old to sit up all night," he explained it to himself.

His thoughts went back to the night. It had left with him an impression of being unsatisfactory. Why should it? There was something about the girl, he did not recall exactly what. Oh yes, Cheyenne Harry! That affair had balked. Well, it did not much matter: that was a detail. Now that the dance hall was up, the girl could be forced to take her place. Lafond told himself that he was a little tired of finesse and delicate planning--too tired to undertake another long campaign of the kind merely for the satisfaction to be found in the process. Besides, in this case it was not necessary. He would settle the affair now, get it off his mind.

He strode over to the girl's shack and pushed open the door. She was lying flat on her face, fully dressed as in her first transport of shame, but she had now fallen into a light sleep. At the creak of the door, however, she looked up, her eyes red with crying.

"That was a hell of a performance last night," said Lafond brutally, "and it don't go again."

He had never spoken to her so before.

She sat upright on the bed and stared at him, clasping one hand near her throat.

"That ain't what you're here for," continued Mike. "There'll be another dance Saturday night, and you be on hand and stay on hand. That's your job now--understand?"

A slow comprehension of his meaning crept into her eyes, and she covered them with her hands. The halfbreed stood in the doorway coiling and uncoiling the lash of his whip. He wanted some indication of how she was going to take it.

"Understand?" he repeated.

She merely shuddered.

"Damn it! can't you answer?" he cried impatiently. "What do you think I've raised you for anyway? You're none of my breed. Answer, you----," and he spat out an epithet.

She lowered her hands and looked at him again with wide-open eyes from which all expression had faded. This stony silence irritated Lafond.

"You've had your head long enough. Now you're going to show what you're made for. Understand? Great God!" he cried, "you've got a tongue, haven't you? Why don't you answer when I ask you a question?" In one of the sudden Latin gusts of passion, which generally he held so well in control, Lafond lashed her across the breast with his black-snake whip. Almost before the impulse had quitted his brain he regretted it, for her scream would bring out the camp, and Lafond could see the awkwardness of an explanation. It was better to break her in gradually. To his relief, she did not cry out, but merely shivered pitifully and closed her eyes.

"That's what you'll get if you don't toe the mark," threatened Lafond, only too glad to avoid a scene. He slouched out of the door, climbed into his light wagon shaking his heavy head sullenly, and drove away in the direction of Rapid.

After he had gone and the sound of his wheels had died away, the girl arose staggeringly from her bed. The bright world had crumbled. For the first time in her young existence her thoughts turned to the vague conception of a higher Being which she had built, Heaven knows how, from materials gathered, Heaven knows where.

"God, God, God!" she cried, "I thought this was a happy world where people laughed. I did not know there was so much sorrow in the world. You did not make the world to be sorrowful, did you, God?"

She was almost blind. She knew that she must kill herself: that alone was clear. It was that or the dance hall. She was to be like Bismarck Anne. And she realized in a moment that she knew Black Mike, his iron will and his cruel heart; and she was afraid of him, deadly afraid. She began to grope about the room. There was a dim square: that must be the window. Her hands passed fumblingly over the table, just missing the long sewing scissors. Nothing there. Quick, quick, he might come back! She almost fell over the cloak, which had fallen to the floor, and was now entangled about her feet. There was another square of light: it must be the door. She stumbled out into a glare of merciless sunshine that filled her brain and beat on the walls of her understanding until she covered her eyes, and still stumbled on. She thought she heard men shouting. She was not sure.

From his work of sweeping out the stale saloon, Frosty had seen her. She was a strange sight, her hair half down, her face white and drawn, her step so uncertain. Frosty was very fond of her in his stupid silent way. He yelled and ran toward her.

In this day of excitement, a cry brought a dozen heads to a dozen windows and doors. In a moment the girl was surrounded. The men were puzzled. "Plain case of bug-juice," said one, a little sorrowfully.

She felt someone trying gently to lead her somewhere, but she resisted, crying "Let me go, let me go. I want to get to the big rock."

Graham pushed his way anxiously into the group. He had not been able to bring himself to attend the dance the evening before, but he had been told the details, and up to now had felt rather relieved than otherwise at the turn affairs had taken.

"Why do you want to go to the big rock, Molly?" he asked gently.

At the sound of his voice she began to cry a little. "It is so high up there, so high," she said over and over.

"Of course it's high, Molly, very high; but don't you think you'd better wait until to-morrow?"

The men stood about with awe-stricken faces. They saw now that there was more in this than they had at first supposed. "Nutty," they whispered to each other in undertones.

"Such a long way down, a long way down," went on the girl. "I could jump from there very easily; such a long way down!"

Graham took her quietly by the shoulders.

"Listen, Molly, it's I, Jack Graham."

"Yes, Jack."

"And I want you to do just as I say. Will you do it?"

"Yes, Jack."

"I want you to go with me. Do you trust me, Molly?"

She began to sob violently, almost convulsively, dabbing uncertainly at her eyes.

"What is it, Jack? What am I doing here?"

"Nothing; it's all right. Will you come with me? Ah, that's better."

She looked about her with intelligence.

"What is it, boys? How did I come here?" Her glance wandered past them to the dance hall, and she turned away suddenly. "Ah! I remember!" The strained look began to come back into her face.

"Here, here, Molly!" cried Graham in alarm, "that won't do! Here, you must do just exactly as I say. You must come with me now, and get something to eat and some sleep. Don't you trust me, Molly?"

He looked steadily into her eyes, his brow contorted with anxiety.

"Oh, Jack, Jack," she cried suddenly, "whom else could I trust but you? You have been the only man whom I could have trusted from the very first, the only man I should have trusted. I see that now. I have known it all the while, but I would not acknowledge it."

"Will you go with me then, Molly?" asked Graham again.

This time it was she who raised her hands to his shoulders. "Jack," said she solemnly, "a few minutes ago I was on the point of killing myself because I saw nothing but death or that dance hall before me. I had forgotten. I will never do so again. I will go with you now, Jack, wherever you want me to; and I will go with you, Jack, forever, to the end of the world."

She leaned suddenly forward and kissed him, and then as suddenly fell to weeping again, with great sobs that shook her slender body cruelly.

Never was a stranger love scene; never was one more in keeping with the wayward, capricious, yet intrinsically sterling character of Molly Lafond. She did not understand it; but she felt to her inmost soul that it was real; and that if she did not love Jack Graham now, at least she respected him above all men and above herself, and that her affection for him would never diminish, but rather increase as the time went on. And this the event proved to be true. Nor did Graham understand, but he too felt the sincerity of it. As for the men before whose audience the curious drama had been enacted, they understood still less.

But it was very simple after all.

In her nature, as in all other natures, two forces had struggled for the mastery. With her they happened to be called heredity, or the East; and education, or the West. Her training, her environment, her mental atmosphere had powerfully affected her general conduct of life; but in the great crisis her deeper nature had spoken, and she had obeyed.

XXXV

OUT OF THE PAST

Michail Lafond drove on slowly down the valley of Copper Creek, although, if he intended to reach Rapid before dark, there would seem to be every reason for haste.

He usually conducted his affairs so carefully, so shrewdly, so calculatingly. How had he happened to give way so to an impulse? He regretted lashing the girl with his whip, because he felt that it was unnecessary. Doing unnecessary evil had always been against Lafond's principles. He considered it bad luck, and somehow that spectre of bad luck seemed to be coming very close. He had lost confidence. Therefore he made mistakes.

Just outside of town he encountered Blair's stage crawling along on a mended axle. Naturally both vehicles pulled up. After explanations of the accident, Blair remarked casually--

"Struck Billy down the road a piece."

"Yes," said Mike, "he left this morning."

"Almighty lucky happen-so for him, 'cause I had an old codger aboard that was just on his way to visit Billy. Nice old cuss, too. Name Buckley, or Bulkley, or something like that. Come from out Wyoming way."

Lafond clamped on his brake again.

"Yes," said he, "I used to know him. He went off with Billy, you say?"

"Yes, bag _an'_ baggage."

"Goin' to Rapid?"

"Near as I could make out," said Blair. "They reversed the proposition on the spot. Place of him a visitin' of Billy, Billy he aims to visit him. Things movin' at camp?"

"They'll tell you up there," replied Lafond and drove on.

What a fiendish stroke of luck! This one man in all the West who knew of the affair at Spanish Gulch in the seventies, who would remember the doctor's wife, who would recognize the strong resemblance of her daughter to her, who might stir up that dust of the past which Lafond had so carefully laid--that he should come just at this time! To be sure, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to implicate him--Lafond. But Buckley was a tenacious sort of individual; he would insist on investigating. That would mean explanations by Lafond, a detailed account. The details would have to be invented. And then a chill struck his heart as he realized that he could not recall all the story he had told the Indian agent when he had left the little girl in his charge!

He pulled his horses down to a walk and set himself to thinking earnestly. He went over in sequence, as nearly as he could remember them, every word and action, from his meeting with Durand to his departure from the agency. It was no use. Even at the time, he had invented the story lightly, without much thought of its importance except as a temporary expedient. Now the matter had quite escaped him. Jim Buckley's return West, which had before seemed merely fortunate, he saw now had been providential. It was a narrow escape. He must visit the agent as soon as possible, for the purpose of refreshing his memory.

He came to Durand's cabin. The old man stood near the doorway examining something which he held flat in the palm of his hand. At his feet, Jacques, the little raccoon, was curled up in a bright-eyed ball of fur, enjoying the early sun. Out behind the cabin, Isabeau, the tasselled lynx, stepped lightly to and fro along the length of his chain; and the great Pantalon sat drolly on his shaggy haunches sniffing the air. Lafond stopped. He felt he must talk to some one or give way to this incomprehensible impulse to shriek aloud.

They exchanged greetings. At once Lafond saw something suspicious in the old man's attitude. He was preternaturally grave. He seemed to be thinking of something behind his actual speech.

"I've something to show you, Lafond," he remarked after a little. "It's very queer," and with what Lafond saw at once to be an accusing motion he held before the latter's eyes the little ivory miniature of Prue Welch.

He had found it under a _mesquite_ bush. Ever since he had been struggling vainly to place the familiarity of the features. He had not seen enough of the girl at the camp to be able to do so definitely, but he had succeeded in bringing his mind almost to the point of a recognition which was continually just escaping him.

Lafond started violently, and stared at the portrait.

"Why, what's the matter?" cried Durand. "You look as though you'd seen a ghost!"

On the instant Lafond recovered his self-possession. He glanced with side-long evil look at the old man.

"Nothing," said he briefly.

It was evident that the naturalist was trying to trap him.

"Where have you seen her before?" asked the latter, returning to the portrait. "She is old-fashioned--must have had that painted fifteen or twenty years ago--and yet I've seen her recently."

Lafond stiffly descended from the vehicle, both hands thrust deep into the pockets of his canvas coat, and peered over the old man's shoulder.

"Here, Lafond," the latter was saying, "you know more about this than I do----" He meant that the half-breed possessed a wider circle of acquaintances. At his words Lafond drew an ivory-handled clasp-knife from the pocket of his canvas coat, opened it in two lightning motions and stabbed the old man deeply in the back. The latter stumbled forward, half turning as he fell. Lafond plunged his blade wickedly into Durand's throat, where it stuck, twisting out of the murderer's hands. The victim writhed twice, gasped, and died.

Black Mike stood over the body for a moment, panting. He stooped to recover the knife. On its ivory handle he read the words "William Knapp," on which he remembered, and left it where it was. Then he climbed into his wagon and insanely lashed his horses into a frantic run.

The little furry 'coon approached its master bristling. It dabbled its black paws, almost human, in the blood that stood on the threshold, and then, frothing at the muzzle, it scrambled into the house and up a high bookshelf, where it crouched, its eyes like coals of green fire.

On the hillside opposite a white-faced little boy rose from behind a mesquite clasping the neck of a homely dog. He ran at once to town, where he burst in on Moroney, crying, "Pop, pop, Black Mike's gone and killed old Bugchaser with a knife," after which he began to cry hysterically. It took time for the camp to arouse, to dress, to hear the tale, to believe, to visit the scene of the deed, to believe again after finding Billy's knife, to discuss, to decide, and finally to saddle horses and depart, puzzled, on the trail of Lafond. It had a rope. But it also wanted to hear more about it. Therefore its speed was not as rapid as it might have been, had a horse thief, for instance, been the object of pursuit.

So Lafond, after his first impulse to get away from the scene of his deed had spent itself, jogged along unmolested toward Rapid. His brain was working like lightning, but always on one line. He saw himself alone, standing opposed to this huge black Bad-luck. Everything was against him. But they couldn't get him down. He was Man-who-speaks-Medicine, the Sioux; he was Lafond, the half-breed; he was Black Mike, the pioneer. Let them come on! They thought they could corner him. He would show them. One was gone. There remained the other two. Lafond's mind saw red; he was set on murder. No consideration of reason, probability, or common sense obtruded itself athwart his plan. He could perceive one fact--that three men knew his secret, of whom one was dead and the other two were living. Why Knapp and Buckley should have told Durand; what they expected to gain by going to Rapid; or what benefit the naturalist imagined could accrue to him from his insinuating the state of affairs to the half-breed, the latter did not inquire. He only knew that he wanted to catch Knapp's buckboard before it had left the pine belt. Ambush would then be easier. He lashed his horses unmercifully.

Rockerville told him the two men had passed through not half an hour before, and wondered at the wildness of his eye.

That was well. They could not escape him now, for their wagon was heavily loaded, and they were travelling leisurely, having no reason for haste. Remembering appearances, he told Rockerville that it did not much matter, he would not try to catch up; and then drove back toward Copper Creek, only to make a detour by a wood road into the Rapid trail again. As he approached the foothills, he could hear occasionally the creak of a brake below him, by which he knew that he was drawing near. He slowed up at once, for he knew of a short cut a mile or so ahead, which the prospectors would not attempt because of their heavy load, but by which he could come out ahead of his victims. Then he would lie in wait. The short cut in question dipped steeply down into the bed of a creek, and as steeply up on the other side; while the main stage-road made a long horseshoe curve around the head of the canyon. Lafond decided to drive rapidly down, to leave his team in the creek bottom, and to climb on foot to the level of the main road on the other side. In the meantime he drew as near to the other wagon as he could without being seen. The minutes seemed to drag.

At last he discerned the dimly blazed trail, rocky and dangerous enough, which dropped sheer away into the underbrush below. He locked the brakes and turned sharply down to the right. The descent was hazardous, bumpy, exceedingly noisy. For this reason, it was not until he had reached the level ground at the bottom of the canyon and the clash of iron tire against stone had ceased, that he became aware the ravine was already occupied. A sound of voices and laughter floated up through the thin screen of leaves. As the half-breed's vehicle pushed out toward the creek itself, he saw that he had unwittingly stumbled on a camp of Indians up in the Hills on one of their annual jaunts after teepee poles.

Once a year they make these excursions. The whole band--men, women, children, ponies, dogs, and household goods--goes along. It is an outing. The women fell and strip the long slender saplings. The men loaf lazily in front of their temporary shelters or ride about the Hills to the various camps, giving war dances for nickels and silver pieces. The occasion is eminently peaceful.

Of such a nature was the gathering which Michail Lafond came upon in the level of the little canyon. The wigwams had been pitched either side of the old overgrown road. Children had cut away the slight underbrush to clear a round smooth park of perhaps thirty yards diameter, in the circumference of which were crowded the persons and household belongings of four score people. Near the centre stood the chief's lodge distinguished by a shield and spear. The whole was a facsimile of a plains camp, except that here the whole affair was in miniature--little wigwams, little kettle-tripods, little space--for the camp was but temporary. Perhaps a score of men were idling about, dressed in blue overalls and old flannel shirts. Moccasins and no hats left still a slight flavor of savagery. The women were clothed for the most part in dirty calico prints. The children had on just nothing at all.

Lafond cursed a little excitedly as he became aware of this not unpicturesque gathering. It was plainly out of the question to leave his horses and wagon in the creek bottom as he had intended; and it was now equally impossible to waylay the prospectors at the top of the grade. A shot would bring out the entire band. The situation was much complicated, for just beyond lay the rolling treeless foothills. More bad luck!

Still the half-breed remembered it was yet many miles to Rapid; and an ambush would not be impossible in some one of the numerous gullies that seamed the foothills. He must hurry his tired horses up the steep slope in order to emerge on the main road ahead of Knapp and Buckley.

"How!" said the nearest warrior, raising his hand palm outward.

"How!" replied Lafond gravely.

He drove on through the half-obliterated road, responding to the conventional salutations of those on the right and on the left. Near the further side of the little clearing, a tiny copper-colored boy rose from the grass and scurried across in front of the horses, so near that Lafond had to pull up sharply to keep from running over him. An old woman, evidently its nurse, hurried to catch him. When she came to the road, however, she stopped short, and stared at Black Mike wildly, and began to scream out in the language of the Brule Sioux.

"'Tis he, the Defiler! 'Tis he!"

She was an unkempt, wild old hag, and Lafond thought her mad. Her face was lined deeply, as only an Indian's face ever is; a few ragged wisps of gray hair fell over her eyes; and her skinny arm showed that she was thin almost to emaciation.

At her scream a warrior arose before the chief's lodge and approached. From all directions the other warriors gathered. Two of the younger men had already taken the horses by the bits. Lafond did not understand it, and was about to expostulate vigorously against what he thought was intended robbery until he saw the face of the chieftain, who now drew near. Then he turned cold to the marrow.

The chief looked him in the face for almost a minute.

"It is not so," he said quietly.

The hag had ceased her cries when the two young men had grasped the horses' bits.

"It is so, O Lone Wolf," she replied with respect. "The form is changed by the hand of Manitou, but the spirit is the same, and I know it in his eyes. It is the Defiler."

"Let Rippling Water be sought," responded the savage, still without excitement.

About him the old-time dignity clung as a mantle. To any one in a less desperate situation than Michail Lafond there would have been something strangely incongruous and a little pathetic in this contrast between the manner of the old wild plains savage and the habit of the modern ward of the government. Even he was cool enough to see that the once powerful tribe had sadly shrunk in numbers and in wealth.

After a moment the woman called by the name of Rippling Water appeared from a distance, where she had been cutting birch bark. In the syllables of the beautiful name Lafond had recognized that of the second of his Indian wives; in the prematurely aged withered squaw who now approached he recognized nothing.

"My daughter," said Lone Wolf, "look upon this man. Have you seen him ever?"

She peered at him a moment through short-sighted eyes.

"I have lain on his bosom," she answered simply.

"It is----?"

"It is the Defiler," she replied.

XXXVI

UNDER THE ETERNAL STARS