A CHANGE OF JAILERS.
There was a significant silence in the passage when Colina had gone.
Finally Macfarlane said stubbornly, "He's my prisoner. It's my duty to
hold him against any odds. It's the first rule of the service."
Giddings and Pringle urgently remonstrated with him. Strange held
apart as if he considered it none of his business. At last, with a
deprecating air, he added his voice to the other men's.
"Look here," he said smoothly; "you know best, of course; but aren't
there times when a soldier must make his own rules? All of us men
would stand by you gladly, but there's a sick man up-stairs that they
have been taught to hate. And a woman."
Macfarlane gave in with a shrug. "I suppose you'll stand by me if I'm
hauled up for it," he grumbled.
He drew his revolver and stood aside to let Ambrose pass. The others
likewise drew back, as from one marked with the plague. Every face was
hard with scorn.
Ambrose kept his eyes straight ahead. When he appeared on the porch,
cries, apparently of welcome, were raised by the Kakisas.
Ambrose supposed that Strange had made a deal with the Kakisas to put
him out of the way. He believed that he was going straight to his
death.
He accepted it sooner than make an appeal to those who scorned him. He
wished to speak to them before he went; but it was to warn them, not to
ask for aid for himself.
He faced the little group in the doorway. "I tell you again," he said,
"this is all a put-up job. You know nothing of what is going on but
what this breed chooses to tell you. He's a liar and a murderer. If
you put yourselves in his hands, so much the worse for you."
The white men laughed in Ambrose's face. The breed smiled
deprecatingly and forgivingly.
"Hold your tongue, and be thankful you're getting off so easy,"
Macfarlane said, full of honest contempt.
Ambrose became very pale. He turned his back, on them, and, climbing
over the wire barrier, marched stiffly down to the gate. The
consciousness of innocence is supposed to be sufficient to armor a man
against any slanders, but this is only partially true.
When one's accusers are honest, their scorn hurts, hurts more than any
other wound we are capable of receiving. Ambrose was of the type that
rages against a hurt. At present, for all he was outwardly so pale and
still, he was deafened and blinded by rage.
It was now full daylight. An extraordinary picture faced the watchers
from the doorway--the ruined store in the background, the grotesque
crew hanging to the fence palings.
Their ordinary rags were covered with layers of misfit clothing out of
the store, while many of them wore several hats, and others had extra
pairs of shoes hanging around their necks.
There was a great display of gaudy silk handkerchiefs. Pockets bulged
with small articles of loot, and nearly every man lugged some
particular treasure according to his fancy, whether it was an alarm
clock or a glass pitcher or a bolt of red flannel.
The younger men, still susceptible to gallantry, mostly were burdened
with crushed articles of feminine finery, gaily trimmed hats, red or
blue shawls, fancy satin bodices, corsets with the strings dangling.
The faces, after a night of unbridled license, showed dull and slack in
the daylight.
Myengeen, whom Ambrose had marked earlier as a leader of the mob,
gripped his hand at the gate and cried out with hypocritical joy.
Others crowded around, those who could not obtain his hands, stroking
his sleeves and fawning upon him.
There was an ironical note in the demonstration. Ambrose observed that
the majority of the Indians looked on indifferently. He smelted
treachery in the air.
The mob, facing about, started to move in open order toward the river.
Ambrose, as they opened up, caught sight of the two dead bodies. It
afflicted him with a dull at the pit of the stomach--these were the
first deaths by violence he had witnessed.
They still lay where they had fallen--the Indian sprawling in the
middle of a black stain on the platform; Tole huddled on the bare earth
of the quadrangle. Ambrose's heart sank at the thought of returning to
Simon Grampierre with the gift of a dead son.
The Indians gave no regard to the bodies--apparently they meant to
leave them behind. Ambrose with no uncertain gestures commanded
Myengeen to have them taken up and carried to the boat. It was done.
When they got down the bank out of sight of the house Myengeen and the
others gave over their hollow pretense of enthusiasm at Ambrose's
release.
Thereafter none paid the least attention to him.
He saw that they had not only loaded the boat they came in, but on the
principle of in for a penny, in for a pound, had also taken possession
of one of the company york boats, and had loaded it to the gunwale.
They immediately embarked and pushed off. Ambrose secured a place
below Myengeen's steering platform. In the bottom of the boat, at his
feet, lay the wizened Indian in his rags, and the straight, slim body
of Tole--side by side like brothers in a bed.
Tole's face was not disfigured; serene, boyish, and comely, it gave
Ambrose's heart-strings a fresh wrench. He covered them both with a
piece of sail-cloth.
Across the river, as the Indians started to unload, Watusk came down to
the beach, followed by several of his councilors. It was impossible to
tell from his inscrutable, self-important air what he thought of all
this.
His flabby, yellow face changed neither at the sight of all the wealth
they brought nor at the two dead men. Ambrose demanded four men of him
to carry Tole's body to his father's house.
Watusk kept him waiting while he listened to a communication from
Myengeen. Ambrose guessed that it had to do with himself, for both men
glanced furtively at him. Watusk finally turned away without having
answered the white man.
Ambrose, growing red, imperiously repeated his demand. Watusk, still
without looking at him directly, spoke a word to some Indians within
call, and Ambrose was immediately seized by a dozen hands.
He was finally bound hand and foot with thongs of hide. This was no
more than he expected, still he did not submit without a fierce but
ineffectual struggle.
When it was done his captors looked on him with respect--they did not
laugh at him nor evince any anger. It was impossible for him to read
any clue in their stolid faces what was going forward.
Half a dozen of them carried him up the bank and laid him at the door
of a teepee. Presently Watusk passed by. Ambrose so violently
demanded an explanation that the Indian was forced to stop. He said,
still without meeting Ambrose's eye:
"Myengeen say you kill Tom Moosa. You got to take our law."
"It's a lie!" cried Ambrose, suffocating with indignation.
Watusk shrugged and disappeared. It was useless for Ambrose to shout
at any of the others. He fumed in silence. The Indians gave his
dangerous eyes a wide berth.
Meanwhile the camp was plunged into a babel of confusion by the order
to move.
Boys ran here and there catching the horses, the teepees came down on
the run, and the squaws frantically to pack their household gear.
Infants and dogs infected with a common excitement outvied each other
in screaming and barking.
Ambrose saw only the beginning of the preparations. A horse was
brought to where he lay, and the six men whom he was beginning to
recognize as his particular guard unbound his ankles and lifted him
into the saddle.
They never dared lay hands on him except in concert--he took what
comfort he could out of that tribute to his prowess. They tied his
bound wrists to the saddle-horn, and also tied his ankles under the
horse's belly, leaving just play enough for him to use the stirrups.
The six then mounted their own horses, and they set off at a swift lope
away from the river--one leading Ambrose's horse.
They extended themselves in single file along a well-beaten trail.
This, Ambrose knew, was the way to the Kakisa River--their own country.
A chill struck to his breast. Any intelligible danger may be faced
with a good heart, but to be cast among capricious and inscrutable
savages, whom he could neither command nor comprehend, was enough to
undermine the stoutest courage.
Nevertheless he strove with himself as he rode. "They cannot put it
over me unless I knuckle under," he thought. "They're afraid of me.
No Indian that ever lived can face out a white man when the white man
knows his power."
Several dogs followed them out of camp. There was one that the others
all snapped at and drove from among them. Ambrose suddenly recognized
Job, and his heart leaped up.
He had left him at Grampierre's the night before. The faithful little
beast must have followed him down to the Kakisa camp and have been
waiting for him ever since to return.
During the events of the last half-hour Job had no doubt been regarding
his master from afar. The other dogs would not let him run at the
horses' heels, but he followed indomitably in the rear.
Every time they went over a hill Ambrose saw him trotting patiently far
behind in the trail. When they stopped to eat there was a joyful
reunion.
Ambrose no longer felt friendless. He divided his rations with his
humble follower. The Indians smiled. In this respect they evidently
considered the formidable white man a little soft-headed.