MAPLE LEAF'S SCAR
"I say, Maple Leaf," Percy Rapson declared with boyish frankness,
"you're lookin' awfully charmin' at this moment, standin' there peelin'
those apples with the light of the settin' sun on you! I don't think you
ever realise how good-lookin' you are. If I were an artist, I should
want to paint a picture of you; only you should be dressed in fringed
and beaded buckskins, and wear a feathered head-dress like a war-chief's
daughter. Of course, I should never be able to do you justice, but your
portrait would look rippin' fine on the top of a chocolate box."
The Indian girl's naturally ruddy cheeks took on a deeper tinge, which
was not wholly due to the rosy glow from the western sky.
"Maple Leaf is glad that you are not an artist," she responded with
dignity and a slightly contemptuous curl of her lip.
Percy stood near to her in the kitchen at Rattlesnake Ranch. He had one
of a litter of bull pups on the dresser beside him, and was tempting the
fat, ungainly animal to take more nourishment than it needed from a
saucer of milk. He looked at the girl very closely and his eyes
lingered, not for the first time, upon a curious scar in the smooth skin
of her right temple. It was a long, very straight scar, that ran into
the midst of the ebony black hair above her ear.
"Maple Leaf!" he said, after a considerable pause.
"Well?" She glanced aside at him.
"I've often wanted to ask you," he went on. "How did you get that wound
on your temple? It's like the cut of a knife. It must have been a good
deal more than a scratch to leave a mark like that. How was it done?"
Maple Leaf continued with her work of peeling and quartering apples.
She had turned her back to him.
"Don't you want to tell me?" he asked. "Indians are usually proud of
their wounds. At least, the men are, the chiefs and warriors and braves.
I don't know about the women. Perhaps you got yours in some childish
accident?"
"I have never told any one," she answered. And then, after a pause, she
added: "And I am not going to. It is my secret. It is no business of
yours."
Percy laughed awkwardly, feeling the rebuff, and took up his wriggling
bull pup.
"All right," he said, knowing by experience that Maple Leaf was like the
rest of her race and that wild horses couldn't drag from her anything
that she did not wish to tell. "You can keep your secret, for all I
care. But I could easily find out if I wanted, you know. I could even
ask Sergeant Silk. I daresay Silk knows. There isn't much that he
doesn't know about you and every one else on the Rattlesnake patrol."
She turned sharply and her dark eyes flashed. But only for an instant.
"You had better not ask Sergeant Silk," she said in a slow, level
voice, which had in it something of warning. "He knows. Yes, he knows.
But he would not tell you."
She watched him go out into the back garden towards the shed which he
used as a kennel. When he was out of sight, she put forth her hand to
the plate rack and drew a small square of looking-glass from behind a
cracked dish.
Propping the mirror against the shelf, she drew aside the strands of
black hair from above her ear in such a way that the scar was revealed
more clearly, running upward and backward from her temple.
"Yes," she nodded with a smile of satisfaction at her own reflection,
"it is still there. It will always be there. Maple Leaf is not sorry.
She is glad. It helps her to remember."
She put the mirror back in its hiding-place and went to the door and
looked out across the ripening cornfields and the more distant prairie
to the blue foothills behind which the sun was sinking.
It was just such an evening as this, she reflected. And she recalled
one by one the incidents of the adventure in which she had taken so
prominent a part.
It had happened that her father, The Moose That Walks, and her brother,
Rippling Water, had been absent many days from Mrs. Medlicott's ranch,
where they lived and worked. The crops were not yet ready for
harvesting, and there was not much for them to do on the farm lands,
whereas the beaver were plentiful on the creeks and in their best
condition; so the father and son had gone trapping on the head waters of
the Bow River.
They had left word at the ranch that if they did not return within a
stated time it would mean that they were having good luck, and that
Maple Leaf was to go to them with some further supplies of the white
man's food--tea, sugar, flour, with rifle cartridges, not forgetting
tobacco.
So Maple Leaf had filled her saddle-bags, mounted her pony, and gone
off on the trail alone to the trappers' dug-out on far-away Butterfly
Creek.
It was a long and lonesome journey among the mountains, occupying two
days; but she had the Indians' instinct for finding her way through
unfamiliar places, and she reached her destination without adventure.
It was as she had expected. The Moose That Walks and Rippling Water had
met with good luck. Their traps had yielded a rich harvest. Some
hundreds of beautiful beaver skins had been dried and packed, and there
were more to be taken. Now that fresh supplies of food and tobacco had
come, it would be possible to continue trapping with success for many
days.
"It is good medicine," said The Moose That Walks. "We will sleep seven
more sleeps and then return with many beaver skins to our white friends.
With the sun's rising you will go back, my daughter, for it is not well
that you should be away when there is work to be done."
"And, say!" added Rippling Water, observing that she had come unarmed
with any other weapon than the knife in her belt. "Don't you reckon that
you'd be some wiser to carry a loaded gun along with you? You might need
it, see? There's no knowing."
He offered her his own revolver, but the girl shook her head decisively.
"What d'you suppose I could want with a loaded gun?" she objected.
"Nobody's going to touch me. There's no road-agents to rob me, even if I
was worth robbing; and there's no grizzly bears or hungry wolves
prowling around, this time of year. No, Rip. I'm safe enough. Don't you
worry."
She had no fear, because she knew of no possible danger, and she started
on her backward journey as confident of her personal safety as if she
were riding among the familiar cornfields and orchards of Rattlesnake
Ranch instead of in the gloomy wilds of the Rocky Mountains.
She had abundance of food and a good, sure-footed horse. She knew the
landmarks and could not well go astray. In the noon-day heat she would
halt at the side of some shady creek to rest; at night she would seek
out some friendly shelter where she could build a fire, and, wrapping
her blanket about her, sleep as comfortably and securely as in her
little room under the roof at the Medlicott homestead.
Leaving the mountains behind, she crossed a belt of old sand-drift
overgrown with pine. Beyond that, for a score of miles or so, there was
no bush, but only a swell of golden grass rolling away to violet
distances.
Late in the afternoon she came to Emerald Canyon, where, sunk three
hundred feet below the plains, there was a chain of pools and an acre or
so of green meadow starred with the ashes of old camp fires.
In this secluded canyon Maple Leaf hobbled her broncho and made camp for
the night within sound of a high cascade of water, which fell noisily
into a pool darkened by overhanging trees.
She shared her solitude with a family of little foxes at play on a
grassy knoll and with a crane, which stood on one leg at the water's
edge.
She watched the crane, wondering how long it would remain motionless in
that position, and as she watched, a waft of smoke from her fire drifted
towards the bird, which rose into the air and flapped lazily away into
the blue gloom.
Suddenly as she followed its flight the girl's quick eyes were drawn
upward to the rim of the shadowed canyon, where a waving line of ripened
grass glowed orange against the sky, and she became aware of a filmy
cloud of dust, which rose from the high plain beyond.
She clasped her fingers tightly, drew back into the shadow, and crouched
there, listening, watching.
The dust cloud thickened, and above the deep murmur of the waterfall she
caught the unmistakable sound of the tramping of horses and the rumble
of wagon wheels.
She thought of Indians and of the need of concealing her fire, lest they
should discover her and perhaps steal her pony.
Earlier in the day she had come upon the marks of horses' hoofs in the
prairie dust. The horses had not all been shod, and she had known by
this that their riders were Indians. She began to wish that she had
taken the loaded gun which Rippling Water had offered her. But her
anxiety quickly left her.
Presently a mounted man came out upon the edge of the ravine. The
sunlight shone warmly upon his chestnut horse and flamed upon his
scarlet tunic. He had come to a halt not half-a-mile away from her, and
he was looking down towards the drifting mist of her wood fire. For a
moment he glanced back over his shoulder, then moved onward in her
direction, followed, after a while, by some twenty riders, each with a
carbine poised across the horn of his stock saddle. They were a troop of
the North-West Mounted Police.
At a word of command the riders dismounted to lead their horses, while
behind them there appeared five wagons, each with a driver and an off
man. A pair of troopers in the rear waited for the dust to settle before
they followed down the breakneck hill into the hollow of the canyon.
Maple Leaf watched them winding down the rocky slopes. Some wore suits
of brown canvas, some were dressed in fringed deer-skin with grey
flannel shirts or old red jackets, with long boots, sombrero hats, belts
glittering with brass cartridges, and big revolvers at their sides.
Hard-featured, weather-beaten, dusty, great big men they were, all
having the same clear, far-searching eyes, the same pride of bearing,
and the same swaggering gallantry and wild grace in their masterly
horsemanship.
The trooper who had first appeared in sight waited for a while and spoke
to the officer in command, then went on in advance of his companions.
Even at a distance as he approached, Maple Leaf made out that he had a
sergeant's triple chevron on the arm of his dusty red tunic. When he
reached the level ground he vaulted into his saddle and rode across the
long grass straight for the trees where her fire still burned smokily.
"Yes," she said to herself with a thrill of satisfaction. "It's sure
Sergeant Silk." And he in his turn was as quick to recognise the Indian
girl who did the chores at Rattlesnake Ranch.
"How do, Maple Leaf?" he cried in greeting, drawing rein in front of her
as she stood up. "Alone, eh? We came upon your trail 'way back there on
the plains. Been west somewhere near Butterfly Creek, I reckon?"
"Yes," she responded. "Been along to take things to father and Rip."
He glanced at her pony nibbling at the fresh grass, then at the
preparations she had made for her bivouac.
"Say, aren't you a bit afraid to be camping out all alone so far from
home?" he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Why should I be?" she returned. "There's no danger. What could happen?"
"You might lose your pony, for one thing," he smiled. "For another
thing, there are Indians knocking about--hostile Indians, who have
broken bounds. That is why we are here." He nodded in the direction of
his companions of the Mounted Police. "We are out on their trail, to
drive them back into their Reservation. There might be danger from them,
even for you, who are yourself an Indian; though there's not much to be
afraid of while our fellows are at hand to look after you."
"I shall be all right," she assured him.
"Have you everything you want?" he inquired. "I'll bring you some cooked
meat presently, and an extra blanket. It'll be cold after sundown. And
in the morning you may as well fall in with our outfit, see? We shall be
going along the Rattlesnake trail, after we've rounded up the Indians."
"I should only hinder you," she replied. "I'm not needing any sort of
help. I shall not take any. I am going to quit."
Sergeant Silk had already moved to go away, and amid the roar of the
neighbouring waterfall he did not hear her last words.