A MAID’S MISTAKE
DIMINISHED but undaunted, the great herd swept north once more into
the wide, sweet, unknown world. The mingled grasslands and narrow timber
tracts which lay between the heads of the water courses made for cattle
drovers a land of plenty where man had not yet come. In every hollow the
wild deer sprang away, the head of every draw contained its flocks of
great wild turkeys. On the grassy flats were uncounted coveys of the
prairie grouse. The air was enlivened with the wild calls of the giant
sickle-billed curfew; and from above came the mysterious, baffling
liquid tremolo of the upland plover, honey sweet to hear. Glossy green
parakeets showed in the timber mottes, meadow larks made gay the air
with their metallic clankings, mixed with the broken strains of melody
all their own. There was life, motion, all the time in the wild
landscape.
The vegetable world also was rich, richer than our Government had
thought when in ignorance it gave this domain to the savages in a treaty
which, like all our treaties, later was to be repealed. Fruits began to
appear, few of them yet ripening; wild grapes, plums. They crossed one
strip of sand dunes which ran through the grassy knolls, and found an
astonishing growth of dwarfed grapevines, showing not more than a foot
or so above the sand, but promising fruit of great size.
In the timbered valleys there was an admirable growth of elms,
cottonwoods, black walnuts. Haws and persimmons, not yet ripe, young
acorns of the oak trees, showed what the fall mast would be. The black
bears and the deer even now were hunting mushrooms. Abundance of food
was there for every species. The spotted wildcat made no unusual sight.
Now and then a panther passed ghostlike from one covert to the next. A
rich land and a contented, indolent, assured. The white men had not yet
come. Nor was there even here either weed or bee.
Though really near the eastern edge of their range of that day, distant
bands of the buffalo still showed; and adding yet keener zest to an
enlivened landscape, frequent bands of wild horses passed in their easy
drifting over the grasslands, or stood at gaze in superb confidence in
their own speed. It was the open country, the free country, of the old
West. In it these men were as much adventurers as had been the sailors
of Columbus or Cabot, Leif Ericson or Magellan. It had taken three Army
expeditions and a half century of time to find the head of the Red
River, which made the drovers’ Rubicon. Young in the youth of their
world, they exulted as they rode.
Colonel Sandy Griswold quit the saddle for the jolting cart seat to
which Nabours had banished Taisie Lockhart. The wilderness makes swift
friendships.
“My dear,” said the soldier to the girl one day as they rode, joltingly
along. “I wouldn’t ask anything better than just to ride along this way
with you forever. You are by no means painful to the naked eye, and
within sixty days you will be rich. Abilene is not a dream, although it
is just beginning. Two railroads are going west across the lower Plains
now. They are going to make a cattle market at Abilene and you are in on
the ground floor. Rich? Are you going to support a husband? You could,
you know.”
“I think I’ll buy myself some clothes the first thing I’ll do,” said
Taisie, slowly smiling, “if there is such a thing as women’s clothes at
Abilene.”
“There you go! Woman’s first instinct. Tell me”—suddenly—“where is
that tall young man—you know which one I mean. You don’t know where he
is?”
“I think he’s back behind to-day. He’s not regularly on the herd—now.”
“You don’t know very much, do you, my dear? You’d let a brave, square
man ride on the drag?”
“Please don’t, I beg of you! I don’t really know why you mention him. My
men all are splendid.”
But he went on relentlessly.
“Yes; and I suppose you know that your men are riding his horses—that
you are eating his food yourself? Did you know that he staked you for
this drive—that he is going to make your fortune for you? No, you never
knew that. But that’s true.”
“Oh, don’t tell me such things!” broke out Taisie in swift
consternation. “I never knew that! Of course I never knew it! I’d never
have gone a foot! Oh, this is an awful thing!”
“Yes, my dear; there are awful things that a woman can do to a man, too.
Now that it is too late it would be quite like a woman for you to love
him. You ought to have trusted him in the first place. You can’t fool
with a man like that. He’s cold iron.”
“He didn’t—he wouldn’t—don’t you think—do you suppose—why, what can
I do? I’ve been unjust. Yes, I know that now!”
“Well, I wouldn’t climb down out of this cart right now anyhow,” said
Colonel Griswold calmly.
“But I can’t go on this way. What shall I do? Rich? No, I’m a pauper!
And I’ve not a soul in all the world to go to.”
“Oh, yes, you have, my dear! Observe me beat on my chest. I, Sandy
Griswold, will save this maiden in distress! But it’s always best to get
the truth, the first thing. Well, you’ve got it now. You never would
have learned it unless I had told you. That young man would rather cut
his throat than tell you what I have told you. He never dreamed I would.
But I thought it right.”
“But I can’t go on this way!”
“You have got to go on in this way, my dear. There is nothing else for
you to do. When that man says he is through he is through. He’s got the
chief ingredients of a bad man. But there never was a bad man who didn’t
have good things about him. That sort of a man can’t alter a decision.
He thinks once, acts once, is done once and for all, and when he’s done
he’s done. I can’t help you with him. But what a splendid pair of human
beings you have spoiled!”
“A fine prospect you give me, sir! Oh, you are comforting!” said Taisie
Lockhart bitterly.
“It will be very hard for a girl like you not to marry some man. It is a
very terrible thing to marry the wrong man, my dear. It’s a very
terrible thing to let a man think you meant to marry him when you
didn’t. It’s the worst when a man wants to marry and can’t—because he
can’t forgive an insult to his honor. It is lucky you are not a man.”
“Ah, less lucky that I am woman! I shall choke at the thought of eating
his bread!”
“Oh, no, you won’t. That’s melodrama, my dear. If you don’t like his
flour eat some of mine.
“No, keep your eyes closed and your mouth closed, too, until you get to
Abilene. I may meet you or send for you up there myself. That’s what the
Army’s for—we’re organized to help damsels in distress. That you are in
distress I know very well indeed. While there’s a sack of flour or an
ambulance mule left—well, we’ll see.”
At the encampment of the last night below the Washita, Taisie Lockhart
might well have felt a sense of security. There were two troops of
cavalry and all her own men bivouacked about her. But she could not
sleep.
Soon after dark that night Dan McMasters, asking no consent and giving
no notification, quietly rose and caught up his night horse. He
disappeared in the darkness headed toward the ford. He said no word of
good-by to any one, and was not missed by any one—save by one unhappy
girl who had lacked his coming all these days. She was sure she hated
him—when she reasoned. When she did not reason she felt her veins run
hot with love of him. He had kissed her. Their arms had encircled one
another. Ah, obligations?