here."
"I merely means," Tubbs hastened to explain, "that it sounds so easy that
it makes me sore we wasn't doin' it before."
The reply appeared to pacify Smith.
"I hates to fool with cattle," he admitted, "'specially these here Texas
brutes that spread out, leavin' tracks all over the flat, and they can't
make time just off green grass. Gimme horses--but horses ain't safe right
now, with the Injuns riled up. Now, you start out and gather up what you
can, and hold 'em here till I get back. I'll go to the ranch and get a
little grub together and get here as quick as it's safe."
Smith galloped back to the ranch, to learn that Dora had ridden to the
Agency to spend the day. He was keenly disappointed that he had missed the
opportunity of saying good-by. She had chided him before for not telling
her of his contemplated absence, and he had promised not to neglect to do
so again; for she was in the habit of arranging the table for her
night-school and waiting until he came. Then it occurred to Smith that he
might write. He was delighted with the idea, and undoubtedly Dora would be
equally delighted to receive a letter from him. It would show her that he
remembered his promise, and also give her a chance to note his progress.
Since Smith had learned that a capital letter is used to designate the
personal pronoun, and that a period is placed at such points as one's
breath gives out, he had begun to think himself something of a scholar.
His enthusiasm grew as he thought of it, and he decided that while he was
about it he would write a genuine love-letter.
Borrowing paper, an erratic pen, and ink pale from frequent watering, from
a shelf in the living-room, he repaired to the dining-room table and gave
himself up to the throes of composition.
Bearing in mind that the superlative of dear is dearest, he wrote:
Dearest Girl.
I have got to go away on bizness. I had ought to hav said good-by but
I cant wate till you gets back so I thort I wold write. I love you. I
hates everyboddy else when I think of you. I dont love no other woman
but you. Nor never did. If ever I go away and dont come back dont
forget what I say because I will be ded, I mean it. I will hav a stak
perty quick then I will show you this aint no josh. You no the rest,
good-by for this time.
Smith.
The perspiration stood out on his forehead, and he wiped it away with his
ink-stained fingers.
"Writin' is harder work nor shoein' a horse," he observed to Ling, and
added for the Indian woman's benefit, "I'm sendin' off to get me a pair of
them Angory saddle-pockets."
His explanation did not deceive the person for whom it was intended. With
the intuition of a jealous woman, she knew that he was writing a letter
which he would not have her see. She meant to know, if possible, to whom
he was writing, and what. Although she did not raise her eyes from her
work when he replaced the pen and ink, she did not let him out of her
sight. She believed that he had written to Dora, and she was sure of it
when, thinking himself unobserved, he crept to Dora's open window, outside
of the house, and dropped the letter into the top drawer of her bureau,
which stood close.
As soon as Smith was out of sight, she too crept stealthily to the open
window. A red spot burned on either swarthy cheek, and her aching heart
beat fast. She took the letter from the drawer, and, going toward the
creek, plunged into the willows, with the instinct of the wounded animal
seeking cover.
The woman could read a little--not much, but better than she could write.
She had been to the Mission when she was younger, and MacDonald had
labored patiently to teach her more. Now, concealed among the willows,
sitting cross-legged on the ground, she spelled out Smith's letter word by
word,
I love you. I hates everyboddy else when I think of you. I don't love no
other woman but you. Nor never did.
She read it slowly, carefully, each word sinking deep. Then she stroked
her hair with long, deliberate strokes, and read it again.
I don't love no other woman but you. Nor never did.
She laid the letter on the ground, and, folding her arms, rocked her body
to and fro, as though in physical agony. When she shut her lips they
trembled as they touched each other, but she made no sound. The wound in
her arm was beginning to heal. It itched, and she scratched it hard, for
the pain served as a kind of counter-irritant. A third time she read the
letter, stroking her hair incessantly with the long, deliberate strokes.
Then she folded it, and, reaching for a pointed stick, dug a hole in the
soft dirt. In the bottom of the hole she laid the letter and covered it
with earth, patting and smoothing it until it was level. Before she left
she sprinkled a few leaves over the spot.
She looked old and ugly when she went into the house, seeming, for the
first time, the woman of middle-age that she was. Quietly, purposefully,
she drew out a chair, and, standing upon it, took down from the rafters
the plant which Little Coyote's woman, the Mandan, had given her. It had
hung there a long time, and the leaves crumpled and dropped off at her
touch. She filled a basin with water and put the plant and root to soak,
while she searched for a sharp knife. Turning her back to the room and
facing the corner, like a child in mischief, she peeled the outer bark
from the root with the greatest care. The inner bark was blood-red, and
this too she peeled away carefully, very, very carefully saving the
smallest particles, and laid it upon a paper. When she had it all, she
burned the plant; but the red inner bark she put in a tin cup and covered
it with boiling water, to steep.
"Don't touch dat," she warned Ling.
The afternoon was waning when she went again to the willows, but the air
was still hot, for the rocks and sand held the heat until well after
nightfall. In the willows she cut a stick--a forked stick, which she
trimmed so that it left a crotch with a long handle. Hiding the stick
under her blanket, she stepped out of the willows, and seemed to be
wandering aimlessly until she was out of sight of the house and the
bunk-house. Then she walked rapidly, with a purpose. Her objective point
was a hill covered so thickly with rocks that scarcely a spear of grass
grew upon it. The climb left her short of breath, she wiped the
perspiration from her face with her blanket, but she did not falter.
Stepping softly, listening, she crept over the rocks with the utmost
caution, peering here and there as if in search of something which she did
not wish to alarm. A long, sibilant sound stopped her. She located it as
coming from under a rock only a few feet away, and a little gleam of
satisfaction in her sombre eyes showed that she had found that for which
she searched. The angry rattlesnake was coiled to strike, but she
approached without hesitancy. Calculating how far it could throw itself,
she stood a little beyond its range and for a moment stood watching the
glitter of its wicked little eyes, the lightning-like action of its
tongue. When she moved, its head followed her, but she dexterously pinned
it to the rock with her forked stick and placed the heel of her moccasin
upon its writhing body. Then, stooping, she severed its head from its body
with her knife.
She put the head in a square of cloth and continued her search. After a
time, she found another, and when she went down the hill there were three
heads in the blood-soaked square of cloth. She hid them in the willows,
and went into the house to stir the contents of the tin cup. She noted
with evident satisfaction that it had thickened somewhat. Little Coyote's
woman had told her it would do so. She found a bottle which had contained
lemon extract, and this she rinsed. She measured a teaspoonful of the
thick, reddish-brown liquid and poured it into the bottle, filling it
afterward with water. The cup she took with her into the willows. Laying
the heads of the snakes upon a flat stone, she cut them through the jaws,
and, extracting the poison sac, stirred the fluid into the tin cup. While
she stirred, she remembered that she had heard an owl hoot the night
before. It was an ill-omen, and it had sounded close. The hooting of an
owl meant harm to some one. She wondered now if an owl feather would not
make the medicine stronger. She set down her cup and looked carefully
under the trees, but could find no feathers. Ah, well, it was stout enough
medicine without it!
She had brought a long, keen-bladed hunting-knife into the willows, and
she dipped the point of it into the concoction--blowing upon it until it
dried, then repeating the process. When the point of the blade was well
discolored, she muttered:
"Dat's de strong medicine!"
Her eyes glittered like the eyes of the snakes among the rocks, and they
seemed smaller. Their roundness and the liquid softness of them was gone.
She looked "pure Injun," as Smith would have phrased it, with murder in
her heart. Deliberately, malevolently, she spat upon the earth beneath
which the letter lay, before she returned to the house.
She heard Susie's voice in the Schoolmarm's room, and quickly hid the
knife behind a mirror in the living-room, where she hid everything which
she wished to conceal, imagining, for some unknown reason, that no one but
herself would ever think of looking there. Susie often had thought
laughingly that it looked like a pack-rat's nest.
The woman poured the liquid which remained in the tin cup into another
bottle, frowning when she spilled a few precious drops upon her hand.
This bottle she also hid behind the mirror.
In Dora Marshall's room, Susie was examining the teacher's toilette
articles, which held an unfailing interest for her. She meant to have an
exact duplicate of the manicure set and of the hairbrush with the heavy
silver back. To Susie, these things, along with side-combs and petticoats
that rustled, were symbols of that elegance which she longed to attain.
As she stood by the bureau, fumbling with the various articles, she caught
sight of a box through the crack of the half-open drawer. She had seen
that battered box before. It was the grasshopper box--for there was the
slit in the top.
Susie was not widely experienced in matters of sentiment, but she had her
feminine intuitions, besides remarkably well-developed reasoning powers
for her years.
Why, she asked herself as she continued to stare through the crack, why
should Teacher be cherishing that old bait-box? Why should she have it
there among her handkerchiefs and smelly silk things, and the soft lace
things she wore at her throat? Why--unless she attached value to it?
Why--unless it was a romantic and sacred keepsake?
Susie rather prided herself on being in touch with all that went on, and
now she had an uneasy feeling that she might have missed something. She
remembered the day of their fishing trip well, and at the time had
thought she had scented a budding romance. Had they quarrelled, she
wondered?
She sat on the edge of the bed and swung her feet.
"My, but won't it seem lonesome here without Mr. Ralston?" Susie sighed
deeply.
"Is he going away?" Dora asked quickly.
"He'll be goin' pretty soon now, because he's found most of his strays and
bought all the ponies he wants."
"I suppose he will be glad to get back among his friends."
Susie thought Teacher looked a little pale.
"Maybe he'll go back and get married."
"Did he say so?"
Susie was _sure_ she was paler.
"No," she replied nonchalantly. "I just thought so, because anybody that's
as good-looking as he is, gets gobbled up quick. Don't you think he is
good-looking?"
"Oh, he does very well."
"Gee whiz, I wish he'd ask me to marry him!" said Susie unblushingly. "You
couldn't see me for dust, the way I'd travel. But there's no danger. Look
at them there skinny arms!"
"Susie! What grammar!"
"Those there skinny arms."
"Those."
"Those skinny arms; those hair; those eyes--soft and gentle like a couple
of augers, Meeteetse says." Susie shook her head in mock despondency.
"I've tried to be beautiful, too. Once I cut a piece out of a newspaper
that told how you could get rosy cheeks. It gave all the different things
to put in, so I sent off and got 'em. I mixed 'em like it said and rubbed
it on my face. There wasn't any mistake about my rosy cheeks, but you
ought to have seen the blisters on my cheek-bones--big as dollars!"
"I'm sure you will not be so thin when you are older," Dora said
consolingly, "and your hair would be a very pretty color if only you would
wear a hat and take a little care of it."
Susie shook her head and sighed again.
"Oh, it will be too late then, for he will be snapped up by some of those
stylish town girls. You see."
Dora put buttons in her shirt-waist sleeves in silence.
"I think he liked to stay here until you quarrelled with him."
"I quarrelled with him?"
"Oh, didn't you?" Susie was innocence itself. "You treat him so polite, I
thought you must have quarrelled--such a chilly polite," she explained.
"I don't think _he_ has observed it," Dora answered coldly.
"Oh, yes, he has." Susie waited discreetly.
"How do you know?"
"When you come to the table and say, Good-morning, and look at him without
seeing him, I know he'd a lot rather you cuffed him."
"What a dreadful word, Susie, and what an absurd idea!"
Susie noted that Teacher's eyes brightened.
"_You'll_ be goin' away, too, pretty soon, and I s'pose you'll be glad you
will never see him again. But," she added dolefully, "ain't it awful the
way people just meets and parts?"
Dora was a long time finding that for which she was searching among the
clothes hanging on a row of nails, and Susie, rolling her eyes in that
direction, was sure, very sure, that she saw Teacher dab at her lashes
with the frilly ruffle of a petticoat before she turned around.
"When did he say he was going?"
"He didn't say; but to-day or to-morrow, I should think."
"If he cared so much because I am cool to him, he certainly would have
asked me why I treated him so. But he didn't care enough to ask."
Teacher's voice sounded queer even to herself, and she seemed intensely
interested in buttoning her boots.
"Pooh! I know why. It's because he thinks you like that Smith."
"Smith!"
"Yes, Smith."
The jangle of Ling's triangle interrupted the fascinating conversation.
"How perfectly foolish!" gasped Dora.
"Not to Smith," Susie replied dryly, "nor to Mr. Ralston."
Susie looked at the unoccupied chairs at the table as she and Dora seated
themselves. Ralston's, Tubbs's, Smith's, and McArthur's chairs were
vacant.
"Looks like you're losin' your boarders fast, Ling," she remarked.
"Good thing," Ling answered candidly.
The Indian woman gulped her coffee, but refused the food which was passed
to her. A strange faintness, accompanied by nausea, was creeping upon her.
Her vision was blurred, and she saw Meeteetse Ed, at the opposite end of
the table, as through a fog. She pushed back her chair and went into the
living-room, swaying a little as she walked. A faint moan caught Susie's
ear, and she hastened to her mother.
The woman was lying on the floor by the bench where she sewed, her head
pillowed on her rag-rug.
"Mother! Why, what's the matter with your hand? It's swelled!"
"I heap sick, Susie!" she moaned. "My arm aches me."
"Look!" cried Susie, who had turned back her sleeve. "Her arm is black--a
purple black, and it's swellin' up!"
"Oh, I heap sick!"
"What did you do to your arm, Mother? Did you have the bandage off?"
"Yes, it come off, and I pin him up," said Ling, who was standing by.
A paroxysm of pain seized the woman, and she writhed.
"It looks exactly like a rattlesnake bite! I saw a fellow once that was
bit in the ankle, and it swelled up and turned a color like that,"
declared Susie in horror. "Mother, you haven't been foolin' with snakes,
or been bit?"
The woman shook her head.
"I no been bit," she groaned, and her eyes had in them the appealing look
of a sick spaniel.
Dora and Susie helped her to her room, and though they tried every simple
remedy of which they had ever heard, to reduce the rapidly swelling arm,
all seemed equally unavailing. The woman's convulsions hourly became more
violent and frequent, while her arm was frightful to behold--black, as it
was, from hand to shoulder with coagulated blood.
"If only we had an idea of the cause!" cried Dora, distracted.
"Mother, can't you imagine anything that would make your arm bad like
this? Try to think."
But though drops of perspiration stood on the woman's forehead, and her
grip tore the pillow, she obstinately shook her head.
"I be better pretty soon," was all she would say, and tried to smile at
Susie.
"If only some one would come!" Dora went to the open window often and
listened for Ralston's voice or McArthur's--the latter having gone for his
mail.
The strain of watching the woman's suffering told on both of the girls,
and the night by her bedside seemed centuries long. Toward morning the
paroxysms appeared to reach a climax and then to subside. They were of
shorter duration, and the intervals between were longer.
"She's better, I'm sure," Dora said hopefully, but Susie shook her head.
"I don't think so; she's worse. There's that look behind, back of her
eyes--that dead look--can't you see it? And it's in her face, too. I don't
know how to say what I mean, but it's there, and it makes me shiver like
cold." The girl looked in mingled awe and horror at the first human being
she ever had seen die.
Unable to endure the strain any longer, Dora went into the fresh air, and
Susie dropped on her knees by the bedside and took her mother's limp hand
in both of hers.
"Oh, Mother," she begged pitifully, "say something. Don't go away without
sayin' something to Susie!"
With an effort of will, the woman slowly opened her dull eyes and fixed
them upon the child's face.
"Yas," she breathed; "I _want_ to say something."
The words came slowly and thickly.
"I no--get well."
"Oh, Mother!"
Unheeding the wail, perhaps not hearing it, she went on, stopping often
between words:
"I steal--from you--my little girl. I bad woman, Susie. It is right I die.
I take de money--out of de bank dat MacDonald leave us--to give to Smith.
De hold-ups steal de money on--de road. I have de bad heart--Susie--to do
dat. I know now."
"You mustn't talk like that, Mother!" cried Susie, gripping her hand
convulsively. "You thought you'd get it again and put it back. You didn't
mean to steal from me. I know all about it. And I've got the money. Mr.
Ralston found a check you had thrown away--you'd signed your name on it in
the wrong place. When we saw the date, and what a lot of money it was, and
found you had gone to town, we guessed the rest. It was easy to see Smith
in that. So we held you up, and got it back. We knew there was no danger
to anybody, but, of course, we felt bad to worry and frighten you."
"I'm glad," said the woman simply. She had no strength or breath or time
to spare. "Dey's more. I tell you--I kill Smith--if he lie. He lie. He
bull-dog white man. I make de strong medicine to kill him--and I get de
poison in my arm when de bandage slip. Get de bottles and de knife behind
de lookin'-glass--I show you."
Susie quickly did as she was bid.
"De lemon bottle is de love-charm of de Sioux. One teaspoonful--no more,
Little Coyote's woman say. De other bottle is de bad medicine. Be careful.
Smith--make fool--of me--Susie." What else she would have said ended in a
gurgle. Her jaw dropped, and she died with her glazing eyes upon Susie's
face.
Susie pulled the gay Indian blanket gently over her mother's shoulders, as
if afraid she would be cold. Then she slipped a needle and some beads and
buckskin, to complete an unfinished moccasin, underneath the blanket. Her
mother was going on a long journey, and would want occupation. There were
no tears in Susie's eyes when she replaced the bottles and the skinning
knife with the discolored blade behind the mirror.
The wan little creature seemed to have no tears to shed. She was
unresponsive to Dora's broken words of sympathy, and the grub-liners'
awkward condolences--they seemed not to reach her heart at all. She heard
them without hearing, for her mind was chaos as she moved silently from
room to room, or huddled, a forlorn figure, on the bench where her mother
always had sat.
Breakfast was long since over and the forenoon well advanced when she
finally left the silent house and crept like the ghost of her spirited
self down the path to the stable and into the roomy stall where her stout
little cow-pony stood munching hay.
In her sorrow, the dumb animal was the one thing to which she turned. He
lifted his head when she went in, and threw his cropped ears forward,
while his eyes grew limpid as a horse's eyes will at the approach of some
one it knows well and looks to for food and affection.
They had almost grown up together, and the time Susie had spent on his
back, or with him in the corral or stall, formerly had been half her
waking hours. They had no fear of each other; only deep love and mutual
understanding.
"Oh, Croppy! Croppy!" her childish voice quavered. "Oh, Croppy, you're all
I've got left!" She slipped her arms around his thick neck and hid her
face in his mane.
He stopped eating and stood motionless while she clung to him, his ears
alert at the sound of the familiar voice.
"What _shall_ I do!" she wailed in an abandonment of grief.
In her inexperience, it seemed to Susie, that with her mother's death all
the world had come to an end for her. Undemonstrative as they were, and
meagre as had been any spoken words of affection, the bond of natural love
between them had seemed strong and unbreakable until Smith's coming. They
had been all in all to each other in their unemotional way; and now this
unexpected tragedy seemed to crush the child, because it was something
which never had entered her thoughts. It was a crisis with which she did
not know how to cope or to bear. The world could never be blacker for her
than it was when she clung sobbing to the little sorrel pony's thick neck
that morning. The future looked utterly cheerless and impossible to
endure. She had not learned that no tragedy is so blighting that there is
not a way out--a way which the sufferer makes himself, which comes to him,
or into which he is forced. Nothing stays as it is. But it appeared to
Susie that life could never be different, except to be worse.
She had talked much to McArthur of the outside world, and questioned him,
and a doubt had sprung up as to the feasibility of searching for her
kinsfolk, as she had planned. There were many, many trails and wire fences
to bewilder one, and people--hundreds of people--people who were not
always kind. His answers filled her with vague fears. To be only sixteen,
and alone, is cause enough for tears, and Susie shed them now.
McArthur, with a radiant face, was riding toward the ranch to which he had
become singularly attached. His saddle-pockets bulged with mail, and his
elbows flapped joyously as he urged his horse to greater speed. He looked
up eagerly at the house as he crossed the ford, and his kind eyes shone
with happiness when he rode into the stable-yard and swung out of the
saddle.
He heard a sound, the unmistakable sound of sobbing, as he was unsaddling.
Listening, he knew it came from somewhere in the stable, so he left his
horse and went inside.
It was Susie, as he had thought. She lifted her tear-stained face from the
pony's mane when he spoke, and he knew that she was glad to see him.
"Oh, pardner, I thought you'd _never_ come!"
"The mail was late, and I stayed with the Major to wait for it. What has
gone wrong?"
"Mother's dead," she said. "She was poisoned accidentally."
"Susie! And there was no one here?" The news seemed incredible.
"Only Teacher and me--no one that knew what to do. We sent Meeteetse for a
doctor, but he hasn't come yet. He probably got drunk and forgot what he
went for. It's been a terrible night, pardner, and a terrible day!"
McArthur looked at her with troubled eyes, and once more he stroked her
hair with his gentle, timid touch.
"Everything just looks awful to me, with Dad and mother both gone, and me
here alone on this big ranch, with only Ling and grub-liners. And to think
of it all the rest of my life like this--with nobody that I belong to, or
that belongs to me!"
Something was recalled to McArthur with a start by Susie's words. He had
forgotten!
"Come, Susie, come with me."