A CAMP-FIRE TALE
Another surprise was waiting for Jessie. As soon as Onistah came into
the circle of light, he walked straight to the whiskey-smuggler.
"You save my life from Crees. Thanks," he said in English.
Onistah offered his hand.
The white man took it. He was embarrassed. "Oh, well, I kinda took a
hand."
The Indian was not through. "Onistah never forget. He pay some day."
Tom waved this aside. "How's the leg? Seems to be all right now."
Swiftly Jessie turned to the Indian and asked him a question in the
native tongue. He answered. They exchanged another sentence or two.
The girl spoke to Morse. "Onistah is my brother. I too thank you," she
said stiffly.
"Your brother! He's not Angus McRae's son, is he?"
"No. And I'm not his daughter--really. I'll tell you about that," she
said with a touch of the defensive defiance that always came into her
manner when the subject of her birth was referred to.
She did, later, over the camp-fire.
It is fortunate that desire and opportunity do not always march
together. The constable and Morse had both been dead men if Bully West
could have killed with a wish. Sleeping Dawn would have been on the
road to an existence worse than death. Instead, they sat in front of
the coals of buffalo chips while the big smuggler and his companions
rode away from an ignominious field of battle.
When the constable and his prisoner had first struck camp, there had
been two of them. Now there were six. For in addition to Jessie McRae,
the Blackfoot, and Barney, another had come out of the night and
hailed them with a "Hello, the camp!" This last self-invited guest was
Brad Stearns, who had not ridden to Whoop-Up as he had announced, but
had watched events from a distance on the chance that he might be of
help to Tom Morse.
Jessie agreed with Beresford that she must stay in camp till morning.
There was nothing else for her to do. She could not very well ride the
night out with Onistah on the road back to the fort. But she stayed
with great reluctance.
Her modesty was in arms. Never before had she, a girl alone, been
forced to make camp with five men as companions, all but one of them
almost strangers to her. The experience was one that shocked her sense
of fitness.
She was troubled and distressed, and she showed it. Her impulsiveness
had swept her into an adventure that might have been tragic, that
still held potentialities of disaster. For she could not forget the
look on West's face when he had sworn to get even with her. This man
was a terrible enemy, because of his boldness, his evil mind, and his
lack of restraining conscience.
Yet even now she could not blame herself for what she had done. The
constable's life was at stake. It had been necessary to move swiftly
and decisively.
Sitting before the fire, Sleeping Dawn began to tell her story. She
told it to Beresford as an apology for having ridden forty miles with
Onistah to save his life. It was, if he chose so to accept it, an
explanation of how she came to do so unwomanly a thing.
"Onistah's mother is my mother," she said. "When I was a baby my own
mother died. Stokimatis is her sister. I do not know who my father
was, but I have heard he was an American. Stokimatis took me to her
tepee and I lived there with her and Onistah till I was five or six.
Then Angus McRae saw me one day. He liked me, so he bought me for
three yards of tobacco, a looking-glass, and five wolf pelts."
It may perhaps have been by chance that the girl's eyes met those of
Morse. The blood burned beneath the tan of her dusky cheeks, but her
proud eyes did not flinch while she told the damning facts about her
parentage and life. She was of the métis, the child of an unknown
father. So far as she knew her mother had never been married. She had
been bought and sold like a negro slave in the South. Let any one that
wanted to despise her make the most of all this.
So far as any expression went Tom Morse looked hard as pig iron. He
did not want to blunder, so he said nothing. But the girl would have
been amazed if she could have read his thoughts. She seemed to him a
rare flower that has blossomed in a foul swamp.
"If Angus McRae took you for his daughter, it was because he loved
you," Beresford said gently.
"Yes." The mobile face was suddenly tender with emotion. "What can any
father do more than he has done for me? I learned to read and write at
his knee. He taught me the old songs of Scotland that he's so fond of.
He tried to make me good and true. Afterward he sent me to Winnipeg to
school for two years."
"Good for Angus McRae," the young soldier said.
She smiled, a little wistfully. "He wants me to be Scotch, but of
course I can't be that even though I sing 'Should auld acquaintance'
to him. I'm what I am."
Ever since she had learned to think for herself, she had struggled
against the sense of racial inferiority. Even in the Lone Lands men
of education had crossed her path. There was Father Giguère, tall and
austere and filled with the wisdom of years, a scholar who had left
his dear France to serve on the outposts of civilization. And there
was the old priest's devoted friend Philip Muir, of whom the story ran
that he was heir to a vast estate across the seas. Others she had seen
at Winnipeg. And now this scarlet-coated soldier Beresford.
Instinctively she recognized the difference between them and the
trappers and traders who frequented the North woods. In her bed at
night she had more than once wept herself to sleep because life had
built an impassable barrier between what she was and what she wanted
to be.
"To the Scot nobody is quite like a Scot," Beresford admitted with
a smile. "When he wants to make you one, Mr. McRae pays you a great
compliment"
The girl flashed a look of gratitude at him and went on with her
story. "Whenever we are near Stokimatis, I go to see her. She has
always been very fond of me. It wasn't really for money she sold me,
but because she knew Angus McRae could bring me up better than she
could. I was with her to-day when Onistah came in and told us what
this West was going to do. There wasn't time for me to reach Father. I
couldn't trust anybody at Whoop-Up, and I was afraid if Onistah came
alone, you wouldn't believe him. You know how people are about--about
Indians. So I saddled a horse and rode with him."
"That was fine of you. I'll never forget it, Miss McRae," the young
soldier said quietly, his eyes for an instant full on hers. "I don't
think I've ever met another girl who would have had the good sense and
the courage to do it."
Her eyes fell from his. She felt a queer delightful thrill run through
her blood. He still respected her, was even grateful to her for what
she had done. No experience in the ways of men and maids warned her
that there was another cause for the quickened pulse. Youth had looked
into the eyes of youth and made the world-old call of sex to sex.
In a little pocket opening from the draw Morse arranged blankets for
the girl's bed. He left Beresford to explain to her that she could
sleep there alone without fear, since a guard would keep watch against
any possible surprise attack.
When the soldier did tell her this, Jessie smiled back her
reassurance. "I'm not afraid--not the least littlest bit," she said
buoyantly. "I'll sleep right away."
But she did not. Jessie was awake to the finger-tips, her veins apulse
with the flow of rushing rivers of life. Her chaotic thoughts centered
about two men. One had followed crooked trails for his own profit.
There was something in him hard and unyielding as flint. He would
go to his chosen end, whatever that might be, over and through any
obstacles that might rise. But to-night, on her behalf, he had thrown
down the gauntlet to Bully West, the most dreaded desperado on the
border. Why had he done it? Was he sorry because he had forced her
father to horsewhip her? Or was his warning merely the snarl of one
wolf at another?
The other man was of a different stamp. He had brought with him from
the world whence he had come a debonair friendliness, an ease of
manner, a smile very boyish and charming. In his jaunty forage cap and
scarlet jacket he was one to catch and hold the eye by reason of his
engaging personality. He too had fought her battle. She had heard him,
in that casually careless way of his, try to take the blame of having
wounded West. Her happy thoughts went running out to him gratefully.
Not the least cause of her gratitude was that there had not been the
remotest hint in his manner that there was any difference between her
and any white girl he might meet.