LOUISE
It was raining when she left Wind City, but the rain had soon been
distanced. Perhaps the Judge was right when he said it never rained
north or west of Wind City. But the Judge had not wanted her to go.
Neither had the Judge’s wife.
Full twenty minutes, only day before yesterday, the Judge had delayed
his day’s outing at the mill where the Jim River doubles right around on
its tracks, in order to make it perfectly clear to her that it was
absolutely outside of the bounds of her duty, that it was altogether an
affair on the side, that she could not be expected to go, and that the
prosecuting attorney up there had merely asked her out of courtesy, in
deference to her position. Of course he would be glad enough to get her,
but let him get some one nearer home, or do without. It wasn’t at all
necessary for the court reporter to hold herself in readiness to answer
the call of anything outside her prescribed circuit duties. To be sure
she would earn a trifle, but it was a hard trip, a hard country, and she
had much better postpone her initial journey into the unknown until the
regular term of court, when he could be with her. He had then thrown his
minnow seine over his shoulders, taken his minnow pail in one hand and
his reel case and lunch box in the other, and walked out to the road
wagon awaiting him at the gate, and so off to his frolic, leaving her to
fight it out for herself.
The Judge’s wife had not been so diplomatic, not by any means. She had
dwelt long and earnestly, and no doubt to a large extent truly, on the
uncivilized condition of their neighbors up the line; the roughness of
accommodation, the boldness and license of the cowboys, the daring and
insolence of the cattle thieves, the cunning and dishonesty of the
Indians, and the uncouthness and viciousness of the half-breeds. She had
ended by declaring eloquently that Louise would die of lonesomeness if,
by God’s good providence, she escaped a worse fate at the hands of one
or all of the many evils she had enumerated. Yes, it was very evident
Aunt Helen had not wanted her to go. But Aunt Helen’s real reason had
been that she held it so dizzily unconventional for her niece to go out
to that wild and unholy land alone. She did not actually fear for her
niece’s personal safety, and Louise more than half suspected the truth.
She had heard all the arguments before. They had little or no terrors
for her now. They were the arguments used by the people back in her
eastern home, those dear, dear people, her people—how far away she
was!—when they had schemed and plotted so pathetically to keep her with
them, the second one to break away from the slow, safe, and calm
traditions of her kin in the place where generation after generation of
her people had lived and died, and now lay waiting the Great Judgment in
the peaceful country burying-ground.
She had listened to them dutifully, half-believingly, swallowed hard and
followed her uncle, her father’s youngest brother, to the “Land of the
Dakotahs,” the fair land of promise, right in the face of her fears and
the loneliness that loomed before her—a thing with smirks and horns and
devil’s eyes that would not be suppressed, but perched itself insolently
before her, a heart-choking presence, magnified by the mist in her eyes,
through all the long, long journey to the west country. It had left her
for a while when she had crossed the Sioux and was on Dakota soil at
last. It was such a glorious land through which she was passing, the
fair region of the corn-belt, and such a prosperous land, and the fields
spread so broadly. It had been a sunny day with clear skies, one of
those days when distances are so infinite in South Dakota, the land of
widespread spaces. It was indeed a fertile valley through which she was
passing. There is none better on earth.
When her train had pulled out of Yankton, she reflected with a
whimsical smile that she had not yet seen an Indian. To be sure, she
had not really expected to see one in feathers and war-paint, but
surely an Indian of some description—did not the traditions of her
youth run that Dakota was the land of Indians and blizzards? She well
remembered—indeed, could she ever forget?—when, a tot of seven or eight,
she had run out into the road to gaze after the carry-all that was
taking her well-beloved young uncle away, away, into that dreadful land
where blood ran like rivers and where people trimmed their clothes with
scalps. She even remembered the feel of the warm, yellow dust up to her
bare ankles and the dreadful lump that she couldn’t swallow when her
uncle leaned out and waved his hat vigorously, crying out gayly:—
“Good-bye, little girl, good-bye. If they take my scalp, I’ll beg them
as a special favor to send it back to you as a keepsake. Don’t forget to
take good care of it. I was always rather proud of my yaller mop.”
He had said more; he had kept on calling to her till the big woods
swallowed him. But she had understood nothing after that last awful
charge. It had happened more than fifteen years before, but for many and
many a day thereafter, sensitive mite that she had been, she would run
and hide in the hay-mow whenever she saw her father or the boys coming
from town with the mail. It was years before the horror of the expected
packet containing the fair hair of her young uncle, dabbled with blood,
fell away from her.
Gradually the awfulness of that dread expectation passed away. Now, that
same dear uncle was a man of power and position in the new land that had
graciously permitted him his scalp. Only last November he had been
reëlected to his third term on the bench of his circuit with a big,
heart-stirring majority. In the day of his prosperity he had not
forgotten the little, tangle-haired girl who had cried so inconsolably
when he went away, and the unaccountable horror in whose eyes he had
tried to laugh away on that never-to-be-forgotten day when he had
wrenched his heartstrings from their safe abiding-place and gone forth
in quest of the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end—the first of many
generations. Tradition knew no other since his ancestors had felled
forests and built homes of hewn logs. Now he had sent for Louise. His
court reporter had recently left him for other fields of labor.
There was commotion among her people on receipt of the astounding
proposition. She lived over again the dark days of the first flitting.
It might well be her uncle had exaggerated the dangers of life in the
new land. It was great fun to shock his credulous relatives. He had
surely written them some enormous tales during those fifteen years and
more. He used to chuckle heartily to himself at reading some of the
sympathizing replies. But these tales were held in evidence against him
now that he dared to want Louise. Every letter was brought out by
Louise’s dear old grandmother and read to her over again. Louise did not
half believe them, but they were gospel truth to her grandmother and
almost so to her father and mother as well. She remembered the old
spirit of fun rampant in her favorite uncle, and while his vivid
pictures took all the color from her sensitive face, deep down in her
heart she recognized them for what they were worth. The letters were a
strange medley of grasshoppers, blizzards, and Indians. But a ten-dollar
per diem was a great temptation over a five-dollar per diem, and times
were pretty hard on the old farm. More than all, the inexplicable
something that had led her uncle to throw tradition to the four winds of
heaven was calling her persistently and would not be denied. So she had
written to him for the truth.
“My dear child,” he had answered, “I live in a little city whose
civilization would make some of our good friends in the old home stare.
As for grasshoppers, I believe there was some crazy talk ages ago, but
in my day I do well to corner enough scrawny, scared specimens to land a
fish in midsummer. Their appalling scarcity is a constant sorrow to me.
Makes me plumb mad even yet to think of the hopeless hours I used to
spend blistering my nose on White River, dangling for my finny favorite
with dough-balls. Dough-balls—ugh! ‘Send us more grasshoppers, oh,
Lord,’ is my daily prayer. As for your last question, I cannot answer it
so well. Not enjoying the personal acquaintance of many Indians I cannot
tell you much about them. I believe there are a few over on the Crow
Creek Reservation and perhaps as many on Lower Brule. I wouldn’t be
positive, but I think so. Occasionally I meet one coming from that
direction. I have heard—mind, this is only hearsay—that there are a
handful or so down on the Rosebud Reservation. I wouldn’t vouch for it.
You can hear most anything in this day and generation. The few I have
met seem mild enough. They appear to be rather afraid of me. Their chief
occupations seem to be dog-eating and divorce-getting, so you can see
for yourself how highly modern and civilized they are becoming. I am
sure you will have no trouble.”
Louise had not altogether believed this rollicking letter, but it had
helped her to her decision.
Wind City and still no Indians; but there was the dear hero of her
childhood. He was much changed to be sure; his big joints had taken on
more flesh and he had gained in dignity of deportment what he had lost
in ease of movement. His once merry eyes had grown keen with the years
of just judging. The lips that had laughed so much in the old days were
set in lines of sternness. Judge Hammond Dale was a man who would live
up to the tenets of his high calling without fear or favor, through good
and evil report. Yet through all his gravity of demeanor and the pride
of his integrity, Louise instinctively felt his kindliness and loved him
for it. The loneliness fell away from her and a measure of content had
come in its place, until the letter had come from the State’s attorney
up in the Kemah County:—
My dear Miss Dale:—The eighteenth of August is the date set for the
preliminary hearing of Jesse Black. Will you come and take the
testimony? I am very anxious that the testimony be taken by a
competent reporter and shall be grateful to you if you decide to come.
The Judge will tell you about our poor accommodations. Let me
recommend to your consideration some good friends of mine, the
Willistons, father and daughter. They live three miles northwest of
Kemah. The Judge will remember Williston, George Williston of the Lazy
S. They are cultured people, though their way of living is necessarily
primitive. I am sure you will like it better there than at our shabby
little hotel, which is a rendezvous for a pretty rough class of men,
especially at court time.
If you decide to come, Mary Williston will meet you at Velpen. Please
let me know your decision.
Very sincerely, Richard Gordon.
So here she was, going into the Indian country at last. A big State,
South Dakota, and the phases of its civilization manifold. Having come
so far, to refuse to go on seemed like turning back with her hand
already on the plough, so with a stout heart she had wired Richard
Gordon that she would go. But it was pretty hard now, to be sure, and
pretty dreary, coming into Velpen knowing that she would see no one she
knew in all the wide, wide world. The thought choked her and the impish
demon, Loneliness, he of the smirk and horns and devil’s eyes, loomed
leeringly before her again. Blindly, she picked up her umbrella,
suit-case, and rain-coat.
“Homesick?” asked the kindly brakeman, with a consolatory grin as he
came to assist her with her baggage.
She bit her lip in mortification to think she had carried her feelings
so palpably on her sleeve. But she nodded honestly.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” sympathized the brakeman. His rough heart
had gone out to the slim, fair-haired young creature with the vague
trouble in her eyes.
“Thank you,” said Louise, gratefully.
There was a moment’s bewilderment on the station platform. There was no
one anywhere who seemed to be Mary—no one who might be looking for her.
It was evening, too, the lonesome evening to those away from home, when
thoughts stab and memories sap the courage. Some one pushed her rudely
aside. She was in the way of the trucks.
“Chuck it! None o’ your sass, my lad! There’s my fist. Heft it if you
don’t put no stock in its looks. Git out o’ this, I say!”
The voice was big and convincing. The man wasn’t so big, but some way he
looked convincing, too. The truckman stepped aside, but with plucky
temerity answered back.
“Get out yourself! Think you own the whole cattle country jest ’cause
you herd a few ornery, pink-eyed, slab-sided critters for your salt?
Well, the railroad ain’t the range, le’ me tell you that. Jest you run
your own affairs, will you?”
“Thanky. Glad to. And as my affairs is at present a lady, I’ll thank you
to jest trundle this here railroad offspring to the back o’ this here
lady—the back, I say—back ain’t front, is it? Wasn’t where I was
eddicated. That’s better. And ef you ain’t satisfied, why, I belong to
the Three Bars. Ever hear o’ the Three Bars? Ef I’m out, jest leave word
with the Boss, will you? He’ll see I git the word. Yes, sir, you ol’ hoss
thief, I belong to the Three Bars.”
The encounter was not without interested spectators. Louise’s brakeman
was grinning broadly at the discomfiture of his fellow-employee. Louise
herself had forgotten her predicament in the sudden whirlwind of which
she was the innocent storm-centre.
The cowboy with the temper, having completely routed the enemy to the
immense satisfaction of the onlookers, though why, no one knew exactly,
nor what the merits of the case, turned abruptly to Louise.
“Are you her?” he asked, with a perceptible cooling of his assertive
bravado.
“I don’t know,” said Louise, smiling fearlessly at her champion, though
inwardly quaking at the intuition that had flashed upon her that this
strange, uncouth man had come to take the place of Mary. “The boldness
and license of the cowboys,” her aunt had argued. There could be no
doubt of the boldness. Would the rest of the statement hold good?
“I think maybe I am, though I am Louise Dale, the new court reporter. I
expected Miss Mary Williston to meet me.”
“Then you are her,” said the man, with renewed cheerfulness, seizing her
suit-case and striding off. “Come along. We’ll git some supper afore we
start. You’re dead tired, more’n likely. It’ll be moonlight so’t won’t
matter ef we are late a gittin’ home.”
“Court reporter! I’ll be doggoned!” muttered the brakeman. “The new girl
from down East. A pore little white lamb among a pack o’ wolves and
coyotes, and homesick a’ready. No wonder! I’ll be takin’ you back
to-morrow, I’m thinkin’, young lady.”
He didn’t know the “little white lamb” who had come to help Paul
Langford and Dick Gordon in their big fight.