With the setting of the sun an ominous silence fell. He could hear the
low breathing of Susy, and even fancied he could hear the beating of his
own heart in that oppressive hush of all nature. For the day's march had
always been accompanied by the monotonous creaking of wheels and axles,
and even the quiet of the night encampment had been always more or less
broken by the movement of unquiet sleepers on the wagon beds, or the
breathing of the cattle. But here there was neither sound nor motion.
Susy's prattle, and even the sound of his own voice, would have broken
the benumbing spell, but it was a part of his growing self-denial now
that he refrained from waking her even by a whisper. She would awaken
soon enough to thirst and hunger, perhaps, and then what was he to do?
If that looked-for help would only come now--while she still slept. For
it was part of his boyish fancy that if he could deliver her asleep and
undemonstrative of fear and suffering, he would be less blameful, and
she less mindful of her trouble. If it did not come--but he would not
think of that yet! If she was thirsty meantime--well, it might rain, and
there was always the dew which they used to brush off the morning grass;
he would take off his shirt and catch it in that, like a shipwrecked
mariner. It would be funny, and make her laugh. For himself he would not
laugh; he felt he was getting very old and grown up in this loneliness.
It was getting darker--they should be looking into the wagons now. A new
doubt began to assail him. Ought he not, now that he was rested, make
the most of the remaining moments of daylight, and before the glow faded
from the west, when he would no longer have any bearings to guide him?
But there was always the risk of waking her!--to what? The fear of being
confronted again with HER fear and of being unable to pacify her, at
last decided him to remain. But he crept softly through the grass, and
in the dust of the track traced the four points of the compass, as he
could still determine them by the sunset light, with a large printed W
to indicate the west! This boyish contrivance particularly pleased him.
If he had only had a pole, a stick, or even a twig, on which to tie his
handkerchief and erect it above the clump of mesquite as a signal to the
searchers in case they should be overcome by fatigue or sleep, he would
have been happy. But the plain was barren of brush or timber; he did
not dream that this omission and the very unobtrusiveness of his
hiding-place would be his salvation from a greater danger.
With the coming darkness the wind arose and swept the plain with a
long-drawn sigh. This increased to a murmur, till presently the whole
expanse--before sunk in awful silence--seemed to awake with vague
complaints, incessant sounds, and low moanings. At times he thought he
heard the halloaing of distant voices, at times it seemed as a whisper
in his own ear. In the silence that followed each blast he fancied he
could detect the creaking of the wagon, the dull thud of the oxen's
hoofs, or broken fragments of speech, blown and scattered even as he
strained his ears to listen by the next gust. This tension of the ear
began to confuse his brain, as his eyes had been previously dazzled by
the sunlight, and a strange torpor began to steal over his faculties.
Once or twice his head dropped.
He awoke with a start. A moving figure had suddenly uplifted itself
between him and the horizon! It was not twenty yards away, so clearly
outlined against the still luminous sky that it seemed even nearer.
A human figure, but so disheveled, so fantastic, and yet so mean and
puerile in its extravagance, that it seemed the outcome of a childish
dream. It was a mounted figure, but so ludicrously disproportionate to
the pony it bestrode, whose slim legs were stiffly buried in the dust in
a breathless halt, that it might have been a straggler from some vulgar
wandering circus. A tall hat, crownless and rimless, a castaway of
civilization, surmounted by a turkey's feather, was on its head; over
its shoulders hung a dirty tattered blanket that scarcely covered the
two painted legs which seemed clothed in soiled yellow hose. In one hand
it held a gun; the other was bent above its eyes in eager scrutiny of
some distant point beyond and east of the spot where the children lay
concealed. Presently, with a dozen quick noiseless strides of the pony's
legs, the apparition moved to the right, its gaze still fixed on that
mysterious part of the horizon. There was no mistaking it now! The
painted Hebraic face, the large curved nose, the bony cheek, the broad
mouth, the shadowed eyes, the straight long matted locks! It was an
Indian! Not the picturesque creature of Clarence's imagination, but
still an Indian! The boy was uneasy, suspicious, antagonistic, but
not afraid. He looked at the heavy animal face with the superiority of
intelligence, at the half-naked figure with the conscious supremacy of
dress, at the lower individuality with the contempt of a higher race.
Yet a moment after, when the figure wheeled and disappeared towards the
undulating west, a strange chill crept over him. Yet he did not know
that in this puerile phantom and painted pigmy the awful majesty of
Death had passed him by.
“Mamma!”
It was Susy's voice, struggling into consciousness. Perhaps she had been
instinctively conscious of the boy's sudden fears.
“Hush!”
He had just turned to the objective point of the Indian's gaze. There
WAS something! A dark line was moving along with the gathering darkness.
For a moment he hardly dared to voice his thoughts even to himself.
It was a following train overtaking them from the rear! And from the
rapidity of its movements a train with horses, hurrying forward to
evening camp. He had never dreamt of help from that quarter. This
was what the Indian's keen eyes had been watching, and why he had so
precipitately fled.
The strange train was now coming up at a round trot. It was evidently
well appointed with five or six large wagons and several outriders. In
half an hour it would be here. Yet he refrained from waking Susy, who
had fallen asleep again; his old superstition of securing her safety
first being still uppermost. He took off his jacket to cover her
shoulders, and rearranged her nest. Then he glanced again at the coming
train. But for some unaccountable reason it had changed its direction,
and instead of following the track that should have brought it to his
side it had turned off to the left! In ten minutes it would pass abreast
of him a mile and a half away! If he woke Susy now, he knew she would be
helpless in her terror, and he could not carry her half that distance.
He might rush to the train himself and return with help, but he would
never leave her alone--in the darkness. Never! If she woke she would die
of fright, perhaps, or wander blindly and aimlessly away. No! The train
would pass and with it that hope of rescue. Something was in his throat,
but he gulped it down and was quiet again albeit he shivered in the
night wind.
The train was nearly abreast of him now. He ran out of the tall grass,
waving his straw hat above his head in the faint hope of attracting
attention. But he did not go far, for he found to his alarm that when
he turned back again the clump of mesquite was scarcely distinguishable
from the rest of the plain. This settled all question of his going. Even
if he reached the train and returned with some one, how would he ever
find her again in this desolate expanse?
He watched the train slowly pass--still mechanically, almost hopelessly,
waving his hat as he ran up and down before the mesquite, as if he were
waving a last farewell to his departing hope. Suddenly it appeared to
him that three of the outriders who were preceding the first wagon had
changed their shape. They were no longer sharp, oblong, black blocks
against the horizon but had become at first blurred and indistinct,
then taller and narrower, until at last they stood out like exclamation
points against the sky. He continued to wave his hat, they continued to
grow taller and narrower. He understood it now--the three transformed
blocks were the outriders coming towards him.
This is what he had seen--
[Drawing of three black blocks]
This is what he saw now--
! ! !
He ran back to Susy to see if she still slept, for his foolish desire
to have her saved unconsciously was stronger than ever now that safety
seemed so near. She was still sleeping, although she had moved slightly.
He ran to the front again.
The outriders had apparently halted. What were they doing? Why wouldn't
they come on?
Suddenly a blinding flash of light seemed to burst from one of them.
Away over his head something whistled like a rushing bird, and sped
off invisible. They had fired a gun; they were signaling to
him--Clarence--like a grown-up man. He would have given his life at that
moment to have had a gun. But he could only wave his hat frantically.
One of the figures here bore away and impetuously darted forward again.
He was coming nearer, powerful, gigantic, formidable, as he loomed
through the darkness. All at once he threw up his arm with a wild
gesture to the others; and his voice, manly, frank, and assuring, came
ringing before him.
“Hold up! Good God! It's no Injun--it's a child!”
In another moment he had reined up beside Clarence and leaned over him,
bearded, handsome, powerful and protecting.
“Hallo! What's all this? What are you doing here?”
“Lost from Mr. Silsbee's train,” said Clarence, pointing to the darkened
west.
“Lost?--how long?”
“About three hours. I thought they'd come back for us,” said Clarence
apologetically to this big, kindly man.
“And you kalkilated to wait here for 'em?”
“Yes, yes--I did--till I saw you.”
“Then why in thunder didn't you light out straight for us, instead of
hanging round here and drawing us out?”
The boy hung his head. He knew his reasons were unchanged, but all at
once they seemed very foolish and unmanly to speak out.
“Only that we were on the keen jump for Injins,” continued the stranger,
“we wouldn't have seen you at all, and might hev shot you when we did.
What possessed you to stay here?”
The boy was still silent. “Kla'uns,” said a faint, sleepy voice from the
mesquite, “take me.” The rifle-shot had awakened Susy.
The stranger turned quickly towards the sound. Clarence started and
recalled himself. “There,” he said bitterly, “you've done it now, you've
wakened her! THAT'S why I stayed. I couldn't carry her over there to
you. I couldn't let her walk, for she'd be frightened. I wouldn't wake
her up, for she'd be frightened, and I mightn't find her again. There!”
He had made up his mind to be abused, but he was reckless now that she
was safe.
The men glanced at each other. “Then,” said the spokesman quietly, “you
didn't strike out for us on account of your sister?”
“She ain't my sister,” said Clarence quickly. “She's a little girl.
She's Mrs. Silsbee's little girl. We were in the wagon and got down.
It's my fault. I helped her down.”
The three men reined their horses closely round him, leaning forward
from their saddles, with their hands on their knees and their heads on
one side. “Then,” said the spokesman gravely, “you just reckoned to stay
here, old man, and take your chances with her rather than run the risk
of frightening or leaving her--though it was your one chance of life!”
“Yes,” said the boy, scornful of this feeble, grown-up repetition.
“Come here.”
The boy came doggedly forward. The man pushed back the well-worn straw
hat from Clarence's forehead and looked into his lowering face. With his
hand still on the boy's head he turned him round to the others, and said
quietly,--
“Suthin of a pup, eh?”
“You bet,” they responded.
The voice was not unkindly, although the speaker had thrown his lower
jaw forward as if to pronounce the word “pup” with a humorous suggestion
of a mastiff. Before Clarence could make up his mind if the epithet
was insulting or not, the man put out his stirruped foot, and, with a
gesture of invitation, said, “Jump up.”
“But Susy,” said Clarence, drawing back.
“Look; she's making up to Phil already.”
Clarence looked. Susy had crawled out of the mesquite, and with her
sun-bonnet hanging down her back, her curls tossed around her face,
still flushed with sleep, and Clarence's jacket over her shoulders, was
gazing up with grave satisfaction in the laughing eyes of one of the men
who was with outstretched hands bending over her. Could he believe his
senses? The terror-stricken, willful, unmanageable Susy, whom he would
have translated unconsciously to safety without this terrible ordeal of
being awakened to the loss of her home and parents at any sacrifice
to himself--this ingenuous infant was absolutely throwing herself with
every appearance of forgetfulness into the arms of the first new-comer!
Yet his perception of this fact was accompanied by no sense of
ingratitude. For her sake he felt relieved, and with a boyish smile
of satisfaction and encouragement vaulted into the saddle before the
stranger.