"I'm glad I help you," Dora replied gently. "I want to."

"I'm in the way of makin' a stake now," Smith went on, "and when I gets it"—he hesitated—"well, when I gets it I aims to let you know."

When Dora went into the house, to her own room, Smith stepped into the living-room, where the Indian woman sat by the window.

"You like dat white woman better den me?" she burst out as he entered.

"Prairie Flower," he replied wearily, "if I had a dollar for every time I've answered that question, I wouldn't be lookin' for no stake to buy cattle with."

"De white woman couldn't give you no stake."

He made no reply to her taunt. He was thinking. The words of a cowpuncher came back to him as he sat and regarded with unseeing eyes the Indian woman. The cowpuncher had said: "When a feller rides the range month in and month out, and don't see nobody but other punchers and Injuns, some Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes begins to look kind of good to him when he rides into camp and she smiles as if she was glad he had come. He gits used to seein' her sittin' on an antelope hide, beadin' moccasins, and the country where they wear pointed-toed shoes and sit in chairs gits farther and farther away. And after awhile he tells himself that he don't mind smoke and the smell of buckskin, and a tepee is a better home nor none, and that he thinks as much of this here Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes as he could think of any woman, and he wonders when the priest could come. And while he's studyin' it over, some white girl cuts across his trail, and, with the sight of her, Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes looks like a dirty two-spot in a clean deck." The cowpuncher's words came back to Smith as though they had been said only yesterday.

"Why don't you say what you think?" the woman asked, uneasy under his long stare.

"No," said Smith, rousing himself; "the Schoolmarm couldn't give me no stake; and money talks."

"When you want your money?"

"Quick."

"How much you want?"

"How much you got?" he asked bluntly. He was sure of her, and he was in no mood to finesse.

"Eight—nine thousand."

"If I'm goin' to do anything with cattle this year, I want to get at it."

"I give you de little paper MacDonald call check. I know how to write check," she said with pride.

Smith shook his head. A check was evidence.

"It's better for you to go to the bank and get the cash yourself. Meeteetse can hitch up and take you. It won't bother your arm none, for you ain't bad hurt. Nine thousand is quite a wad to get without givin' notice, and I doubt if you gets it, but draw all you can. Take a flour-sack along and put the stuff in it; then when you gets home, pass it over to me first chance. Don't let 'em load you down with silver—I hates to pack silver on horseback."

To all of which instructions the woman agreed.

That she might avoid Susie's questions, she did not start the next morning until Susie was well on her way to school. Then, dressed in her gaudiest skirt, her widest brass-studded belt, her best and hottest blanket, she was ready for the long drive.

Smith put a fresh bandage on her arm, and praised the scrawling signature on the check which she had filled out after laborious and oft-repeated efforts. He made sure that she had the flour-sack, and that the check was pinned securely inside her capacious pocket, before he helped her in the wagon. He had been all attention that morning, and her eyes were liquid with gratitude and devotion as she and Meeteetse drove away. She turned before they were out of sight, and her face brightened when she saw Smith still looking after them. She thought comfortably of the fast approaching day when she would be envied by the women who had married only "bloods" or "breeds."

Smith, as it happened, was remarking contemptuously to Tubbs, as he nodded after the disappearing wagon:

"Don't that look like a reg'lar Injun outfit? One old white horse and a spotted buzzard-head; harness wired up with Mormon beeswax; a lopsided spring seat; one side-board gone and no paint on the wagon."

"You'd think Meeteetse'd think more of hisself than to go ridin' around with a blanket-squaw."

"He said he was out of tobacer, but he probably aims to get drunk."

"More'n likely," Tubbs agreed. "Meeteetse's gittin' to be a reg'lar squawman anyhow, hangin' around Injuns so much and runnin' with 'em. He believes in signs and dreams, and he ain't washed his neck for six weeks."

"Associatin' too much with Injuns will spile a good man. Tubbs," Smith went on solemnly, "you ain't the feller you was when you come."

"I knows it," Tubbs agreed plaintively. "I hain't half the gumption I had."

"It hurts me to see a bright mind like yours goin' to seed, and there's nothin'll do harm to a feller quicker nor associatin' with them as ain't his equal. Tubbs, like you was my own brother, I says that bug-hunter ain't no man for you to run with."

"He ain't vicious and the likes o' that," said Tubbs, in mild defense of his employer.

"What's 'vicious' anyhow?" demanded Smith. "Who's goin' to say what's vicious and what ain't? I says it's vicious to lie like he does about them idjot skulls and ham-bones he digs out and brings home, makin' out that they might be pieces of fellers what could use one of them cotton-woods for a walkin' stick and et animals the size of that meat-house at a meal."

"He never said jest that."

"He might as well. What I'm aimin' at is that it's demoralizin' to get interested in things like that and spend your life diggin' up the dead. It's too tame for a feller of any spirit."

"It's nowise dang'rous," Tubbs admitted.

"If I thought you was my kind, Tubbs, I'd give you a chance. I'd let you in on a deal that'd be the makin' of you."

"All I needs is a chanct," Tubbs declared eagerly.

"I believe you," Smith replied, with flattering emphasis.

A disturbing thought made Tubbs inquire anxiously:

"This here chanct your speakin' of—it ain't work, is it?—real right-down work?"

"Not degradin' work, like pitchin' hay or plowin'."

"I hates low-down work, where you gits out and sweats."

"I see where you're right. There's no call for a man of your sand and sabe to do day's work. Let them as hasn't neither and is afraid to take chances pitch hay and do plowin' for wages."

Tubbs looked a little startled.

"What kind of chances?"

Smith looked at Tubbs before he lowered his voice and asked:

"Wasn't you ever on the rustle none?"

Tubbs reflected.

"Onct back east, in I-o-wa, I rustled me a set of underwear off'n a clothes-line."

Smith eyed Tubbs in genuine disgust. He had all the contempt for a petty-larceny thief that the skilled safe-breaker has for the common purse-snatcher. The line between pilfering and legitimate stealing was very clear in his mind. He said merely,

"Tubbs, I believe you're a bad hombre."

"They is worse, I s'pose," said Tubbs modestly, "but I've been pretty rank in my time."

"Can you ride? Can you rope? Can you cut out a steer and burn a brand? Would you get buck-ague in a pinch and quit me if it came to a show-down? Are you a stayer?"

"Try me," said Tubbs, swelling.

"Shake," said Smith. "I wisht we'd got acquainted sooner."

"And mebby I kin tell you somethin' about brands," Tubbs went on boastfully.

"More'n likely."

"I kin take a wet blanket and a piece of copper wire and put an addition to an old brand so it'll last till you kin git the stock off'n your hands. I've never done it, but I've see it done."

"I've heard tell of somethin' like that," Smith replied dryly.

"Er you kin draw out a brand so you never would know nothin' was there. You take a chunk of green cottonwood, and saw it off square; then you bile it and bile it, and when it's hot through, you slaps it on the brand, and when you lifts it up after while the brand is drawed out."

"Did you dream that, Tubbs?"

"I b'leeve it'll work," declared Tubbs stoutly.

"Maybe it would work in I-o-wa," said Smith, "but I doubts if it would work here. Any way," he added conciliatingly, "we'll give it a try."

"And this chanct—it's tolable safe?"

"Same as if you was home in bed. When I says 'ready,' will you come?"

"Watch my smoke," answered Tubbs.

Smith's eyes followed Tubbs's hulking figure as he shambled off, and his face was full of derision.

"Say"—he addressed the world in general—"you show me a man from I-o-wa or Nebrasky and I'll show you a son-of-a-gun."

Tubbs was putty in the hands of Smith, who could play upon his vanity and ignorance to any degree—though he believed that beyond a certain point Tubbs was an arrant coward. But Smith had a theory regarding the management of cowards. He believed that on the same principle that one uses a whip on a scared horse—to make it more afraid of that which is behind than of that which is ahead—he could by threats and intimidations force Tubbs to do his bidding if the occasion arose. Tubbs's mental calibre was 22-short; but Smith needed help, and Tubbs seemed the most pliable material at hand. That Tubbs had pledged himself to something the nature of which he knew only vaguely, was in itself sufficient to receive Smith's contempt. He had learned from observation that little dependence can be placed upon those who accept responsibilities too readily and lightly, but he was confident that he could utilize Tubbs as long as he should need him, and after that—Smith shrugged his shoulders—what was an I-o-wan more or less?

Altogether, he felt well satisfied with what he had accomplished in the short while since his return.

When Susie came home from school, Smith was looking through the corral-fence at a few ponies which Ralston had bought and driven in, to give color to his story.

"See anything there you'd like?" she inquired, with significant emphasis.

"I'd buy the bunch if I was goin' to set me some bear-traps." Smith could see nothing to praise in anything which belonged to Ralston.

Susie missed her mother immediately upon going into the house, and in their sleeping-room she saw every sign of a hurried departure.

"Where's mother gone?" she asked Ling.

"Town."

"To town? To see a doctor about her arm?"

"Beads."

"Beads?"

"Blue beads, gleen beads. She no have enough beads for finish moccasin."

"When's she comin' home?"

"She come 'night."

Forty miles over a rough road, with her bandaged arm, for beads! It did not sound reasonable to Susie, but since Smith was accounted for, and her mother would return that night, there seemed no cause for worry. Susie could not remember ever before having come home without finding her mother somewhere in the house, and now, as she fidgeted about, she realized how much she would miss her if that which she most feared should transpire to separate them.

She walked to the door, and while she stood idly kicking her heel against the door-sill she saw Ralston, who was passing, stoop and pick up a scrap of paper which had been caught between two small stones. She observed that he examined it with interest, but while he stood with his lips pursed in a half-whistle a puff of wind flirted it from his fingers. He pursued it as though it had value, and Susie, who was not above curiosity, joined in the chase.

It lodged in one of the giant sage-brushes which grew some little distance away on the outer edge of the dooryard, and into this brush Ralston reached and carefully drew it forth. He looked at it again, lest his eyes had deceived him, then he passed it to Susie, who stared blankly from the scrap of paper to him.



XIX

WHEN THE CLOUDS PLAYED WOLF

The Indian woman was restless; she had been so from the time they had lost sight of the town, but her restlessness had increased as the daylight faded and night fell.

"You're goin' to bust this seat in if you don't quit jammin' around," Meeteetse Ed warned her peevishly.

Meeteetse was irritable, a state due largely to the waning exhilaration of a short and unsatisfactory spree.

The woman clucked at the horses, and, to the great annoyance of her driver, reached for the reins and slapped them on the back.

"They're about played out," he growled. "Forty miles is a awful trip for these buzzard-heads to make in a day. We orter have put up some'eres overnight."

"I could have stayed with Little Coyote's woman."

"We orter have done it, too. Look at them cayuses stumblin' along! Say, we won't git in before 'leven or twelve at this gait, and I'm so hungry I don't know where I'm goin' to sleep to-night."

"Little Coyote's woman gifted me some sa'vis berries."

"Aw, sa'vis berries! I can't go sa'vis berries," growled Meeteetse. "They're too sweet. The only way they're fit to eat is to dry 'em and pound 'em up with jerked elk—then they ain't bad eatin'. I've et 'most ev'ry thing in my day. I've et wolf, and dog, and old mountain billy-goat, and bull-snakes, and grasshoppers, so you kin see I ain't finnicky, but I can't stummick sa'vis berries." He asked querulously: "What's ailin' of you?"

The Indian woman, who had been studying the black clouds as they drifted across the sky to dim the starlight, said in a half-whisper:

"The clouds no look good to me. They look like enemies playin' wolf. I feel as if somethin' goin' happen."

The bare suggestion of the supernatural was sufficient to alarm Meeteetse. He asked in a startled voice:

"How do you feel?"

"I feel sad. My heart drags down to de ground, and it seem like de dark hide somethin'."

Meeteetse elongated his neck and peered fearfully into the darkness.

"What do you think it hides?" he asked in a husky whisper.

She shook her head.

"I don't know, but I have de bad feelin'."

"I forgot to sleep with my feet crossed last night," said Meeteetse, "and I dreamed horrible dreams all night long. Maybe they was warnin's. I can't think of anything much that could happen to us though," he went on, having forgotten some of his ill-nature in his alarm for his personal safety. "These here horses ain't goin' to run away—I wisht they would, fer 't would git us quite a piece on our road. We ain't no enemies worth mentionin', and we ain't worth stealin', so I don't hardly think your feelin' means any wrong for us. More'n likely it's jest somebody dead."

This thought, slightly consoling to Meeteetse, did not seem to comfort the Indian woman, who continued to squirm on the rickety seat and to strain her eyes into the darkness.

"If anybody ud come along and want to mix with me—say, do you see that fist? If ever I hit anybody with that fist, they'll have to have it dug out of 'em. I don't row often, but when I does—oh, lordy! lordy! I jest raves and caves. I was home on a visit onct, and my old-maid aunt gits a notion of pickin' on me. Say, I ups and runs her all over the house with an axe! I'm more er less a dang'rous character when I'm on the peck. Is that feelin' workin off of you any?" he inquired anxiously.

"It comes stronger," she answered, and her grip tightened on the flour-sack she held under her blanket.

"I wisht I knowed what it was. I'm gittin' all strung up myself." His popping eyes ached from trying to see into the darkness around them. "If we kin git past them gulches onct! That ud be a dum bad place to roll off the side. We'd go kerplunk into the crick-bottom. Gosh! what was that?" He stopped the weary horses with a terrific jerk.

It was only a little night prowler which had scurried under the horses' feet and rustled into the brush.

"You see how on aidge I am! I'll tell you," he went on garrulously—the sound of his own voice was always pleasant to Meeteetse: "I take more stock in signs and feelin's than most people, for I've seen 'em work out. Down there in Hermosy there was a feller made a stake out'n a silver prospect, and he takes it into his head to go back to Nebrasky and hunt up his wife, that he'd run off and left some time prev'ous. As the date gits clost for him to leave, he got glummer and glummer. He'd skerce crack a smile. The night before the stage was comin' to git him, he was settin' in a 'dobe with a dirt roof, rared back on the hind legs of his chair, with his hands in his pockets.

"'Boys,' he says, 'I'll never git back to Genevieve. I feels it; I knows it; I'll bet you any amount I'm goin' to cash in between here and Nebrasky. I've seen myself in my coffin four times hand-runnin', when I was wide awake.'

"Everybody had their mouths open to let out a holler and laff when jest then one of the biggest terrantuler that I ever see dropped down out'n the dirt and straw and lands on his bald head. It hangs on and bites 'fore anybody kin bresh it off, and, 'fore Gawd, he ups and dies while the medicine shark is comin' from the next town!"

His companion did not find Meeteetse's reminiscence specially interesting, possibly because she had heard it before, so at its conclusion she made no comment, but continued to watch with anxious eyes the clouds and the road ahead.

"Now if that ud been me," Meeteetse started to say, in nowise disconcerted by the unresponsiveness of his listener—"if that ud——"

"Throw up your hands!" The curt command came out of the night with the startling distinctness of a gun-shot. The horses were thrown back on their haunches by a figure at their head.

Meeteetse not only threw up his hands, but his feet. He threw them up so high and so hard that he lost his equilibrium, and, as a result, the ill-balanced seat went over, carrying with it Meeteetse and the Indian woman.

The latter's mind acted quickly. She knew that her errand to the bank had become known. Undoubtedly they had been followed from town. As soon as she could disentangle herself from Meeteetse's convulsive embrace, she threw the flour-sack from her with all her strength, hoping it would drop out of sight in the sage-brush. It was caught in mid-air by a tall figure at the wagon-side.

"Thank you, madam," said a hollow voice, "Good-night."

It was all done so quickly and neatly that Meeteetse and the Indian woman were still in the bottom of the wagon when two dark figures clattered past and vanishing hoof-beats told them the thieves were on their way to town.

"Well, sir!" Meeteetse found his feet, also his tongue, at last.

"Well, sir!" He adjusted the seat.

"Well, sir!" He picked up the reins and clucked to the horses.

"Well, sir! I know 'em. Them's the fellers that held up the Great Northern!"

The Indian woman said not a word. Her heart was filled with despair. What would Smith say? was her thought. What would he do? She felt intuitively how great would be his disappointment. How could she tell him?

She drew the blanket tighter about her shoulders and across her face, crouching on the seat like a culprit.

The ranch-house was dark when they drove into the yard, for which she was thankful. She left Meeteetse to unharness, and, without striking a light or speaking to Susie, crept between her blankets like a frightened child.

Smith, in his dreams, had heard the rumble of the wagon as it crossed the ford, and he awoke the next morning with a sensation of pleasurable anticipation. In his mind's eye, he saw the banknotes in a heap before him. There were all kinds in the picture—greasy ones, crisp ones, tattered bills pasted together with white strips of paper. He rather liked these best, because the care with which they had been preserved conveyed an idea of value. They had been treasured, coveted by others, counted often.

Eager, animated, his eyes bright, his lips curving in a smile, Smith hurried into his clothes and to the ranch-house, to seek the Indian woman. He heard her heavy step as she crossed the floor of the living-room, and he waited outside the door.

"Prairie Flower!" he whispered as she stood before him.

She avoided his eyes, and her fingers fumbled nervously with the buckle of her wide belt.

"Could you get it?"

"Most of it."

"Where is it?" His eyes gleamed with the light of avarice.

She drew in her breath hard.

"It was stole."

His face went blood-red; the cords of his neck swelled as if he were straining at a weight. She shrank from the snarling ferocity of his mouth.

"You lie!" The voice was not human.

He clenched his huge fist and knocked her down.

She was on the ground when Susie came out.

"Mother!"

The woman blinked up at her.

"I slip. I gettin' too fat," she said, and struggled to her feet.

Elsewhere, with great minuteness of detail, Meeteetse was describing the exciting incident of the night, and what would have happened if only he could have laid hold of his gun.

"Maybe they wouldn't 'a' split the wind if I could have jest drawed my automatic in time! As 'twas, I put up the best fight I could, with a woman screamin' and hangin' to me for pertection. I rastled the big feller around in the road there for some time, neither of us able to git a good holt. He was glad enough to break away, I kin tell you. They's no manner o' doubt in my mind but them was the Great Northern hold-ups."

"But what would they tackle you for?" demanded Old Man Rulison. "Everybody knows you ain't got nothin', and you say all they took from the old woman was a flour-sack full of dried sa'vis berries. It's some of a come-down, looks to me, from robbing trains to stealin' stewin'-fruit."

"Well, there you are." Meeteetse shrugged his shoulders. "That's your mystery. All I knows is, that I pulled ha'r every jump in the road to save them berries."



XX

THE LOVE MEDICINE OF THE SIOUX

Still breathing hard, Smith hunted Tubbs.

"Tubbs, will you be ready for business, to-day?"

"The sooner, the quicker," Tubbs answered, with his vacuous wit.

"Do you know the gulch where they found that dead Injun?"

"Yep."

"Saddle up and meet me over there as quick as you can."

"Right." Tubbs winked knowingly, and immediately after breakfast started to do as he was bid.

Smith's face was not good to look upon as he sat at the table. He took no part in the conversation, and scarcely touched the food before him. His disappointment was so deep that it actually sickened him, and his unreasoning anger toward the woman was so great that he wanted to get out of her sight and her presence. She was like a dog which after a whipping tries to curry favor with its master. She was ready to go to him at the first sign of relenting. She felt no resentment because of his injustice and brutality. She felt nothing but that he was angry at her, that he kept his eyes averted and repelled her timid advances. Her heart ached, and she would have grovelled at his feet, had he permitted her. In her desperation, she made up her mind to try on him the love-charm of the Sioux women. It might soften his heart toward her. She would have sacrificed anything and all to bring him back.

Smith was glad to get away into the hills for a time. He was filled with a feverish impatience to bring about that which he so much desired. The picture of the ranch-house with the white curtains at the windows became more and more attractive to him as he dwelt upon it. He looked upon it as a certainty, one which could not be too quickly realized to please him. Then, too, the atmosphere of the MacDonald ranch had grown distasteful to him. With that sudden revulsion of feeling which was characteristic, he had grown tired of the place, he wanted a change, to be on the move again; but, of more importance than these things, he sensed hostility in the air. There was something significant in the absence of the Indians at the ranch. There was an ominous quiet hanging over the place that chilled him. He had a feeling that he was being followed, without being able to detect so much as a shadow. He felt as if the world were full of eyes—glued upon him. Sudden sounds startled him, and he had found himself peering into dark stable corners and stooping to look where the shadows lay black in the thick creek-brush.

He told himself that the trip through the Bad Lands had unnerved him, but the explanation was not satisfying. Through it all, he had an underlying feeling that something was wrong; yet he had no thought of altering his plans. He wanted money, and he wanted Dora. The combination was sufficient to nerve him to take chances.

Tubbs was waiting in the gulch. Smith looked at the spot where White Antelope's body had lain, and reflected that it was curious how long the black stain of blood would stay on sand and gravel. He had been lucky to get out of that scrape so easily, he told himself as he rode by.

"I guess you know what you're up against, feller," he said bluntly, as he and Tubbs met.

"I inclines to the opinion that it's a little cattle deal," Tubbs replied facetiously.

"You inclines right. Now, here's our play—listen. The Bar C outfit is workin' up in the mountains, so they won't interfere with us none, and about three or three and a half days' drive from here there's some fellers what'll take 'em off our hands. We gets our wad and divvies."

"What for a hand do I take?"

"By rights, maybe, we ought to do our work at night, but I've rode over the country, and it looks safe enough to drive 'em into the gulch to-day. They isn't a human in sight, and if one shows up, I reckon you know what to do."

"It sounds easy enough, if it works," said Tubbs dubiously.

"If it works? Feller, if you've got a yeller streak, you better quit right here."

"I merely means," Tubbs hastened to explain, "that it sounds so easy that it makes me sore we wasn't doin' it before."

The reply appeared to pacify Smith.

"I hates to fool with cattle," he admitted, "'specially these here Texas brutes that spread out, leavin' tracks all over the flat, and they can't make time just off green grass. Gimme horses—but horses ain't safe right now, with the Injuns riled up. Now, you start out and gather up what you can, and hold 'em here till I get back. I'll go to the ranch and get a little grub together and get here as quick as it's safe."

Smith galloped back to the ranch, to learn that Dora had ridden to the Agency to spend the day. He was keenly disappointed that he had missed the opportunity of saying good-by. She had chided him before for not telling her of his contemplated absence, and he had promised not to neglect to do so again; for she was in the habit of arranging the table for her night-school and waiting until he came. Then it occurred to Smith that he might write. He was delighted with the idea, and undoubtedly Dora would be equally delighted to receive a letter from him. It would show her that he remembered his promise, and also give her a chance to note his progress. Since Smith had learned that a capital letter is used to designate the personal pronoun, and that a period is placed at such points as one's breath gives out, he had begun to think himself something of a scholar.

His enthusiasm grew as he thought of it, and he decided that while he was about it he would write a genuine love-letter.

Borrowing paper, an erratic pen, and ink pale from frequent watering, from a shelf in the living-room, he repaired to the dining-room table and gave himself up to the throes of composition.

Bearing in mind that the superlative of dear is dearest, he wrote:

Dearest Girl.

I have got to go away on bizness. I had ought to hav said good-by but I cant wate till you gets back so I thort I wold write. I love you. I hates everyboddy else when I think of you. I dont love no other woman but you. Nor never did. If ever I go away and dont come back dont forget what I say because I will be ded, I mean it. I will hav a stak perty quick then I will show you this aint no josh. You no the rest, good-by for this time.

Smith. The perspiration stood out on his forehead, and he wiped it away with his ink-stained fingers.

"Writin' is harder work nor shoein' a horse," he observed to Ling, and added for the Indian woman's benefit, "I'm sendin' off to get me a pair of them Angory saddle-pockets."

His explanation did not deceive the person for whom it was intended. With the intuition of a jealous woman, she knew that he was writing a letter which he would not have her see. She meant to know, if possible, to whom he was writing, and what. Although she did not raise her eyes from her work when he replaced the pen and ink, she did not let him out of her sight. She believed that he had written to Dora, and she was sure of it when, thinking himself unobserved, he crept to Dora's open window, outside of the house, and dropped the letter into the top drawer of her bureau, which stood close.

As soon as Smith was out of sight, she too crept stealthily to the open window. A red spot burned on either swarthy cheek, and her aching heart beat fast. She took the letter from the drawer, and, going toward the creek, plunged into the willows, with the instinct of the wounded animal seeking cover.

The woman could read a little—not much, but better than she could write. She had been to the Mission when she was younger, and MacDonald had labored patiently to teach her more. Now, concealed among the willows, sitting cross-legged on the ground, she spelled out Smith's letter word by word,

I love you. I hates everyboddy else when I think of you. I don't love no other woman but you. Nor never did.

She read it slowly, carefully, each word sinking deep. Then she stroked her hair with long, deliberate strokes, and read it again.

I don't love no other woman but you. Nor never did.

She laid the letter on the ground, and, folding her arms, rocked her body to and fro, as though in physical agony. When she shut her lips they trembled as they touched each other, but she made no sound. The wound in her arm was beginning to heal. It itched, and she scratched it hard, for the pain served as a kind of counter-irritant. A third time she read the letter, stroking her hair incessantly with the long, deliberate strokes. Then she folded it, and, reaching for a pointed stick, dug a hole in the soft dirt. In the bottom of the hole she laid the letter and covered it with earth, patting and smoothing it until it was level. Before she left she sprinkled a few leaves over the spot.

She looked old and ugly when she went into the house, seeming, for the first time, the woman of middle-age that she was. Quietly, purposefully, she drew out a chair, and, standing upon it, took down from the rafters the plant which Little Coyote's woman, the Mandan, had given her. It had hung there a long time, and the leaves crumpled and dropped off at her touch. She filled a basin with water and put the plant and root to soak, while she searched for a sharp knife. Turning her back to the room and facing the corner, like a child in mischief, she peeled the outer bark from the root with the greatest care. The inner bark was blood-red, and this too she peeled away carefully, very, very carefully saving the smallest particles, and laid it upon a paper. When she had it all, she burned the plant; but the red inner bark she put in a tin cup and covered it with boiling water, to steep.

"Don't touch dat," she warned Ling.

The afternoon was waning when she went again to the willows, but the air was still hot, for the rocks and sand held the heat until well after nightfall. In the willows she cut a stick—a forked stick, which she trimmed so that it left a crotch with a long handle. Hiding the stick under her blanket, she stepped out of the willows, and seemed to be wandering aimlessly until she was out of sight of the house and the bunk-house. Then she walked rapidly, with a purpose. Her objective point was a hill covered so thickly with rocks that scarcely a spear of grass grew upon it. The climb left her short of breath, she wiped the perspiration from her face with her blanket, but she did not falter. Stepping softly, listening, she crept over the rocks with the utmost caution, peering here and there as if in search of something which she did not wish to alarm. A long, sibilant sound stopped her. She located it as coming from under a rock only a few feet away, and a little gleam of satisfaction in her sombre eyes showed that she had found that for which she searched. The angry rattlesnake was coiled to strike, but she approached without hesitancy. Calculating how far it could throw itself, she stood a little beyond its range and for a moment stood watching the glitter of its wicked little eyes, the lightning-like action of its tongue. When she moved, its head followed her, but she dexterously pinned it to the rock with her forked stick and placed the heel of her moccasin upon its writhing body. Then, stooping, she severed its head from its body with her knife.

She put the head in a square of cloth and continued her search. After a time, she found another, and when she went down the hill there were three heads in the blood-soaked square of cloth. She hid them in the willows, and went into the house to stir the contents of the tin cup. She noted with evident satisfaction that it had thickened somewhat. Little Coyote's woman had told her it would do so. She found a bottle which had contained lemon extract, and this she rinsed. She measured a teaspoonful of the thick, reddish-brown liquid and poured it into the bottle, filling it afterward with water. The cup she took with her into the willows. Laying the heads of the snakes upon a flat stone, she cut them through the jaws, and, extracting the poison sac, stirred the fluid into the tin cup. While she stirred, she remembered that she had heard an owl hoot the night before. It was an ill-omen, and it had sounded close. The hooting of an owl meant harm to some one. She wondered now if an owl feather would not make the medicine stronger. She set down her cup and looked carefully under the trees, but could find no feathers. Ah, well, it was stout enough medicine without it!

She had brought a long, keen-bladed hunting-knife into the willows, and she dipped the point of it into the concoction—blowing upon it until it dried, then repeating the process. When the point of the blade was well discolored, she muttered:

"Dat's de strong medicine!"

Her eyes glittered like the eyes of the snakes among the rocks, and they seemed smaller. Their roundness and the liquid softness of them was gone. She looked "pure Injun," as Smith would have phrased it, with murder in her heart. Deliberately, malevolently, she spat upon the earth beneath which the letter lay, before she returned to the house.

She heard Susie's voice in the Schoolmarm's room, and quickly hid the knife behind a mirror in the living-room, where she hid everything which she wished to conceal, imagining, for some unknown reason, that no one but herself would ever think of looking there. Susie often had thought laughingly that it looked like a pack-rat's nest.

The woman poured the liquid which remained in the tin cup into another bottle, frowning when she spilled a few precious drops upon her hand. This bottle she also hid behind the mirror.

In Dora Marshall's room, Susie was examining the teacher's toilette articles, which held an unfailing interest for her. She meant to have an exact duplicate of the manicure set and of the hairbrush with the heavy silver back. To Susie, these things, along with side-combs and petticoats that rustled, were symbols of that elegance which she longed to attain.

As she stood by the bureau, fumbling with the various articles, she caught sight of a box through the crack of the half-open drawer. She had seen that battered box before. It was the grasshopper box—for there was the slit in the top.

Susie was not widely experienced in matters of sentiment, but she had her feminine intuitions, besides remarkably well-developed reasoning powers for her years.

Why, she asked herself as she continued to stare through the crack, why should Teacher be cherishing that old bait-box? Why should she have it there among her handkerchiefs and smelly silk things, and the soft lace things she wore at her throat? Why—unless she attached value to it? Why—unless it was a romantic and sacred keepsake?

Susie rather prided herself on being in touch with all that went on, and now she had an uneasy feeling that she might have missed something. She remembered the day of their fishing trip well, and at the time had thought she had scented a budding romance. Had they quarrelled, she wondered?

She sat on the edge of the bed and swung her feet.

"My, but won't it seem lonesome here without Mr. Ralston?" Susie sighed deeply.

"Is he going away?" Dora asked quickly.

"He'll be goin' pretty soon now, because he's found most of his strays and bought all the ponies he wants."

"I suppose he will be glad to get back among his friends."

Susie thought Teacher looked a little pale.

"Maybe he'll go back and get married."

"Did he say so?"

Susie was sure she was paler.

"No," she replied nonchalantly. "I just thought so, because anybody that's as good-looking as he is, gets gobbled up quick. Don't you think he is good-looking?"

"Oh, he does very well."

"Gee whiz, I wish he'd ask me to marry him!" said Susie unblushingly. "You couldn't see me for dust, the way I'd travel. But there's no danger. Look at them there skinny arms!"

"Susie! What grammar!"

"Those there skinny arms."

"Those."

"Those skinny arms; those hair; those eyes—soft and gentle like a couple of augers, Meeteetse says." Susie shook her head in mock despondency. "I've tried to be beautiful, too. Once I cut a piece out of a newspaper that told how you could get rosy cheeks. It gave all the different things to put in, so I sent off and got 'em. I mixed 'em like it said and rubbed it on my face. There wasn't any mistake about my rosy cheeks, but you ought to have seen the blisters on my cheek-bones—big as dollars!"

"I'm sure you will not be so thin when you are older," Dora said consolingly, "and your hair would be a very pretty color if only you would wear a hat and take a little care of it."

Susie shook her head and sighed again.

"Oh, it will be too late then, for he will be snapped up by some of those stylish town girls. You see."

Dora put buttons in her shirt-waist sleeves in silence.

"I think he liked to stay here until you quarrelled with him."

"I quarrelled with him?"

"Oh, didn't you?" Susie was innocence itself. "You treat him so polite, I thought you must have quarrelled—such a chilly polite," she explained.

"I don't think he has observed it," Dora answered coldly.

"Oh, yes, he has." Susie waited discreetly.

"How do you know?"

"When you come to the table and say, Good-morning, and look at him without seeing him, I know he'd a lot rather you cuffed him."

"What a dreadful word, Susie, and what an absurd idea!"

Susie noted that Teacher's eyes brightened.

"You'll be goin' away, too, pretty soon, and I s'pose you'll be glad you will never see him again. But," she added dolefully, "ain't it awful the way people just meets and parts?"

Dora was a long time finding that for which she was searching among the clothes hanging on a row of nails, and Susie, rolling her eyes in that direction, was sure, very sure, that she saw Teacher dab at her lashes with the frilly ruffle of a petticoat before she turned around.

"When did he say he was going?"

"He didn't say; but to-day or to-morrow, I should think."

"If he cared so much because I am cool to him, he certainly would have asked me why I treated him so. But he didn't care enough to ask."

Teacher's voice sounded queer even to herself, and she seemed intensely interested in buttoning her boots.

"Pooh! I know why. It's because he thinks you like that Smith."

"Smith!"

"Yes, Smith."

The jangle of Ling's triangle interrupted the fascinating conversation.

"How perfectly foolish!" gasped Dora.

"Not to Smith," Susie replied dryly, "nor to Mr. Ralston."

Susie looked at the unoccupied chairs at the table as she and Dora seated themselves. Ralston's, Tubbs's, Smith's, and McArthur's chairs were vacant.

"Looks like you're losin' your boarders fast, Ling," she remarked.

"Good thing," Ling answered candidly.

The Indian woman gulped her coffee, but refused the food which was passed to her. A strange faintness, accompanied by nausea, was creeping upon her. Her vision was blurred, and she saw Meeteetse Ed, at the opposite end of the table, as through a fog. She pushed back her chair and went into the living-room, swaying a little as she walked. A faint moan caught Susie's ear, and she hastened to her mother.

The woman was lying on the floor by the bench where she sewed, her head pillowed on her rag-rug.

"Mother! Why, what's the matter with your hand? It's swelled!"

"I heap sick, Susie!" she moaned. "My arm aches me."

"Look!" cried Susie, who had turned back her sleeve. "Her arm is black—a purple black, and it's swellin' up!"

"Oh, I heap sick!"

"What did you do to your arm, Mother? Did you have the bandage off?"

"Yes, it come off, and I pin him up," said Ling, who was standing by.

A paroxysm of pain seized the woman, and she writhed.

"It looks exactly like a rattlesnake bite! I saw a fellow once that was bit in the ankle, and it swelled up and turned a color like that," declared Susie in horror. "Mother, you haven't been foolin' with snakes, or been bit?"

The woman shook her head.

"I no been bit," she groaned, and her eyes had in them the appealing look of a sick spaniel.

Dora and Susie helped her to her room, and though they tried every simple remedy of which they had ever heard, to reduce the rapidly swelling arm, all seemed equally unavailing. The woman's convulsions hourly became more violent and frequent, while her arm was frightful to behold—black, as it was, from hand to shoulder with coagulated blood.

"If only we had an idea of the cause!" cried Dora, distracted.

"Mother, can't you imagine anything that would make your arm bad like this? Try to think."

But though drops of perspiration stood on the woman's forehead, and her grip tore the pillow, she obstinately shook her head.

"I be better pretty soon," was all she would say, and tried to smile at Susie.

"If only some one would come!" Dora went to the open window often and listened for Ralston's voice or McArthur's—the latter having gone for his mail.

The strain of watching the woman's suffering told on both of the girls, and the night by her bedside seemed centuries long. Toward morning the paroxysms appeared to reach a climax and then to subside. They were of shorter duration, and the intervals between were longer.

"She's better, I'm sure," Dora said hopefully, but Susie shook her head.

"I don't think so; she's worse. There's that look behind, back of her eyes—that dead look—can't you see it? And it's in her face, too. I don't know how to say what I mean, but it's there, and it makes me shiver like cold." The girl looked in mingled awe and horror at the first human being she ever had seen die.

Unable to endure the strain any longer, Dora went into the fresh air, and Susie dropped on her knees by the bedside and took her mother's limp hand in both of hers.

"Oh, Mother," she begged pitifully, "say something. Don't go away without sayin' something to Susie!"

With an effort of will, the woman slowly opened her dull eyes and fixed them upon the child's face.

"Yas," she breathed; "I want to say something."

The words came slowly and thickly.

"I no—get well."

"Oh, Mother!"

Unheeding the wail, perhaps not hearing it, she went on, stopping often between words:

"I steal—from you—my little girl. I bad woman, Susie. It is right I die. I take de money—out of de bank dat MacDonald leave us—to give to Smith. De hold-ups steal de money on—de road. I have de bad heart—Susie—to do dat. I know now."

"You mustn't talk like that, Mother!" cried Susie, gripping her hand convulsively. "You thought you'd get it again and put it back. You didn't mean to steal from me. I know all about it. And I've got the money. Mr. Ralston found a check you had thrown away—you'd signed your name on it in the wrong place. When we saw the date, and what a lot of money it was, and found you had gone to town, we guessed the rest. It was easy to see Smith in that. So we held you up, and got it back. We knew there was no danger to anybody, but, of course, we felt bad to worry and frighten you."

"I'm glad," said the woman simply. She had no strength or breath or time to spare. "Dey's more. I tell you—I kill Smith—if he lie. He lie. He bull-dog white man. I make de strong medicine to kill him—and I get de poison in my arm when de bandage slip. Get de bottles and de knife behind de lookin'-glass—I show you."

Susie quickly did as she was bid.

"De lemon bottle is de love-charm of de Sioux. One teaspoonful—no more, Little Coyote's woman say. De other bottle is de bad medicine. Be careful. Smith—make fool—of me—Susie." What else she would have said ended in a gurgle. Her jaw dropped, and she died with her glazing eyes upon Susie's face.

Susie pulled the gay Indian blanket gently over her mother's shoulders, as if afraid she would be cold. Then she slipped a needle and some beads and buckskin, to complete an unfinished moccasin, underneath the blanket. Her mother was going on a long journey, and would want occupation. There were no tears in Susie's eyes when she replaced the bottles and the skinning knife with the discolored blade behind the mirror.

The wan little creature seemed to have no tears to shed. She was unresponsive to Dora's broken words of sympathy, and the grub-liners' awkward condolences—they seemed not to reach her heart at all. She heard them without hearing, for her mind was chaos as she moved silently from room to room, or huddled, a forlorn figure, on the bench where her mother always had sat.

Breakfast was long since over and the forenoon well advanced when she finally left the silent house and crept like the ghost of her spirited self down the path to the stable and into the roomy stall where her stout little cow-pony stood munching hay.

In her sorrow, the dumb animal was the one thing to which she turned. He lifted his head when she went in, and threw his cropped ears forward, while his eyes grew limpid as a horse's eyes will at the approach of some one it knows well and looks to for food and affection.

They had almost grown up together, and the time Susie had spent on his back, or with him in the corral or stall, formerly had been half her waking hours. They had no fear of each other; only deep love and mutual understanding.

"Oh, Croppy! Croppy!" her childish voice quavered. "Oh, Croppy, you're all I've got left!" She slipped her arms around his thick neck and hid her face in his mane.

He stopped eating and stood motionless while she clung to him, his ears alert at the sound of the familiar voice.

"What shall I do!" she wailed in an abandonment of grief.

In her inexperience, it seemed to Susie, that with her mother's death all the world had come to an end for her. Undemonstrative as they were, and meagre as had been any spoken words of affection, the bond of natural love between them had seemed strong and unbreakable until Smith's coming. They had been all in all to each other in their unemotional way; and now this unexpected tragedy seemed to crush the child, because it was something which never had entered her thoughts. It was a crisis with which she did not know how to cope or to bear. The world could never be blacker for her than it was when she clung sobbing to the little sorrel pony's thick neck that morning. The future looked utterly cheerless and impossible to endure. She had not learned that no tragedy is so blighting that there is not a way out—a way which the sufferer makes himself, which comes to him, or into which he is forced. Nothing stays as it is. But it appeared to Susie that life could never be different, except to be worse.

She had talked much to McArthur of the outside world, and questioned him, and a doubt had sprung up as to the feasibility of searching for her kinsfolk, as she had planned. There were many, many trails and wire fences to bewilder one, and people—hundreds of people—people who were not always kind. His answers filled her with vague fears. To be only sixteen, and alone, is cause enough for tears, and Susie shed them now.

McArthur, with a radiant face, was riding toward the ranch to which he had become singularly attached. His saddle-pockets bulged with mail, and his elbows flapped joyously as he urged his horse to greater speed. He looked up eagerly at the house as he crossed the ford, and his kind eyes shone with happiness when he rode into the stable-yard and swung out of the saddle.

He heard a sound, the unmistakable sound of sobbing, as he was unsaddling. Listening, he knew it came from somewhere in the stable, so he left his horse and went inside.

It was Susie, as he had thought. She lifted her tear-stained face from the pony's mane when he spoke, and he knew that she was glad to see him.

"Oh, pardner, I thought you'd never come!"

"The mail was late, and I stayed with the Major to wait for it. What has gone wrong?"

"Mother's dead," she said. "She was poisoned accidentally."

"Susie! And there was no one here?" The news seemed incredible.

"Only Teacher and me—no one that knew what to do. We sent Meeteetse for a doctor, but he hasn't come yet. He probably got drunk and forgot what he went for. It's been a terrible night, pardner, and a terrible day!"

McArthur looked at her with troubled eyes, and once more he stroked her hair with his gentle, timid touch.

"Everything just looks awful to me, with Dad and mother both gone, and me here alone on this big ranch, with only Ling and grub-liners. And to think of it all the rest of my life like this—with nobody that I belong to, or that belongs to me!"

Something was recalled to McArthur with a start by Susie's words. He had forgotten!

"Come, Susie, come with me."

She followed him outside, where he unbuckled his saddle-pocket and took a daguerreotype from a wooden box which had come in the mail. The gilt frame was tarnished, the purple velvet lining faded, and when he handed the case to Susie she had to hold it slanting in the light to see the picture.

"Dad!"

She looked at McArthur with eyes wide in wonder.

"Donald MacDonald, my aunt Harriet's brother, who went north to buy furs for the Hudson Bay Company!" McArthur's eyes were smiling through the moisture in them.

"We've got one just like it!" Susie cried, still half unable to believe her eyes and ears.

"I was sure that day you mimicked your father when he said, 'Never forget you are a MacDonald!' for I have heard my aunt say that a thousand times, and in just that way. But I wanted to be surer before I said anything to you, so I sent for this."

"Oh, pardner!" and with a sudden impulse which was neither Scotch nor Indian, but entirely of herself, Susie threw her arms about his neck and all but choked him in the only hug which Peter McArthur, A.M., Ph.D., could remember ever having had.



XXI

THE MURDERER OF WHITE ANTELOPE

It was nearly dusk, and Ralston was only a few hundred yards from the Bar C gate, when he met Babe, highly perfumed and with his hair suspiciously slick, coming out. Babe's look of disappointment upon seeing him was not flattering, but Ralston ignored it in his own delight at the meeting.

"What was your rush? I was just goin' over to see you," was Babe's glum greeting.

"And I'm here to see you," Ralston returned, "but I forgot to perfume myself and tallow my hair."

"Aw-w-w," rumbled Babe, sheepishly. "What'd you want?"

"You know what I'm in the country for?"

Babe nodded.

"I've located my man, and he's going to drive off a big bunch to-night. There's two of them in fact, and I'll need help. Are you game for it?"

"Oh, mamma!" Babe rolled his eyes in ecstasy.

"He has a horror of doing time," Ralston went on, "and if he has any show at all, he's going to put up a hard fight. I'd like the satisfaction of bringing them both in, single-handed, but it isn't fair to the Colonel to take any chances of their getting away."

"Who is it?"

"Smith."

"That bastard with his teeth stickin' out?"

Ralston laughed assent.

"Pickin's!" cried Babe, with gusto. "I'd like to kill that feller every mornin' before breakfast. Will I go? Will I? Will I?" Babe's crescendo ended in a joyous whoop of exultation. "Wait till I ride back and tell the Colonel, and git my ca'tridge belt. I take it off of an evenin' these tranquil times."

Ralston turned his horse and started back, so engrossed in thoughts of the work ahead of him that it was not until Babe overtook him that he remembered he had forgotten to ask Babe's business with him.

"Well, I guess the old Colonel was tickled when he heard you'd spotted the rustlers," said Babe, as he reined in beside him. "He wanted to come along—did for a fact, and him nearly seventy. He'd push the lid off his coffin and climb out at his own funeral if somebody'd happen to mention that thieves was brandin' his calves."

"You said you had started to the ranch to see me."

"Oh, yes—I forgot. Your father sent word to the Colonel that he was sellin' off his cattle and goin' into sheep, and wanted the Colonel to let you know."

"The poor old Governor! It'll about break his heart, I know; and I should be there. At his time of life it's a pretty hard and galling thing to quit cattle—to be forced out of the business into sheep. It's like bein' made to change your politics or religion against your will."

"'Fore I'd wrangle woolers," declared Babe, "I'd hold up trains or rob dudes or do 'most any old thing. Say, I've rid by sheep-wagons when I was durn near starvin' ruther than eat with a sheep-herder or owe one a favor. Where do you find a man like the Colonel in sheep?" demanded Babe. "You don't find 'em. Nothin' but a lot of upstart sheep-herders, that's got rich in five years and don't know how to act."

"Oh, you're prejudiced, Babe. Not all sheepmen are muckers any more than all cattlemen are gentlemen."

"I'm not prejudiced a-tall!" declared Babe excitedly. "I'm perfectly fair and square. Woolers is demoralizin'. Associate with woolers, and it takes the spirit out of a feller quicker'n cookin.' In five years you won't be half the man you are now if you go into sheep. I'll sure hate to see it!" His voice was all but pathetic as he contemplated Ralston's downfall.

"I think you will, though, Babe, if I get out of this with a whole hide."

"You'll be so well fixed you can git married then?" There was some constraint in Babe's tone, which he meant to be casual.

Ralston's heart gave him a twinge of pain.

"I s'pose you've had every chance to git acquainted with the Schoolmarm," he observed, since Ralston did not reply.

"She doesn't like me, Babe."

"What!" yelled Babe, screwing up his face in a grimace of surprise and unbelief.

"She would rather talk to Ling than to me—at least, she seems far more friendly to any one else than to me."

"Say, she must be loony not to like you!"

Ralston could not help laughing outright at Babe's vigorous loyalty.

"It's not necessarily a sign of insanity to dislike me."

"She doesn't go that far, does she?" demanded Babe.

"Sometimes I think so."

"You don't care a-tall, do you?"

"Yes," Ralston replied quietly; "I care a great deal. It hurts me more than I ever was hurt before; because, you see, Babe, I never loved a woman before."

"Aw-w-w," replied Babe, in deepest sympathy.

Smith had congratulated himself often during the day upon the fact that he could not have chosen a more propitious time for the execution of his plans—at least, so far as the Bar C outfit was concerned. His uneasiness passed as the protecting darkness fell without their having seen a single person the entire day.

When the last glimmer of daylight had faded, Tubbs and Smith started on the drive, heading the cattle direct for their destination. They were fatter than Smith had supposed, so they could not travel as rapidly as he had calculated, but he and Tubbs pushed them along as fast as they could without overheating them.

The darkness, which gave Smith courage, made Tubbs nervous. He swore at the cattle, he swore at his horse, he swore at the rocks over which his horse stumbled; and he constantly strained his roving eyes to penetrate the darkness for pursuers. Every gulch and gully held for him a fresh terror.

"Gee! I wisht I was out of this onct!" burst from him when the howl of a wolf set his nerves jangling.

"What'd you say?" Smith stopped in the middle of a song he was singing.

"I said I wisht I was down where the monkeys are throwin' nuts! I'm chilly," declared Tubbs.

"Chilly? It's hot!"

Smith was light-hearted, sanguine. He told himself that perhaps it was as well, after all, that the hold-ups had got off with the "old woman's" money. She might have made trouble when she found that he meant to go or had gone with Dora.

"You can't tell about women," Smith said to himself. "They're like ducks: no two fly alike."

He felt secure, yet from force of habit his hand frequently sought his cartridge-belt, his rifle in its scabbard, his six-shooter in the holster under his arm. And while he serenely hummed the songs of the dance-halls and round-up camps, two silent figures, so close that they heard the clacking of the cattle's split hoofs, Tubbs's vacuous oaths, Smith's contented voice, were following with the business-like persistency of the law.

The four mounted men rode all night, speaking seldom, each thinking his own thoughts, dreaming his own dreams. Not until the faintest light grayed the east did the pursuers fall behind.

"We're not more'n a mile to water now"—Smith had made sure of his country this time—"and we'll hold the cattle in the brush and take turns watchin'."

"It's a go with me," answered Tubbs, yawning until his jaws cracked. "I'm asleep now."

Ralston and Babe knew that Smith would camp for several hours in the creek-bottom, so they dropped into a gulch and waited.

"They'll picket their horses first, then one of them will keep watch while the other sleeps. Very likely Tubbs will be the first guard, and, unless I'm mistaken, Tubbs will be dead to the world in fifteen minutes—though, maybe, he's too scared to sleep." Ralston's surmise proved to be correct in every particular.

After they had picketed their horses, Smith told Tubbs to keep watch for a couple of hours, while he slept.

"Couldn't we jest switch that programme around?" inquired Tubbs plaintively. "I can't hardly keep my eyes open."

"Do as I tell you," Smith returned sharply.

Tubbs eyed him with envy as he spread down his own and Tubbs's saddle-blankets.

"I ain't what you'd call 'crazy with the heat.'" Tubbs shivered. "Couldn't I crawl under one of them blankets with you?"

"You bet you can't. I'd jest as lief sleep with a bull-snake as a man," snorted Smith in disgust, and, pulling the blankets about his ears, was lost in oblivion.

"I kin look back upon times when I've enj'yed myself more," muttered Tubbs disconsolately, as he paced to and fro, or at intervals climbed wearily out of the creek-bottom to look and listen.

Ralston and Babe had concealed themselves behind a cut-bank which in the rainy season was a tributary of the creek. They were waiting for daylight, and for the guard to grow sleepy and careless. With little more emotion than hunters waiting in a blind for the birds to go over, the two men examined their rifles and six-shooters. They talked in undertones, laughing a little at some droll observation or reminiscence. Only by a sparkle of deviltry in Babe's blue eyes, and an added gravity of expression upon Ralston's face, at moments, would the closest observer have known that anything unusual was about to take place. Yet each realized to the fullest extent the possible dangers ahead of them. Smith, they knew to be resourceful, he would be desperate, and Tubbs, ignorant and weak of will as he was, might be frightened into a kind of frenzied courage. The best laid plans did not always work out according to schedule, and if by any chance they were discovered, and the thieves reached their guns, the odds were equal. But it was not their way to talk of danger to themselves. That there was danger was a fact, too obvious to discuss, but that it was no hindrance to the carrying out of their plans was also accepted as being too evident to waste words upon.

While the east grew pink, they talked of mutual acquaintances, of horses they had owned, of guns and big game, of dinners they had eaten, of socks and saddle blankets that had been stolen from them in cow outfits—the important and trivial were of like interest to these old friends waiting for what, as each well knew, might be their last sunrise.

Ralston finally crawled to the top of the cut-bank and looked cautiously about.

"It's time," he said briefly.

"Bueno." Babe gave an extra twitch to the silk handkerchief knotted about his neck, which, with him, signified a readiness for action.

He joined Ralston at the top of the cut-bank.

"Not a sign!" he whispered. "Looks like you and me owned the world, Dick."

"We'll lead the horses a little closer, in case we need them quick. Then, we'll keep that bunch of brush between us and them, till we get close enough. You take Tubbs, and I'll cover Smith—I want that satisfaction," he added grimly.

It was a typical desert morning, redolent with sage, which the night's dew brought out strongly. The pink light changing rapidly to crimson was seeking out the draws and coulees where the purple shadows of night still lay. The only sound was the cry of the mourning doves, answering each other's plaintive calls. And across the panorama of yellow sand, green sage-brush, burning cactus flowers, distant peaks of purple, all bathed alike in the gorgeous crimson light of morning, two dark figures crept with the stealthiness of Indians.

From behind the bush which had been their objective-point they could hear and see the cattle moving in the brush below; then a horse on picket snorted, and as they slid quietly down the bank they heard a sound which made Babe snicker.

"Is that a cow chokin' to death," he whispered, "or one of them cherubs merely sleepin'?"

In sight of the prone figures, they halted.

Smith, with his hat on, his head pillowed on his saddle, was rolled in an old army blanket; while Tubbs, from a sitting position against a tree, had fallen over on the ground with his knees drawn to his chin. His mouth, from which frightful sounds of strangulation were issuing, was wide open, and he showed a little of the whites of his eyes as he slumbered.

"Ain't he a dream?" breathed Babe in Ralston's ear. "How I'd like a picture of that face to keep in the back of my watch!"

Smith's rifle was under the edge of his blanket, and his six-shooter in its holster lay by his head; but Tubbs, with the carelessness of a green hand and the over-confidence which had succeeded his nervousness, had leaned his rifle against a tree and laid his six-shooter and cartridge-belt in a crotch.

Ralston nodded to Babe, and simultaneously they raised their rifles and viewed the prostrate forms along the barrels.

"Put up your hands, men!"

The quick command, sharp, stern, penetrated the senses of the men inert in heavy sleep. Instantly Smith's hand was upon his gun. He had reached for it instinctively even before he sat up.

"Drop it!" There was no mistaking the intention expressed in Ralston's voice, and the gun fell from Smith's hand.

The red of Smith's skin changed to a curious yellow, not unlike the yellow of the slicker rolled on the back of his saddle. Panic-stricken for the moment, he grinned, almost foolishly; then his hands shot above his head.

A line of sunlight dropped into the creek-bottom, and a ray was caught by the deputy's badge which shone on Ralston's breast. The glitter of it seemed to fascinate Smith.

"You"—he drawled a vile name. "I orter have known!"

Still dazed with sleep, and not yet comprehending anything beyond the fact that he had been advised to put up his hands, and that a stranger had drawn an uncommonly fine bead on the head which he was in honor bound to preserve from mutilation, Tubbs blinked at Babe and inquired peevishly:

"What's the matter with you?" He had forgotten that he was a thief.

"Shove up your hands!" yelled Babe.

With an expression of annoyance, Tubbs did as he was bid, but dropped them again upon seeing Ralston.

"Oh, hello!" he called cheerfully.

"Put them hands back!" Babe waved his rifle-barrel significantly.

"What's the matter with you, feller?" inquired Tubbs crossly. Though he now recollected the circumstances under which they were found, Ralston's presence robbed the situation of any seriousness for him. It did not occur to Tubbs that any one who knew him could possibly do him harm.

"Keep your hands up, Tubbs," said Ralston curtly, "and, Babe, take the guns."

"What for a josh is this anyhow?"—in an aggrieved tone. "Ain't we all friends?"

"Shut up, you idjot!" snapped Smith irritably. His glance was full of malevolence as Babe took his guns. The yellow of his skin was now the only sign by which he betrayed his feelings. To all other appearances, he was himself again—insolent, defiant.

When it thoroughly dawned upon Tubbs that they were cornered and under arrest, he promptly went to pieces. He thrust his hands so high above his head that they lifted him to tiptoe, and they shook as with palsy.

"Stack the guns and get our horses, Babe," said Ralston.

"Mine's hard for a stranger to ketch," said Smith surlily. "I'll get him, for I don't aim to walk."

"All right; but don't make any break, Smith," Ralston warned.

"I'm not a fool," Smith answered gruffly.

Ralston's face relaxed as Smith sauntered toward his horse. He was glad that they had been taken without bloodshed, and, now the prisoners' guns had been removed, that possibility was passed.

Smith's horse was a newly broken bronco, and he was a wild beggar, as Smith had said; but he talked to him reassuringly as the horse jumped to the end of his picket-rope and stood snorting and trembling in fright, and finally laid his hand upon his neck and back. The fingers of one hand were entwined in the horse's mane, and suddenly, with a cat-like spring made possible only by his desperation, Smith landed on the bronco's back. With a yell of defiance which Ralston and Babe remembered for many a day, he kicked the animal in the ribs, and, as it reared in fright, it pulled loose from the picket-stake. Smith reached for the trailing rope, and they were gone!

Ralston shot to cripple the horse, but almost with the flash they were around the bend of the creek and out of sight. The breathless, speechless seconds seemed minutes long before he heard Babe coming.

"Aw-w-w!" roared that person in consternation and chagrin, as he literally dragged the horses behind him.

Ralston ran to meet him, and a glance of understanding passed between them as he leaped into the saddle and swept around the bend like a whirlwind, less than thirty seconds behind Smith.

Babe knew that he must secure Tubbs before he joined in the pursuit, and he was pulling the rawhide riata from his saddle when Tubbs, inspired by Smith's example and imbued with the hysterical courage which sometimes comes to men of his type in desperate straits, made a dash for his rifle, and reached it. He threw it to his shoulder, but, quick as he was, Babe was quicker.



With the lightning-like gesture which had made his name a byword where Babe himself was unknown, he pulled his six-shooter from its holster and shot Tubbs through the head. He fell his length, like a bundle of blankets, and, even as he dropped, Babe was in the saddle and away.

It was a desperate race that was on, between desperate men; for if Smith was desperate, Ralston was not less so. Every fibre of his being was concentrated in the determination to recapture the man who had twice outwitted him. The deputy sheriff's reputation was at stake; his pride and self-respect as well; and the blood-thirst was rising in him with each jump of his horse. Every other emotion paled, every other interest faded, beside the intensity of his desire to stop the man ahead of him.

Smith knew that he had only a chance in a thousand. He had seen Ralston with a six-shooter explode a cartridge placed on a rock as far away as he could see it, and he was riding the little brown mare whose swiftness Smith had reason to remember.

But he had the start, his bronco was young, its wind of the best, and it might have speed. The country was rough, Ralston's horse might fall with him. So long as Smith was at liberty there was a fighting chance, and as always, he took it.

The young horse, mad with fright, kept to the serpentine course of the creek-bottom, and Ralston, on the little mare, sure-footed and swift as a jack-rabbit, followed its lead.

The race was like a steeple-chase, with boulders and brush and fallen logs to be hurdled, and gullies and washouts to complicate the course. And at every outward curve the pin-n-gg! of a bullet told Smith of his pursuer's nearness. Lying flat on the barebacked horse, he hung well to the side until he was again out of sight. The lead plowed up the dirt ahead of him and behind him, and flattened itself against rocks; and at each futile shot Smith looked over his shoulder and grinned in derision, though his skin had still the curious yellowness of fear.

The race was lasting longer than Smith had dared hope. It began to look as if it were to narrow to a test of endurance, for although Ralston's shots missed by only a hair's breadth at times, still, they missed. If Smith ever had prayed, he would have prayed then; but he had neither words nor faith, so he only hoped and rode.

A flat came into sight ahead and a yell burst from Ralston—a yell that was unexpected to himself. A wave of exultation which seemed to come from without swept over him. He touched the mare with the spur, and she skimmed the rocks as if his weight on her back were nothing. It was smoother, and he was close enough now to use his best weapon. He thrust the empty rifle into its scabbard, and shot at Smith's horse with his six-shooter. It stumbled; then its knees doubled under it, and Smith turned in the air. The game was up; Smith was afoot.

He picked up his hat and dusted his coat-sleeve while he waited, and his face was yellow and evil.

"That was a dum good horse," was Babe's single comment as he rode up.

"Get back to camp!" said Ralston peremptorily, and Smith, in his high-heeled, narrow-soled boots, stumbled ahead of them without a word.

He looked at Tubbs's body without surprise. Sullen and surly, he felt no regret that Tubbs, braggart and fool though he was, was dead. Smith had no conscience to remind him that he himself was responsible.

Babe shook out Smith's blue army blanket and rolled Tubbs in it. Smith had bought it from a drunken soldier, and he had owned it a long time. It was light and almost water-proof; he liked it, and he eyed Babe's action with disfavor.

"I reckon this gent will have to spend the day in a tree," said Babe prosaically.

"Couldn't you use no other blanket nor that?" demanded Smith.

It was the first time he had spoken.

"Don't take on so," Babe replied comfortingly. "They furnish blankets where you're goin'."

He went on with his work of throwing a hitch around Tubbs with his picket-rope.

Ralston divided the scanty rations which Smith and Tubbs, and he and Babe, had brought with them. He made coffee, and handed a cup to Smith first. The latter arose and changed his seat.

"I never could eat with a corp' settin' around," he said disagreeably.

Smith's fastidiousness made Babe's jaw drop, and a piece of biscuit which had made his cheek bulge inadvertently rolled out, but was skillfully intercepted before it reached the ground.

"I hope you'll excuse us, Mr. Smith," said Babe, bowing as well as he could sitting cross-legged on the ground. "I hope you'll overlook our forgittin' the napkins and toothpicks."

When they had finished, they slung Tubbs's body into a tree, beyond the reach of coyotes. The cattle they left to drift back to their range. Tubbs's horse was saddled for Smith, and, with Ralston holding the lead rope and Babe in the rear, the procession started back to the ranch.

Smith had much time to think on the homeward ride. He based his hopes upon the Indian woman. He knew that he could conciliate her with a look. She was resourceful, she had unlimited influence with the Indians, and she had proven that she was careless of her own life where he was concerned. She was a powerful ally. The situation was not so bad as it had seemed. He had been in tighter places, he told himself, and his spirits rose as he rode. Without the plodding cattle, they retraced their steps in half the time it had taken them to come, and it was not much after midday when they were sighted from the MacDonald ranch.

The Indians that Smith had missed were at the ford to meet them: Bear Chief, Yellow Bird, Running Rabbit, and others, who were strangers to him. They followed as Ralston and Babe rode with their prisoner up the path to put him under guard in the bunk-house.

Susie, McArthur, and Dora were at the door of the ranch-house, and Susie stepped out and stopped them when they would have passed.

"You can't take him there; that place is for our friends. There's the harness-house below. The dogs sleep there. There'll be room for one more."

The insult stung Smith to the quick.

"What you got to say about it? Where's your mother?"

With narrowed eyes she looked for a moment into his ugly visage, then she laid her hand upon the rope and led his horse close to the open window of the bedroom.

"There," and she pointed to the still figure on its improvised bier. "There's my mother!"

Smith looked in silence, and once more showed by his yellowing skin the fear within him. The avenue of escape upon which he had counted almost with certainty, was closed to him. At that moment the harsh, high walls of the penitentiary loomed close; the doors looked wide open to receive him; but, after an instant's hesitation, he only shrugged his shoulders and said:

"Hell! I sleeps good anywhere."

In deference to Susie's wishes, Ralston and Babe had swung their horses to go back down the path when Smith turned in his saddle and looked at Dora. She was regarding him sorrowfully, her eyes misty with disappointment in him; and Smith misunderstood. A rush of feeling swept over him, and he burst out impulsively:

"Don't go back on me! I done it for you, girl! I done it to make our stake!"

Dora stood speechless, bewildered, confused under the astonished eyes upon her. She was appalled by the light in which he had placed her; and while the others followed to the harness-house below, she sank limply upon the door-sill, her face in her hands.

Smith sat on a wagon-tongue, swinging his legs, while they cleaned out the harness-house a bit for his occupancy.

"Throw down some straw and rustle up a blanket or two," said Babe; and McArthur pulled his saddle-blankets apart to contribute the cleanest toward Smith's bed.

Something in the alacrity the "bug-hunter" displayed angered Smith. He always had despised the little man in a general way. He uncinched his saddle on the wrong side; he clucked at his horse; he removed his hat when he talked to women; he was a weak and innocent fool to Smith, who lost no occasion to belittle him. Now, when the prisoner saw him moving about, free to go and come as he pleased, while he, Smith, was tied like an unruly pup, it, of a sudden, made his gorge rise; and, with one of his swift, characteristic transitions of mood, Smith turned to the Indians who guarded him.

"You never could find out who killed White Antelope—you smart-Alec Injuns!" he sneered contemptuously. "And you've always wanted to know, haven't you?" He eyed them one by one. "Why, you don't know straight up, you women warriors! I've a notion to tell you who killed White Antelope—just for fun—just because I want to laugh, me—Smith!"

The Indians drew closer.

"You think you're scouts," he went on tauntingly, "and you never saw White Antelope's blanket right under your nose! Put it back, feller"—he nodded at McArthur. "I don't aim to sleep on dead men's clothes!"

The Indians looked at the blanket, and at McArthur, whom they had grown to like and trust. They recognized it now, and in the corner they saw the stiff and dingy stain, the jagged tell-tale holes.

McArthur mechanically held it up to view. He had not the faintest recollection where it had been purchased, or of whom obtained. Tubbs always had attended to such things.

No one spoke in the grave silence, and Smith leered.

"I likes company," he said. "I'm sociable inclined. Put him in the dog-house with me."

Susie had listened with the Indians; she had looked at the blanket, the stain, the holes; she saw the blank consternation in McArthur's face, the gathering storm in the Indians' eyes. She stepped out a little from the rest.

"Mister Smith!" she said. "Mister Smith"—with oily, sarcastic emphasis—"how did you know that was White Antelope's blanket, when you never saw White Antelope?"



XXII

A MONGOLIAN CUPID

With his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, Ralston leaned against the corner of the bunk-house, from which point of vantage he could catch a glimpse of the Schoolmarm's white-curtained window. He now had no feeling of elation over his success. Smith was a victorious captive. Ralston's heart ached miserably, and he wished that the day was ended and the morning come, that he might go, never to return.

He too had seen the mist in Dora's eyes; and, with Smith's words, the air-castles which had persistently built themselves without volition on his part, crumbled. There was nothing for him to do but to efface himself as quickly and as completely as possible. The sight of him could only be painful to Dora, and he wished to spare her all of that within his power.

He looked at the foothills, the red butte rising in their midst, the tinted Bad Lands, the winding, willow-fringed creek. It was all beautiful in its bizarre colorings; but the spirit of the picture, the warm, glowing heart of it, had gone from it for him. The world looked a dull and lifeless place. His love for Dora was greater than he had known, far mightier than he had realized until the end, the positive end, had come.

"Oh, Dora!" he whispered in utter wretchedness. "Dear little Schoolmarm!"

In the room behind the white-curtained window the Schoolmarm walked the floor with her cheeks aflame and as close to hysteria as ever she had been in her life.

"What will he think of me!" she asked herself over and over again, clasping and unclasping her cold hands. "What can he think but one thing?"

The more overwrought she became, the worse the situation seemed.

"And how he looked at me! How they all looked at me! Oh, it was too dreadful!"

She covered her burning face with her hands.

"There isn't the slightest doubt," she went on, "but that he thinks I knew all about it. Perhaps"—she paused in front of the mirror and stared into her own horrified eyes—"perhaps he thinks I belong to a gang of robbers! Maybe he thinks I am Smith's tool, or that Smith is my tool, or something like that! Oh, whatever made him say such a thing! 'Our stake—our stake'—and—'I done it for you!'"

Another thought, still more terrifying occurred to her excited mind:

"What if he should have to arrest me as an accomplice!"

She sat down weakly on the edge of the bed.

"Oh," and she rocked to and fro in misery, "if only I never had tried to improve Smith's mind!"

The tears slipped from under the Schoolmarm's lashes, and her chin quivered.

Worn out by the all night's vigil at her mother's bedside, and the exciting events of the morning, Susie finally succumbed to the strain and slept the sleep of exhaustion. It was almost supper-time when she awakened. Passing the Schoolmarm's door, she heard a sound at which she stopped and frankly listened. Teacher was crying!

"Ling, this is an awful world. Everything seems to be upside down and inside out!"

"Plenty tlouble," agreed Ling, stepping briskly about as he collected ingredients for his biscuits.

"Don't seem to make much difference whether you love people or hate 'em; it all ends the same way—in tears."

"Plitty bad thing—love." Ling solemnly measured baking-powder. "Make people cly."

Susie surmised correctly that Ling's ears also had been close to a nearby keyhole.

"There'd 'a' been fewer tears on this ranch if it hadn't been for Smith."

"Many devils—Smith."

Susie sat on the corner of his work-table, and there was silence while he deftly mixed, rolled, and cut his dough.

"Mr. Ralston intends to go away in the morning," said Susie, as the biscuits were slammed in the oven.

Ling wagged his head dolorously.

"And they'll never see each other again."

His head continued to wag.

"Ling," Susie whispered, "we've got to do something." She stepped lightly to the open door and closed it.

* * * * *

There were few at the supper-table that night, and there was none of the noisy banter which usually prevailed. The grub-liners came in softly and spoke in hushed tones, out of a kind of respect for two empty chairs which had been the recognized seats of Tubbs and the Indian woman.

Ralston bowed gravely as Dora entered—pale, her eyes showing traces of recent tears. Susie was absent, having no heart for food or company, and preferring to sit beside her mother for the brief time which remained to her. Even Meeteetse Ed shared in the general depression, and therefore it was in no spirit of flippancy that he observed as he replaced his cup violently in its saucer:

"Gosh A'mighty, Ling, you must have biled a gum-boot in this here tea!"

Dora, who had drank nearly half of hers, was unable to account for the peculiar tang which destroyed its flavor, and Ralston eyed the contents of his cup doubtfully after each swallow.

"Like as not the water's gittin' alkali," ventured Old Man Rulison.

"Alkali nothin'. That's gum-boot, or else a plug of Battle Ax fell in."

Ling bore Meeteetse's criticisms with surprising equanimity.

A moment later the lights blurred for Dora.

"I—I feel faint," she whispered, striving to rise.

Ralston, who had already noted her increasing pallor, hastened around the table and helped her into the air. Ling's immobile face was a study as he saw them leave the room together, but satisfaction was the most marked of its many expressions. He watched them from the pantry window as they walked to the cottonwood log which served as a garden-seat for all.