The question before them was that of the most practical method of
returning over the long miles of prairie they had traversed in their
pursuit of Alfred and his outfit. They entertained not a moment's
doubt as to the necessity of the return. Their equipment consisted now
of ten horses and six wagons. By humoring the animals they might be
able to get through with a pair to each schooner. This meant the
abandonment of one of the wagons, and the lightening of the others. It
was decided. One of the men strode to the group of women.
Lafond was in the midst of a tirade, but when he saw the mountaineer
approach, he prepared to pay eager attention to the plan of action.
"H'yar," announced the latter, with a little the heavier shading on his
accustomed drawl, "that's enough of this h'yar jaw, I reckon. You-all
come along and pack up."
"And when is it that we do pursue them?" asked Lafond eagerly.
"Pursue nothin'," replied the man. "We're goin' back."
There was a moment's silence.
"And you intend not to get that revenge?" the half-breed inquired.
"Revenge!" snorted the man. "You damn fool--with _that_ outfit?" He
swept a descriptive gesture toward the women. "Besides, what's the
good now?" Lafond fell silent, and withdrew from the group.
The man of mixed blood is not like other men, and cannot be judged by
the standards of either race. From his ancestors he takes qualities
haphazard, without balance or proportion, so that the defects of
virtues may often occur without the assistance of the virtues
themselves. And, besides, he develops traits native to neither of the
parent races, traits which perhaps can never be comprehended by us who
call ourselves the saner people. He is superstitious, given to strange
impulses, which may unexpectedly, and without reason, harden into
convictions; obscure in his ends; unscrupulous in his means. No man
lives who can predict what may or may not suffice to set into motion
the machinery of his passions. A triviality is enough to-day.
To-morrow the stroke of a sledge may not even jar the cogs. But, once
started, the results may be tremendous, and quite out of proportion to
the first careless touch on the lever. Such passions are dangerous,
both to their possessor and to those who stand in their way.
[Illustration: A SIOUX COUNCIL]
Now, from the gainsaying of his lesser revenge--the proving to Billy
Knapp the futility of his objections--Lafond conceived the desire for a
greater. There entered into his life one of those absorbing passions
which are to be encountered in all their intensity only in such men as
he--passions which come to be ruling motives in the lives of those who
harbor them; gathering to themselves all lesser forces which are spread
more evenly over saner existences; losing their first burning
intensity, perhaps, but becoming thereby only the more sustained, cool,
and deadly; so that at the last they lie unnoticed in the background of
the man's ordinary life, coloring, influencing every act--a religion to
which, without anger, but without relenting, he bends every
long-planned effort of even his trivial and daily deeds. You may not
understand this, unless you have known a half-breed; but it is true.
Interrupted in the midst of his flow of anger, and deprived of the
immediate solace of shooting things at his enemies, Lafond fell into a
sulking fit. During the rest of the day he brooded. After dark that
night he wound his way silently through the grasses, crept up behind
the solitary sentinel considered necessary in this peaceful country,
stabbed the man in the back, and returned to camp. Thus his way was
clear. Then he took from the wagons three slabs of bacon, a small sack
of coffee, a large supply of powder, lead, and caps, a blanket, and a
frying-pan and cup. With these he mounted the hill, past the dead
sentinel, to the ponies. Two of the latter he drew apart from the
herd. One of them he saddled; the other he packed with his supplies.
Then the half-breed led them silently westward for a good half-mile.
Then he mounted and rode away.
VI
THE WOMAN AND THE MAN
The wagon-train under the command of Billy Knapp, and Alfred, and Jim
Buckley had a very hard trip before they were done with it. The only
difficulty they did not encounter was lack of water. There was too
much of that. Several times the party had to camp in one spot for days
while the wagons were laboriously warped across rivers of mud and
quicksand, with steep, slippery clay banks. How little Prue stood the
journey so well, neither her father, her mother, nor the men of the
party were able to divine; but she did, and, what is more, she seemed
to think it great fun. So cheerful was she, and so sunny, that the men
came to grudge each other her company. And as for Mrs. Prue and the
doctor, who could help loving the patient sweetness of the one, or the
pathetic, gentle, impracticable kindness of the other?
Yes, it was a hard journey; but somehow the feeling was not entirely of
joy and relief when the stockade of Frenchman's Creek shimmered across
the broad, flat foot-hills. There they separated. The dangers were
over.
Then, to the surprise of everyone, the doctor waked up and knew just
where he wanted to go. He displayed an unexpected familiarity with the
general topography of the hills. It puzzled Billy. And, to the vaster
astonishment of both his _confreres_, Jim suddenly announced, with
quite unwonted volubility, that he had been intending all along to
start in prospecting at the end of this trip, and that here he meant to
quit scouting and leave the society of his brothers in arms--unless, of
course, he added, as a doubtful afterthought, they wanted to join him.
They profanely replied that they did not.
Most of the men pushed on immediately to Rockerville, whither a
majority of the former inhabitants of Frenchman's Creek had already
emigrated. Alfred and Billy decided to get over in the Limestone for a
"big hunt" before returning East. Prue said good-by to them with real
feeling, and most of them threw out their chests and were very gruff
and rude because they were sorry to leave. Prue understood. They were
kind-hearted men, after all, these rough pioneers. Billy remembered
for almost two years how she looked when she said that, which was
extraordinary for Billy. He had led so varied a life as pony-express
rider, stage-driver, scout, Indian, bronco-buster, hunter, and trapper,
that he had little room in his memory for anything short of bloodshed
or a triumph for himself.
Finally, after all the rest had gone, Jim and the doctor made the
mutually delightful discovery that they had selected the same locality,
the one for his prospecting, the other for his scientific
investigations. So the doctor simply left his outfit in Jim's wagon,
and they all went up together.
The little scientist was as excited as a child. To him the country was
as a document--a document which he had studied thoroughly in the pocket
editions. He now had it before him in the original manuscript, open
and unabridged.
And indeed, even to an ordinary observer, the Black Hills are a strange
series of formations.
They run north and south at the westernmost edge of the northern
prairie, and are, altogether, about as large as the State of Vermont.
Unlike other ranges, they possess no one ridge that serves as a
backbone to the system. The separate peaks rise tumultuously, like the
rip of seas in a tideway, without connection, solitary, sombre.
Between them lie deep gorges, or broad stretches of grass-park, which
dip away and away, until one catches the breath at the grand free sweep
of them. Huge castellated dikes crop up from the ridge-tops like
ramparts. Others rise parallel in the softest verdure, guarding
between their perpendicular sides streets as narrow and clean-cut as
the alleys of a city of skyscrapers.
Through it all, back and forth, like the walls of a labyrinth, run the
broken, twisted, faintly defined geological systems, which cross each
other so frequently and so vigorously that all semblance of order is
lost in the tumultuous upheaval. Here are strata deposited by the
miocene tertiary; here are breakings forth of metamorphic rocks of many
periods; here are the complex results of diverse influences and forces.
Down in the south is a great cavern--of which ninety-seven miles and
twenty-five hundred rooms have, at this writing, been explored--which
was once the interior of a geyser. For ages it spouted; for ages more
its fluids crystallized and petrified into varied and beautiful forms;
and then, finally, many layers of stratified rock were slowly overlaid
to seal forever this dried-out, beautiful, lifeless mummy of a cave.
It lies there now, as it has lain through the centuries, with a single,
tiny opening by which it can be entered--a palace of vast re-echoing
halls, hung with jewels, a horror-haunted honeycomb of unsounded
depths, a solemn abode wherein not the faintest drip of water, not the
gentlest sigh of air through the corridors, breaks the eternal silence.
Only its mouth roars continually as the winds rush in or out. The
Indians assign to it the spirits of their dead warriors, and cannot be
induced to approach it. Geologists rave over it, and cannot be
persuaded to come away.
But this is in the latter day of railroads and tenderfeet. At the time
of which this story treats, little was known of the country. It was
simply a great second-hand shop, of a little of everything in the
geological line.
When the party arrived at Spanish Gulch, the doctor was so eager to get
into the wonderful hills that only with the greatest difficulty did he
constrain himself to help Jim erect a log cabin for the accommodation
of his family. Even then he was not of much use, although he could at
least help to lift timbers. Jim practically did it alone, and it took
him almost a month; but when it was done, it was very nice. The doctor
accepted the free gift of the scout's labor and skill quite as a matter
of course, just as he had taken the free gift of an ordinarily
expensive pilotage across the plains; but the woman appreciated, and
perhaps she understood, for she suddenly became very shy in Jim's
presence. And then, sometimes, she would gaze at him, when he was not
looking, with an adoration of gratitude filling her eyes.
After the doctor's home was finished, Jim betook himself into another
gulch, where he constructed a less elaborate shelter for his own
occupation. Thenceforward he spent much of his time in mysterious
prospecting operations; but two or three times a week he liked to sit
perfectly silent under the tree which overshadowed the doctor's cabin,
watching Prue, if she happened to be near, playing with Miss Prue, or
trying to talk with the doctor. He never went inside the house, even
in the winter; and he never seemed to try to know Prue any more
intimately. It would have been difficult for him to say just what
pleasure he discovered in these visits.
After a little, the routine of life became fixed. The doctor took up
his work systematically. Each morning he plunged into the hills. His
little bent form moved from ridge to ridge, following his own especial
leads as earnestly as the most eager gold prospector of them all.
Sometimes he got lost, but generally he managed to reach home at
sunset. He was entirely preoccupied. He ate his meals as they were
set before him without question, he pulled on his well-mended clothes
without noticing the new patches, he warmed himself before his fire
without a thought of whence came the wood, blazing up the mud-chimney.
Prue at first wondered a little at this, for even in his intensest
absorption the doctor's home-life had been much to him; but in time she
came to appreciate his mood, and to rely on herself even more than
usual. She had such an exalted opinion of his work that she easily
fell into the habit of sacrificing herself to it. She watched for the
things that pleased him, or, rather, did not bother him, for his
pleasures were negative; she carefully excluded all disturbing
influences, and came to look on this lonely time as only a probation,
sooner or later to be over, after which, in the fulness of his success,
he would turn to her with his old love. To hasten this she would have
cut off her right hand.
So, much to the disgust of Jim Buckley, the brave little woman took the
management of things upon herself. During the long days, while the
doctor was away, she schemed to make both ends meet. She raised a few
vegetables in a plot of open ground on the sunny side of the creek,
working in it daily with an old spade. Her face was hidden in the
depths of a sunbonnet, and her hands were covered with a pair of
deerskin gauntlets, for she could not forget, poor woman! that she was
gently bred, and she hated to see her skin reddening in the dry air of
the hills.
Items of necessity she bought scantily, sparingly, of travelling
pedlars, for prices were high. Candles for the winter, corn-meal,
occasionally flour, coffee, sugar--all these counted. Things cost so
much more here than she had anticipated. Prue saw the end coming,
distant though it might be. She sometimes did little bits of mending
for passing miners, and was paid for it. Oftener she skimped on the
daily meals, pretending that she was tired and did not care to eat.
The doctor never noticed, nor did she mean that he should.
In the presence of his work, he could think of nothing else. Once,
when they ran out of wood, she told him of it. It worried him for a
week. Material necessities drew his mind away from the attitude of
calm scientific investigation. The pile of fuel that goes with every
new shack lasted the first winter through. After that was gone, Prue
used the chips made when the house was built, as long as they held out.
Then she tried to chop down a tree herself. Jim Buckley found her
sitting on a stone, the axe between her knees, her face buried in her
hands. Beside her was a pine scarred at random with weak, ill-directed
blows. He made a few profane remarks into his thick beard concerning
the doctor, then took the axe from her, and started to work. In a week
enough firewood was piled over against the house to last the winter.
During that week he ate his noon meals in the little cabin. The woman
did her best, and used up a fortnight's provisions in the attempt to
make a respectable showing before the hungry man. But in spite of that
he saw through her pitiful efforts, and offered to let her have money.
She drew herself up and showed him the door. When he had gone,
bewildered, she went out and looked at the white shining wood-pile and
wept bitterly.
But in spite of economy the closest, and the sacrifice of absolutely
every non-essential, the time came when the last cent had gone. The
woman stood face to face with want. And, as ill-luck would have it, at
this period the doctor was especially brimming with enthusiasm, for he
had almost achieved the one result he needed to fill out his scheme.
He worked feverishly to forestall the snow. He was full of his system,
alternating between glowing enthusiasm and a haunting fear that the
winter would set in too early. He must have uninterrupted time for
work until then, he said. On this depended his professional
reputation, their fortune.
She set her lips firmly and looked about her. The flour and meal were
gone; there were no candles, and without candles how could the doctor
put the last touches to his book when winter fell? Little light
filtered through the oiled paper of the windows. She sold her ring to
some passing gamblers. The money soon slipped away. For a few days
she fought hard with her pride. Then she put on her sunbonnet, and,
kissing the child tenderly, went, with heightened color, down the gulch
to Jim Buckley's.
She found him sitting on a stump in front of his dirt-roofed shack,
pounding into sand some quartz in an iron mortar. He did not hear her
until she stood beside him. Then he arose, drawing his gaunt form up
quickly, taking off his broad hat, and wiping his grimy hands on his
jeans.
"Mr. Buckley," she said hurriedly, before he could speak, "I have come
to tell you how sorry I am that I was so rude to you. You have been
very kind to me, and I had no right to speak to you as I did. No, no!"
she implored, as Jim opened his mouth to expostulate. "I must tell you
that, and _please_ don't interrupt me.
"My husband is doing some very valuable work," Prue continued, "very
valuable, and when he gets it done he will be very famous and very
rich. But just now it takes all his time and attention, so that he
doesn't realize--how--poor--we--are." The little woman's cheeks
burned, and she lowered her head until the sunbonnet hid her face. "Of
course, if I should tell him," she went on proudly, "he would attend to
it at once. But I mustn't do that. He needs _such_ a little time to
finish his work, and I mustn't--must I?" And she suddenly looked up
into Jim's honest eyes with an imploring gesture.
Jim was standing, his broad hat against his knee, looking at her
fixedly. No doubt he was thinking how, when he had first seen her, her
cheeks were as full and ripe as the apples of his old home in New
England; and was wondering if the dip of strata were worth this.
Seeing that he intended no reply, she looked down again and went on.
"I came here to see you about that. Once, Mr. Buckley, you offered to
lend me some money, and I--I--am afraid I was very rude. And now--oh,
dear!" And suddenly the poor little figure in faded and patched calico
sank to the ground, and began to sob as if her heart would break.
Jim was distressed. He started forward, hesitated, looked up at the
sky and down the gulch. Then he threw down his hat and darted into the
cabin, returning in a moment with a buckskin bag, which he tossed
impulsively into her lap.
"There, there!" he said distractedly. "Why didn't you say so before?
Stop! _Please_ stop! Oh, the----"
She looked up suddenly with a blinding smile.
"Now, don't say anything naughty!" she cried airily through her tears.
She laughed queerly at Jim's open mouth and astonished eyes. He could
not grasp the meaning of her change of mood. Before he could recover,
she was on her feet, a roguish vision of blushing cheeks and dancing
eyes. She shook the buckskin bag in his face.
"Aren't you afraid you'll never be paid, sir?" she demanded; then, with
a quick sob, "I think you are the kindest man in all the world!" The
next instant the alders closed about her fluttering figure on the
trail. For a week after, her cheeks burned, and she was afraid to look
out of the cabin lest Jim should be coming up the path.
As the winter wore away, however, she began to see the bottom of the
little buckskin bag. The doctor was as absorbed as ever. She could
not bring her pride to the point of asking Buckley for another loan,
and so again the terror of poverty seized upon her. Her eyes looked
harassed and worn, and her mouth had queer little lines in the corners.
She would stand watching the flames in the chimney for hours, and then
would turn suddenly, hungrily, and snatch up the little girl, devouring
her with kisses. Sometimes she would wrinkle her brow, peeping into
the doctor's manuscripts, trying to make out how near the end he was,
but she always laid them down with a puzzled sigh. She did not eat
enough, and she grew thin. She tried expedients of which she had read.
For instance, one day she went down into the creek bottom and cut some
willows. She peeled the bark from them, and from the inside rind she
collected a quantity of fine white dust, with which she made a pasty
kind of dough. The biscuits were tough and of a queer flavor. Even
the doctor, after tasting one of them, looked up in surprise.
"What do you call this, my dear?" he inquired.
She clapped her hands gayly, and laughed with a catch in her voice.
"Oh, a queer Indian dish I've learned, that's all. You never _do_ pay
any attention to what you eat, so I thought I'd make you for once."
"Oh," said the doctor, smiling faintly.
The willow flour appeared no more.
So the long winter drew to its close, and still the brave little woman
set her face resolutely forward, striving to help the doctor with his
life-work as only a woman can. She could see no way out. The case was
hopeless, and often she shed impotent tears over her inability. He
worked so hard, and she did so little!
And then the spring brought with it the solution.
VII
THE REINS OF POWER
For two weeks after, Michail Lafond, cut loose from the crippled
wagon-train returning to Three Rivers, travelled westward by the sun,
sleeping under the stars, living on bacon, coffee, and an occasional
bit of small game, drinking muddy water from buffalo wallows which
providential rains had filled. At the end of that time he was raided
by the Sioux. When they approached him, he led forward his two ponies,
placed his rifle on the ground in front of their noses, unslung his
powder-horn and laid it beside the weapon, and stepped back, throwing
his arms wide apart. The Indians rode forward silently, a strange,
naked band, whose fancy ran to chrome yellow, and took possession of
Lafond and his equipment.
The half-breed became a squaw man, and lived with these Indians for
some time. At first he was given drudgery to do. He did it, but kept
his eyes open, and learned the language. After a little his chance
came.
The band captured a wagon-train, and massacred its men and women. It
found itself in possession of fifty or sixty horses, half a score of
wagons, some provisions, and a goodly quantity of blankets, axes,
utensils, and the rude necessities of life on the frontier. An Indian
cannot possess too many ponies, he is always ready to eat, and blankets
come handy in winter; but he has absolutely no use for the rest of the
plunder. So he usually puts a torch to the lot, and has a bonfire by
way of celebration.
On this occasion, Michail Lafond succeeded in getting Lone Wolf to
postpone the bonfire, to lend him twenty ponies, and to detail to his
service half as many squaws. The feat in itself was a mark of genius,
as anyone who knows the Indian character will admit, and cost Michail
many of his newly learned words, put together with all of his native
eloquence.
The twenty ponies, driven by the ten squaws, drew the schooners and
their contents to the Bad Lands, where Michail concealed them in a
precipitous gully of the deeply eroded sort so common in that strange,
rainless district. Then he returned fifteen of the ponies to Lone
Wolf. Lone Wolf's band took up quarters within striking distance of
the cached schooners.
All this was done by Michail Lafond, and when it was completed he drew
a long breath. He felt that the foundations of his influence were
laid. It was no light thing thus to have drawn self-willed savages
from their accustomed ways of life. He had done it only by vague
promises of great benefits to accrue in the immediate future, said
benefits to be "big medicine" in the extreme. Lone Wolf had pondered
much; had seen an opportune shooting star; had consented.
A month later, a half-breed returned alone across the plains from the
hill country. At Pierre he announced open trail. He had himself come
through without the least trouble, he claimed, although he had seen
many Indians. This was strictly true. He went on to say that he would
sell his outfit cheap, as he was anxious to go on east. The gold
prospects were good. He had a partner squatting on several claims, to
whom he would return the following year. He hinted mysteriously of
capital to be invested and exhibited a small nugget of placer gold.
Most of this was untrue, and the nugget he had found, not in the placer
beds, but in a small pasteboard box in one of the schooners.
The outfit brought three hundred and fifty dollars, for the half-breed
sold cheap. With this money and the horses he departed the day
following.