REWARD
The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch
house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the
supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The
vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained
likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white
powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried.
Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking
permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a
convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the
eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the
house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking
permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were
eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one
corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor,
Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy
queensware proceeded.
"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his
chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to,
stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his
work.
Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete
was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had
filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on
the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of
cigars.
"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter--for cigars were a rarity on
the frontier--puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content.
The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and
washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a
cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue,
disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor
introduced himself.
"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the
Centre."
The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at
last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now.
You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up
the two kids."
It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you
were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look
reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other
side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over
here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he
glanced up.
"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and--" Hawkins
laughed peculiarly--"made a fizzle of it."
"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even
heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with
his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl
went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
"Yes."
Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud
of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing
the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they
hit it off well together?"
Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands
fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
"While the money lasted, yes."
"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
"And then--"
"It's the old story."
"They went to pieces?"
"Craig left her--for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter
and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he
was supporting the other woman all the time."
Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the
cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the
mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
"Bess came back."
"Alone?"
Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed
by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes
were blazing.
"Yes, she was alone," he said.
The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The
blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday,
just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
"Back at the ranch--with the Indian?"
Equally directly Manning returned the look.
"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not
there."
"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came
here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to
tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the
lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing.
For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face
incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
"Know where he is? Of course I do--now." He leaned back in his chair.
"To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here,
or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last
week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for
me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We
never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a
sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the
board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm
with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a
two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand
on the chair arm loosened its grip.
"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think
we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two
fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its
mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the
morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded
things a bit on the way up."
For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty
miles, and there's plenty of time."
Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old
storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
"Yes, there's plenty of time--after How Landor knows," he said.
* * * * *
In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny
dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a
shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam.
In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized
pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little
altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was
very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near
and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet,
they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in
flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was
pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking
mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho
had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and
grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were
unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened,
something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror
they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this
something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and
invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the
confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had
been interrupted.
Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late
September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy
brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish
speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all
the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as
irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while
time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within
the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On
soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing,
he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than
once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did
not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within
stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an
Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that
object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he
peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an
instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its
revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken
prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely
beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent
human in their midst this autumn day.
How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could
have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last,
interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great
quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost
before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had
ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up
beside the tent.
Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched
himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was
waiting.
They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat
eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be
enough around when I came."
The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he
dismounted.
"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed
abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before
I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to
dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind
I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the
flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew
on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then,
however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now
at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was
intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of
a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old
storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The
message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with
a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite
care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man
himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the
sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the
impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied,
well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him
at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a
measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white
he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an
inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice,
with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's
sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence
calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless
savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken
for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine
punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal,
with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that
had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his
interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances
unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling
suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a
readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the
dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came
fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal--if the other wished;
but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the
decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit
it afresh suggestively.
"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not
Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
"I thought so," it said simply.
Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight,
the glow lit up his face.
"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service--and
I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless,
smiling infinite.
"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I
should know."
The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his
heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved.
Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe
opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground--his
long fingers locked across his knees.
"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white
man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit
now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering
outside the bowl onto his knee.
"About a month ago"--the speaker cleared his throat raspingly--"on
August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started
from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It
wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one
was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp
crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker.
"It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
"Go on, please," requested a voice.
"Early yesterday morning"--again the narrator halted perforce, to clear
his throat--"just before I left three men went through town on their way
to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man
who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water
their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch
house closing the bargain now."
"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged
when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted
physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness
and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set
eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when
telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was
all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by
request.
"I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old
formula.
For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a
match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the
sound, came a question.
"Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they
looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the
mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two
days old."
"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
"Yes. Several weeks."
"She returned alone?"
"Yes."
"And to stay?"
Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the
inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the
other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
"Yes," answered Manning.
"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
"No, Craig had left her."
Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither
man noticed the change.
"There was a reason?"
"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as
the sunlight without.
"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had
done? You mean to tell me this?"
Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white
man got to his feet, stood so silent.
"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear
against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the
third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come.
"There could be but one other way!"
Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face
opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the
moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so
was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big
game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the
expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the
end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted,
waiting, postponing the inevitable.
"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow
fell.
"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."