escaping her, "even the rudiments of an education would be such a help to
you, opening up many avenues that now are closed to you. What I want to
say is this: that if you intend to stop for a time at the ranch, I will be
glad to teach you. Susie and I have an extra session in the evening, and I
will be delighted to have you join us."
It had not dawned upon Smith that she had questioned him with this end in
view. He looked at her fixedly, then, from the depths of his experience,
he said:
"Girl, you must like me some."
Dora flushed hotly.
"I am interested," she replied.
"That'll do for now;" and Smith wondered if the lump in his throat was
going to choke him. "Will I join that night-school of yours? _Will_ I?
Watch me! Say," he burst out with a kind of boyish impulsiveness, "if ever
you see me doin' anything I oughtn't, like settin' down when I ought to
stand up, or standin' up when I ought to set down, will you just rope me
and take a turn around a snubbin'-post and jerk me off my feet?"
"We'll get along famously if you really want to improve yourself!"
exclaimed the Schoolmarm, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. "If you really
and truly want to learn."
"Really and truly I do," Smith echoed, feeling at the moment that he
would have done dressmaking or taken in washing, had she bid him.
Once more the world looked big, alluring, and as full of untried
possibilities as when he had "quit the flat" at thirteen.
"Have you noticed me doin' anything that isn't manners?" he asked in
humble anxiety. "Don't be afraid of hurtin' my feelin's," he urged, "for I
ain't none."
"If you honestly want me to tell you things, I will; but it seems so--so
queer upon such a very short acquaintance."
"Shucks! What's the use of wastin' time pretendin' to get acquainted, when
you're acquainted as soon as you look at each other? What's the use of
sashayin' around the bush when you meet up with somebody you like? You
just cut loose on me, girl."
"It's only a little thing, in a way, and not in itself important perhaps;
yet it would be, too, if circumstances should take you into the world. It
might make a bad impression upon strangers."
Smith looked slightly alarmed. He wondered if she suspected anything about
White Antelope. At the moment, he could think of nothing else he had done
within the last twenty-four hours, which might prejudice strangers.
"I noticed at the table," the Schoolmarm went on in some embarrassment,
"that you held your fork as though you were afraid it would get away from
you. Like this"--she illustrated with her fist.
"Like a ranch-hand holdin' onto a pitch-fork," Smith suggested, relieved.
"Something," she laughed. "It should be like this. Anyway," she declared
encouragingly, "you don't eat with your knife."
Smith beamed.
"Did you notice that?"
"Naturally, in a land of sword-swallowers, I would;" the Schoolmarm made a
wry face.
"Once I run with a high-stepper from Bowlin' Green, Kentucky, and she told
me better nor that," he explained. "She said nothin' give a feller away
like his habit of handlin' tools at the table. She was a lady all right,
but she got the dope habit and threw the lamp at me. The way I quit her
didn't trouble _me_. None of 'em ever had any holt on me when it come to a
show-down; but you, girl, _you_----"
"Look!"
Her sharp exclamation interrupted him, and, following her gesture, he saw
a flying horseman in the distance, riding as for his life, while behind
him two other riders quirted their horses in hot pursuit.
"Is it a race--for fun?"
"I don't think it," Smith replied dryly, noting the direction from which
they came. "It looks like business."
He knew that the two behind were Indians. He could tell by the way they
used their quirts and sat their horses. Neither was there any mistaking
the bug-hunter on his ewe-necked sorrel, which, displaying unexpected
bursts of speed, was keeping in the lead and heading straight for the
ranch-house. With one hand McArthur was clinging to the saddle-horn, and
with the other was clinging quite as tightly to what at a distance
appeared to be a carbine.
"He's pulled his gun--why don't he use it?" Smith quickened his horse's
gait.
He knew that the Indians had learned White Antelope's fate. That was a
lucky swap Smith had made that morning. He congratulated himself that he
had not "taken chances." He wondered how effective McArthur's denial would
prove in the face of the evidence furnished by the saddle-blanket.
Personally, Smith regarded the bug-hunter's chances as slim.
"They'll get him in the corral," he observed.
"Oh, it's Mr. McArthur!" Dora cried in distress.
Smith looked at her in quick jealousy.
"Well, what of it?" In her excitement, the gruffness of his tone passed
unobserved.
"Come," she urged. "The Indians are angry, and he may need us."
Hatless, breathless, pale, McArthur rolled out of his saddle and thrust a
long, bleached bone into Tubbs's hand.
"Keep it!" he gasped. "Protect it! It may be--I don't say it is, but it
_may_ be--a portion of the paroccipital bone of an Ichthyopterygian!" Then
he turned and faced his pursuers.
Infuriated, they rode straight at him, but he did not flinch, and the
horses swerved of their own accord.
Susie had run from the house, and her mother had followed, expectancy upon
her stolid face, for, like Smith, she had guessed the situation.
The Indians circled, and, returning, pointed accusing fingers at
McArthur.
"He kill White Antelope!"
By this time, the grub-liners had reached the corral, among them four
Indians, all friends of the dead man. Their faces darkened.
"White Antelope is dead in a gulch!" cried his accusers. "He is shot to
pieces--here, there, everywhere!"
A murmur of angry amazement arose. White Antelope, the kindly, peaceable
Cree, who had not an enemy on the reservation!
"This is dreadful!" declared McArthur. "Believe me"--he turned to them
all--"I had but found the corpse myself when these men rode up. The Indian
was cold; he certainly had been dead for hours. Besides," he demanded,
"what possible motive could I have?"
"Them as likes lettin' blood don't need a motive." The sneering voice was
Smith's.
"But you, sir, met us on the hill. You know the direction from which we
came."
"It's easy enough to circle."
"But why should I go back?" cried McArthur.
"They say there's that that draws folks back for another look."
Smith's insinuations, the stand he took, had its effect upon the Indians,
who, hot for revenge, needed only this to confirm their suspicions. One of
the Indians on horseback began to uncoil his rawhide saddle-rope. All save
McArthur understood the significance of the action. They meant to tie him
hand and foot and take him to the Agency, with blows and insults plentiful
en route.
They edged closer to him, every savage instinct uppermost, their faces
dark and menacing. McArthur, his eyes sweeping the circle, felt that he
had not one friend, not one, in the motley, threatening crowd fast closing
in upon him; for Tubbs, hearing himself indirectly included in the
accusation, had discreetly, and with perceptible haste, withdrawn.
The Indian swung from his saddle, rope in hand, and advanced upon McArthur
with unmistakable purpose; but he did not reach the little scientist, for
Susie darted from the circle, her flashing gray eyes looking more
curiously at variance than ever with her tawny skin.
"No, no, Running Rabbit!" She pushed him gently backward with her
finger-tips upon his chest.
There was a murmur of protest from the crowd, and it seemed to sting her
like a spur. Susie was not accustomed to disapproval. She turned to where
the murmurs came loudest--from the white grub-liners, who were eager for
excitement.
"Who are you," she cried, "that you should be so quick to accuse this
stranger? You, Arkansaw Red, that skipped from Kansas for killin' a
nigger! You, Jim Padden, that shot a sheep-herder in cold blood! You,
Banjo Johnson, that's hidin' out this minute! Don't you all be so darned
anxious to hang another man, when there's a rope waitin' somewhere for
your own necks!
"And lemme tell you"--she took a step toward them. "The man that lifts a
finger to take this bug-hunter to the Agency can take his blankets along
at the same time, for there'll never be a bunk or a seat at the table for
him on this ranch as long as he lives. Where's your proof against this
bug-hunter? You can't drag a man off without something against him--just
because you want to _hang_ somebody!"
Some sound from Smith attracted her attention; she wheeled upon him, and,
with her thin arm outstretched as she pointed at him in scorn, she cried
shrilly:
"Why, I'd sooner think _you_ did it, than him!"
There was not so much as the flicker of an eyelid from Smith.
"I know you'd _sooner_ think I did it than him," he said, playing upon the
word. "You'd like to see _me_ get my neck stretched."
His bravado, his very insolence, was his protection.
"And maybe I'll have the chanst!" she retorted furiously.
Turning from him to the Indians, her voice dropped, the harsh language
taking on the soft accent of the squaws as she spoke to them in their own
tongue. Like many half-breeds, Susie seldom admitted that she either
understood or could speak the Indian language. She had an amusing fashion
of referring even to her relatives as "those Injuns"; but now, with hands
outstretched, she pleaded:
"We are all Indians together in this--friends of White Antelope! Our
hearts are down; they are heavy--so. You all know that he came from the
great Cree country with my father, and he has told us many times stories
of the big north woods, where they hunted and trapped. You know how he
watched me when I was little, and sat with his hand upon my head when I
had the big fever. He was like no one else to me except my father. He was
wise and good.
"I could kill with my own hand the man who killed White Antelope. I want
his blood as much as you. I'd like to see a stake driven through his
black heart on White Antelope's grave. But let us not be too quick because
the hate is hot in us. My heart tells me that the white man talks
straight. Let us wait--wait until we find the right one, and when we do we
will punish in our own way. You hear? _In our own way!_"
Smith understood something of her plea, and for the second time he paid
her courage tribute.
"She's a game kid all right," he said to himself, and a half-formed plan
for utilizing her gameness began to take definite shape.
That she had won, he knew before Running Rabbit recoiled his rope. After a
moment's talk among themselves, the Indians went to hitch the horses to
the wagon, to bring White Antelope's body home.
Smith was well aware that he had only to point to the saddle blanket, the
barest edge of which showed beneath the leather skirts of McArthur's
saddle, to make Susie's impassioned defense in vain. Why he did not, he
was not himself sure. Perhaps it was because he liked the feeling of
power, of knowing that he held the life of the despised bug-hunter in the
hollow of his hand; or perhaps it was because it would serve his purpose
better to make the accusation later. One thing was certain, however, and
that was that he had not held his tongue through any consideration for
McArthur.
VI
THE GREAT SECRET
It was the day they buried White Antelope that Smith approached Yellow
Bird, a Piegan, who was among the Indians paying visits of indefinite
length to the MacDonald ranch. "Eddie" Yellow Bird, he was called at the
Blackfoot mission where he had learned to read and write--though he would
never have been suspected of these accomplishments, since to all
appearances he was a "blanket Indian."
Smith spoke the Piegan tongue almost as fluently as his own, so he and
Yellow Bird quickly became _compadres_, relating to each other stories of
their prowess, of horses they had run off, of cattle they had stolen, and
hinting, Indian fashion, with significant intonations and pauses, at
crimes of greater magnitude.
"How is your heart to-day, friend? Is it strong?"
"Weak," replied Yellow Bird jestingly, touching his breast with a
fluttering hand.
"It would be stronger if you had red meat in your stomach," Smith
suggested significantly.
"The bacon is not for Indians," agreed Yellow Bird.
"But the woman would have no cattle left if she killed only her own
beef."
"Many people stop here--strangers and friends," Yellow Bird admitted.
"There is plenty on the range." Smith looked toward the Bar C ranch.
"He is a dog on the trail, that white man, when his cattle are stolen,"
Yellow Bird replied doubtfully.
"I've killed dogs--me, Smith--when they got in my way. Yellow Bird, are
you a woman, that you are afraid?"
"Wolf Robe, who stole only a calf, sits like this"--Yellow Bird looked at
Smith sullenly through his spread fingers.
"You have talked with the forked tongue, Yellow Bird. You are not a Piegan
buck of the great Blackfoot nation; you are a woman. Your fathers killed
men; _you_ are afraid to kill cattle." Smith turned from him
contemptuously.
"My heart is as strong as yours. I am ready."
It was dusk when Smith returned and held out a blood-stained flour sack to
the squaw.
"Liver. A two-year ole."
The squaw's eyes sparkled. Ah, this was as it should be! Her man provided
for her; he brought her meat to eat. He was clever and brave, for it was
other men's meat he brought her to eat. MacDonald had killed only his own
cattle, and secretly it had shamed her, for she mistook his honesty for
lack of courage. To steal was legitimate; it was brave; something to be
told among friends at night, and laughed over. Susie, she had observed
with regret, was honest, like her father. She patted the back of Smith's
hand, and looked at him with dog-like, adoring eyes as they stood in the
log meat-house, where fresh quarters hung.
"I'd do more nor this for you, Prairie Flower;" and, laying his hand upon
her shoulder, he pressed it with his finger-tips.
"Say, but that's great liver!" Tubbs reached half the length of the table
and helped himself a third time. "That'd make a man fight his grandmother.
Who butchered it?"
"Me," Smith answered.
"It tastes like slow elk," said Susie.
"Maybe you oughtn't to eat it till you're showed the hide," Smith
suggested.
"Maybe I oughtn't," Susie retorted. "I didn't see any fresh hide a-hangin'
on the fence. We _always_ hangs _our_ hides."
"I _never_ hangs _my_ hides. I cuts 'em up in strips and braids 'em into
throw-ropes. It's safer."
The grub-liners laughed at the inference which Smith so coolly implied.
The finding of White Antelope's body, and its subsequent burial, had
delayed the opening of Dora's night-school, so Smith, for reasons of his
own, had spent much of his time in the bunk-house, covertly studying the
grub-liners, who passed the hours exchanging harrowing experiences of
their varied careers.
A strong friendship had sprung up between Susie and McArthur. While Susie
liked and greatly admired the Schoolmarm, she never yet had opened her
heart to her. Beyond their actual school-work, they seemed to have little
in common; and it was a real disappointment and regret to the Schoolmarm
that, for some reason which she could not reach, she had never been able
to break through the curious reserve of the little half-breed, who,
superficially, seemed so transparently frank. Each time that she made the
attempt, she found herself repulsed--gently, even tactfully, but
repulsed.
Dora Marshall did not suspect that these rebuffs were due to an error of
her own. In the beginning, when Susie had questioned her naïvely of the
outside world, she had permitted amusement to show in her face and manner.
She never fully recognized the fact that while Susie to all appearances,
intents, and purposes was Anglo-Saxon, an equal quantity of Indian blood
flowed in her veins, and that this blood, with its accompanying traits and
characteristics, must be reckoned with.
As a matter of fact, Susie was suspicious, unforgiving, with all the
Indians' sensitiveness to and fear of ridicule. She meant never again to
entertain the Schoolmarm by her ignorant questions, although she yearned
with all a young girl's yearning for some one in whom to confide--some one
with whom she could discuss the future which she often questioned and
secretly dreaded.
With real adroitness Susie had tested McArthur, searching his face for the
glimmer of amusement which would have destroyed irredeemably any chance of
real comradeship between them. But invariably McArthur had answered her
questions gravely; and when her tears had fallen fast and hot at White
Antelope's grave, she had known, with an intuition both savage and
childish, that his sympathy was sincere. She had felt, too, the
genuineness of his interest when, later, she had repeated to him many of
the stories White Antelope had told her of the days when he and her father
had trapped and hunted together in the big woods to the north.
So to-night, when the living-room was deserted by all save her mother, at
work on her rugs in the corner, Susie confided to him her Great Secret,
and McArthur, some way, felt strangely flattered by the confidence. He had
no desire to laugh; indeed, there were times when the tears were
perilously close to the surface. He had been a shy, lonely student, and
quite as lonely as a man, yet through the promptings of a heart
sympathetic and kind and with the fine instinct of gentle birth, he
understood the bizarre little half-breed in a way which surprised himself.
There was a settee on one side of the room, made of elk-horns and
interwoven buckskin thongs, and it was there, in the whisper which makes a
secret doubly alluring, that Susie told him of her plans; but first she
brought from some hiding-place outside a long pasteboard box, carefully
wrapped and tied.
McArthur, puffing on the briar-wood pipe which he was seldom without,
waited with interest, but without showing curiosity, for he felt that, in
a way, this was a critical moment in their friendship.
"If you didn't see me here on the reservation, would you know I was
Injun?" Susie demanded, facing him.
McArthur regarded her critically.
"You have certain characteristics--your rather high cheek-bones, for
instance--and your skin has a peculiar tint."
"I got an awful complexion on me," Susie agreed, "but I'm goin' to fix
that."
"Then, your movements and gestures----"
"That's from talkin' signs, maybe. I can talk signs so fast that the
full-bloods themselves have to ask me to slow up. But, now, if you saw me
with my hair frizzled--all curled up, like, and pegged down on top of my
head--and a red silk dress on me with a long skirt, and shiny shoes coming
to a point, and a white hat with birds and flowers staked out on it, and
maybe kid gloves on my hands--would you know right off it was me? Would
you say, 'Why, there's that Susie MacDonald--that breed young un from the
reservation'?"
"No," declared McArthur firmly; "I certainly never should say, 'Why,
there's that Susie MacDonald--that breed young un from the reservation.'
As a matter of fact," he went on gravely, "I should probably say, 'What a
pity that a young lady so intelligent and high-spirited should frizz her
hair'!"
"Would you?" insisted Susie delightedly.
"Undoubtedly," McArthur replied, with satisfying emphasis.
"And how long do you think it would take me to stop slingin' the buckskin
and learn to talk like you?--to say big words without bitin' my tongue and
gettin' red in the face?"
"Do I use large words frequently?" McArthur asked in real surprise.
"Whoppers!" said Susie.
"I do it unconsciously." McArthur's tone was apologetic.
"Sure, I know it."
"I shrink from appearing pedantic," said McArthur, half to himself.
"So do I," Susie declared mischievously. "I don't know what it is, but I
shrink from it. Do you think I could learn big words?"
"Of course." McArthur wondered where all these questions led.
"Did you ever notice that I'm kind of polite sometimes?"
"Frequently."
"That I say 'If you please' and 'Thank you,' and did you notice the other
morning when I asked Old Man Rulison how his ribs was getting along that
Arkansaw Red kicked in, and said I was sorry the accident happened?"
McArthur nodded.
"Well, I didn't mean it." She giggled. "That was just my manners that I
was practisin' on him. He was onery, and only got what was comin' to him;
but if you're goin' to be polite, seems like you dassn't tell the truth.
But Miss Marshall says that 'Thank you,' 'If you please,' and 'Good
morning, how's your ribs?' are kind of pass-words out in the world that
help you along."
"Yes, Susie; that's true."
"So I'm tryin' to catch onto all I can, because"--her eyes dilated, and
she lowered her voice--"I'm goin' out in the world pretty soon."
"To school?"
She shook her head.
"I'm goin' to hunt up Dad's relations; and when I find 'em, I don't want
'em to be ashamed of me, and of him for marryin' into the Injuns."
"They need never be ashamed of you, Susie."
"Honest? Honest, don't you think so?" She looked at him wistfully. "I'd
try awful hard not to make breaks," she went on, "and make 'em feel like
cachin' me in the cellar when they saw company comin'. It's just plumb
awful to be lonesome here, like I am sometimes; to be homesick for
something or somebody--for other kind of folks besides Injuns and
grub-liners, and Schoolmarms that look at you as if you was a new, queer
kind of bug, and laugh at you with their eyes.
"Dad's got kin, I know; for lots of times when I would go with him to hunt
horses, he would say, 'I'll take you back to see them some time, Susie,
girl.' But he never said where 'back' was, so I've got to find out myself.
Wouldn't it be awful, though"--and her chin quivered--"if after I'd been
on the trail for days and days, and my ponies were foot-sore, they wasn't
glad to see me when I rode up to the house, but hinted around that
horse-feed was short and grub was scarce, and they couldn't well winter
me?"
"They wouldn't do that," said McArthur reassuringly. "Nobody named
MacDonald would do that."
Susie began to untie the pasteboard box which contained her treasures.
"Nearly ever since Dad died, I've been getting ready to go. I don't mean
that I would leave Mother for keeps--of course not; but after I've found
'em, maybe I can coax 'em to come and live with us. I used to ask White
Antelope every question I could think of, but all he knew was that after
they'd sold their furs to the Hudson Bay Company, they sometimes went to a
lodge in Canada called Selkirk, where almost everybody there was named
MacDonald or MacDougal or Mackenzie or Mac something. Lots of his friends
there married Sioux and went to the Walla Walla valley, and maybe I'll
have to go there to find somebody who knew him; but first I'll go to
Selkirk.
"I'll take a good pack-outfit, and Running Rabbit to find trails and
wrangle horses. See--I've got my trail all marked out on the map."
She unfolded a worn leaf from a school geography.
"It looks as if it was only a sleep or two away, but White Antelope said
it was the big ride--maybe a hundred sleeps. And lookee"--she unfolded
fashion plates of several periods. "I've even picked out the clothes I'll
buy to put on when I get nearly to the ranch where they live. I can make
camp, you know, and change my clothes, and then go walkin' down the road
carryin' this here parasol and wearin' this here white hat and holdin' up
this here long skirt like Teacher on Sunday.
"Won't they be surprised when they open the door and see me standin' on
the door-step? I'll say, 'How do you do? I'm Susie MacDonald, your
relation what's come to visit you.' I think this would be better than
showin' up with Running Rabbit and the pack-outfit, until I'd kind of
broke the news to 'em. I'd keep Running Rabbit cached in the brush till I
sent for him.
"You see, I've thought about it so much that it seems like it was as good
as done; but maybe when I start I won't find it so easy. I might have to
ride clear to this Minnesota country, or beyond the big waters to the New
York or Connecticut country, mightn't I?"
"You might," McArthur replied soberly.
"But I'd take a lot of jerked elk, and everybody says grub's easy to get
if you have money, I'd start with about nine ponies in my string, so it
looks like I ought to get through?"
She waited anxiously for McArthur to express his opinion.