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THE
PLOW-WOMAN
BY
ELEANOR GATES
Author of The Biography of a Prairie Girl
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMVI
_Copyright, 1906, by_
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, September, 1906
Copyright, 1906, by The Pearson Publishing Company
_To
Robert Underwood Johnson, Esq._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN THE FURROW 3
II. A TRIP AND TROUBLE AHEAD 17
III. DALLAS MAKES A FRIEND 30
IV. MISUNDERSTANDINGS 41
V. THE DESPISED 52
VI. FROM DODGE CITY 62
VII. OUT OF THE SKY 76
VIII. BEFORE THE WARPED DOOR 86
IX. A HAND IN THE FUN 96
X. AN APPEAL TO HEADQUARTERS 106
XI. A LITTLE STRATEGY 118
XII. A CONFESSION 129
XIII. A PROPOSAL AND A PROMISE 134
XIV. ANOTHER PROMISE 145
XV. NECESSITY 151
XVI. BACK FROM THE WINTER CAMP 169
XVII. THE AWAKENING 178
XVIII. THE SMOKING MOUNTAIN 191
XIX. AL BRADEN OF SIOUX FALLS 200
XX. A CHARGE 210
XXI. A MEETING BY THE FORD 216
XXII. A FIRST WARNING 223
XXIII. AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT 228
XXIV. THE SPIRIT OF THE FRONTIER 245
XXV. THE INQUIRY 254
XXVI. BACKSLIDING 264
XXVII. SIMON PLAYS A PART 270
XXVIII. A CHANGE IN PLAN 277
XXIX. LOUNSBURY'S RETURN 284
XXX. THE TRYST 297
XXXI. BY THE LIGHT OF A MATCH 303
XXXII. THE EVE OF OTHER THINGS 309
XXXIII. THE END OF A DREAM 312
XXXIV. FIRE AND ESCAPE 318
XXXV. THE LAST WARNING 325
XXXVI. SOME UNEXPECTED DISCOVERIES 330
XXXVII. THE FLIGHT TO MURPHY'S THROAT 335
XXXVIII. FRASER HEARS A CALL 342
XXXIX. STANDING AT BAY 345
XL. SOME ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 351
XLI. TAPS 361
THE PLOW-WOMAN CHAPTER I
IN THE FURROW
The coulee was a long, scarlet gash in the brown level of the Dakota
prairie, for the sumach, dyed by the frosts of the early autumn, covered
its sides like a cloth whose upper folds were thrown far over the brinks
of the winding ravine and, southward, half-way to the new cottonwood
shack of the Lancasters. Near it, a dark band against the flaming shrub,
stretched the plowed strip, narrow, but widening with each slow circuit
of the team as the virgin, grass-grown land was turned by the
mould-board to prepare for the corn-planting of the coming spring.
The sun, just risen, shone coldly upon the plain, and a wind, bearing
with it a hint of raw weather and whirling snow, swept down the Missouri
valley from the north, marshalling in its front hosts of gabbling ducks
and honking geese that were taking noisy flight from a region soon to be
buried and already bleak. Yet with all the chill in the air, Ben and
Betty, the mules, steamed as they toiled to and fro, and lolled out
their tongues with the warmth of their work and the effort of keeping
straight in the furrow; and Dallas, following in their wake with the
reins about her shoulders and the horns of the plow in a steadying
grasp, took off her slouch hat at the turnings to bare her damp
forehead, drew the sleeve of her close-fitting jersey across her face
every few moments, and, at last, to aid her in making better progress,
as well as to cool her ankles, brought the bottom of her skirt through
the waistband, front and back, and walked in her red flannel petticoat.
As she travelled, she looked skyward occasionally with a troubled face,
and, resting but seldom, urged the team forward. Clear weather and
sunshine would not long continue, and the first field on the claim must
be turned up and well harrowed before the opening of winter.
"Come, Ben, come," she called coaxingly to the nigh mule. "If you don't
dig in now, how d' you expect to have anything to eat _next_ winter?
Betty, Betty, don't let Ben do it all; I'm talking to you, too. Come
along, come along."
Ben and Betty, lean, and grey with age, bent willingly to their labour
at the sound of her voice. Their harnesses creaked a monotonous
complaint with their renewed efforts, the colter came whining behind
them. As Dallas gently slapped the lines along their backs, now and
then, to emphasise her commands, clouds of dust, which had been gathered
as mud in the buffalo-wallow where they went each evening to roll,
ascended and were blown away. Faithfully they pulled, not even lifting
an eyelid or flapping an ear in protest when Simon, the stray yearling
bull that had adopted the claim as its home and tagged Dallas
everywhere, bellowed about their straining legs or loitered at their
very noses and impeded their way.
Plowing was strange work to the patient mules and to the girl who was
guiding them. To her, the level prairie, rank with goldenrod,
pink-flowered smartweed, and purple aster, was a land of wondrous
growth. For twenty years her home had been an arid _mesa_ far to the
south, where her father captained the caretakers of a spur railroad
track. The most western station-house in Texas, standing amid thorny
mesquite, was her birthplace and that of her sister Marylyn; the grey
plateau across which the embankment led was their playground; there they
grew to womanhood under the careful guidance of their frail,
Northern-born mother.
And then two casualties, coming close upon each other, had suddenly
changed their life. Their father was brought home one night so maimed
and crushed by the wheels of a flat-car that he could never hope to take
up his work again; and while he lay, bandaged and broken, fighting to
keep the soul in his crippled body, their mother bravely yielded her
life to a lingering illness.
Many months later, when Evan Lancaster's wounds were at last healed, Ben
and Betty were unhitched from a dirt-laden scraper on the siding and put
before a white-topped prairie-schooner. Then the old section-boss, with
his crutches beside him and his daughters seated in the all but empty
box behind, said a husky farewell to the men crowding around the wagon,
and started the mules along the road that led northward beside the
rails.
He gave no backward glance at the wind-battered house where he had
brought an ailing bride; instead, eager to leave that plain of flying
sand and scanty grasses, he drove the team rapidly forward, bound for a
country where there were wells, and not water-cars, where rain fell
oftener, and where food, both for man and beast, could be gotten easily
from the earth. But Dallas, seated in the schooner's bed, her weeping
sister held soothingly against her breast, watched, dry-eyed, as a
mound by a giant mesquite faded slowly from her sight, and saw her
girlhood's home give way, as a lighthouse sinks behind a speeding
vessel, until only its grey-sprinkled roof showed through the scattered
trees. Then, after pillowing Marylyn's head on a Navajo blanket beside
the swashing water cask, she climbed forward to the driver's seat and
took the reins from her father.
It was April, and when the _mesa_ was left far to rearward, a world
almost forgotten by the crippled section-boss burst in new, green
loveliness upon his desert children. Towering pines and spreading oaks,
lush grass strewn with blossoms, clear-running streams and gay-feathered
birds replaced thirsty vegetation, salt lakes, and hovering vultures.
They travelled slowly, each day bringing some fresh delight to ear and
eye, until one evening in the waning Dakota summer they camped beside a
great crooked split in the prairie, on a flat peninsula made by a
sweeping westward bend of the muddy Missouri.
Across the river from their stopping-place, where an amber sun was going
down, the horizon was near. High bluffs, like a huge wind-break, stood
upon the plain, leaving at their feet only enough space for the
whitewashed frame buildings of Fort Brannon. But to the east, the
paralleling bluffs lay at a distance, and broke their ridge-back far up
the scarlet coulee; from where, southward, stretched a wide gap--ten
broad and gently undulating miles--that ended at the slough-studded base
of Medicine Mountain. Evan Lancaster, as he stood bareheaded under the
unclouded sky, looked about him upon acres heavy with tangled grass and
weeds; and pleased with the evident richness of the untouched ground,
and with the sheltered situation of the claim on the bend, swore that
the white-topped schooner, with its travel-stained crew of three, had
found on the yellow billows of that northern prairie its permanent
moorings at last.
The felling and hewing of cottonwoods for the shack had occupied the
first few weeks that followed, citizen carpenters from Brannon doing the
heavy cutting and lifting. But when the little house stood, its square
log room and dirt floor open to the sun, Dallas performed her part of
the building, and thatched the hip-roof with coarse grass from a meadow.
Next, the well was dug; and the barn built as a lean-to, for the
Lancasters knew little, but had heard much, about the blizzards of the
territory. Then, while the elder girl covered the slanting rafters over
Ben and Betty's stall, the section-boss hauled a scanty stock of hay and
provisions from Clark's, a cattle-camp and settlement to the northeast.
And finally, when shack and barn were alike done, Dallas put the mules
to the end of an oak beam and took up the task of plowing.
Now she was winding at a black mat that was gradually growing upon the
brown carpet of the prairie. Up and down she walked, her whiplash
trailing behind her like a lively snake, her hands striving to guide the
cleaving share she followed, a look of deep content, despite all fear
for bad weather, upon her sun-browned face.
But while, working the morning hours slowly away, she gave full
attention to the nodding mules and the young bull straggling at their
head, she did not stop to watch the flocks winging by above her, or to
look off to where the plains fell away from the pale azure line of the
sky. So she failed to see, at the middle of the long forenoon, a group
of dark figures that came into sight to the eastward and moved slowly
forward in the direction of the bend.
Toward noon, however, the furrows were turned less regularly. Ben and
Betty were so tired that they no longer drew evenly, but wavered from
side to side. Again and again the off mule jerked the share out of the
sod; each time Dallas patiently circled the team and steered it back
into place again, for her arms were not strong enough to swing the plow
on the whiffletrees. And each time Simon caught sight of her red flannel
petticoat, and, faint, half-awakened objections stirring beneath his
sprouting horns, came back to challenge the goading colour and butt her
crossly in the skirts.
Just before dinner-time, and half-way of the plowed strip, going east,
Dallas suddenly lifted her shoulders to tighten the slack of the reins,
let go the horns and brought the mules to a stand. And then, as they
halted with lowered heads, she caught sight of the distant figures
between her and the horizon, recognising them as men, mounted and on
foot, with wagons hanging at their rear.
She stepped to the head of the team and shaded her eyes for a moment. As
she did so, a part of the advancing body detached itself and approached
more swiftly, only to retreat again; and the sun, climbing toward the
centre of the sky, flashed back upon bright objects carried at the front
of the group.
"Soldiers for Brannon, I reckon," she said aloud to Simon, who had given
over his butting and was thoughtfully sniffing the air. "Still," she
added, "they're coming slow for soldiers."
Simon rubbed a red shoulder against her arm confidingly and gave a
defiant, sideways toss of the head.
"_You_ know, don't you?" Dallas said, scratching the star in his curly
forehead. "Well, I would, too, if I had your nose." She glanced at the
mules and noted their lack of fright. "They're not Indians anyhow," she
went on, "so I guess we'll do some more plowing."
When the sun was so high that Simon's shadow made but a small splotch
upon the ground under him, Dallas again stopped to look toward the east.
The men and horses had travelled only a short distance, and were halted
for their noon rest. Close to the wagons, the smoke of burning
grass-twists was curling up from under the midday meal.
"They ain't soldiers," she said decisively; "if they was, they'd go on
to the ferry. And what _can_ they be, headed this way?" She took off her
hat and swung it at her father to attract his attention, then pointed
toward the men and teams.
Lancaster was sitting before the shack, his crutches across his knees.
Seeing her signal, he got up and hobbled hastily around the corner, from
where he blinked into the gap. And, unable to make out anything but a
blurred collection of moving things, he called Marylyn from her
dinner-getting.
"Come an' see w'at y' c'n make out off thar on th' prairie, Mar'lyn," he
cried. "Ef it's antelope, bring out th' Sharps."
Marylyn hurried to him and followed the direction of his gaze. "Why,
it's men, pa," she said.
"Certainly, it's men," he agreed pettishly. "But w'at _kin'_ o' men?
_Thet's_ w'at Ah kain't see."
Marylyn shook her head. Then, as she bent her look inquiringly toward
the far-away camp, a horseman suddenly left it and started on a gallop
toward them. "One's coming this way fast!" she exclaimed, and rushed
back into the shack for her bonnet.
Lancaster and his younger daughter commented excitedly as the rider
approached. One troop of cavalry had remained at Brannon throughout the
summer to give protection to the wives and children of officers and
enlisted men. The remaining troops belonging at the fort were away on
Indian service. They were to return soon, and the section-boss believed
he saw in the nearing traveller the herald of the home-coming force.
Marylyn, however, was just as certain that Indians were about to
surround them, and hastily brought out the gun. But Dallas wasted no
time in conjectures. She touched up Ben and Betty and finished her round
of the plowed land. Not till the stranger was close did she stop at the
eastern end of the field and wait, leaning on the cross-bar.
He came forward in a sharp canter, keeping a regular tap upon the flanks
of his mount with the end of a lariat. His careless seat in the saddle
and the fact that he wore no spurs told Dallas that he was not a
trooper, though across the lessening distance now between them his dress
of blue shirt, dark breeches and high boots, crowned by a wide, soft
hat, was not unlike a campaign uniform. At his approach, Ben and Betty
became lazily interested and raised their long ears to the front; Simon
advanced a little and took a determined stand beside Dallas, who hung
her lines on the plow-handles and prepared to greet the horseman.
The instant he reached her, he halted abruptly beside the mules and
bared his head. "Good-morning," he said with cheery politeness; but his
swift glance over team, plow, and girl showed a surprise that was almost
pity.
She saw his look, and the colour swept up under the tan of her face.
"How d' y' do," she answered.
"I'm John Lounsbury from Clark's," he began. "I've been supplying that
crowd back there with feed and grub for a couple of weeks." He nodded
toward the distant men and horses. "May I ask--I--I didn't know any
women folks had settled----"
She faced him squarely for a moment, and he met her eyes. They were
grey, with tawny flecks, wide-open, clear and comprehending. "My
father's Evan Lancaster," she explained.
"Lancaster--oh, he's traded at my store."
"That's him over there with Marylyn."
Lounsbury turned in his saddle and looked toward the shack. "Marylyn?"
he said. "What a pretty name! Sounds like Mary_land_. How'd she----" He
paused questioningly.
"Mother's name was Mary Lynn," she answered, her voice lowered. "So she
just put it together."
"And yours?"
"Mine's Dallas. I was born in Texas."
He leaned back against his high cantle and smiled. "I could 'a' guessed
_that_," he declared.
Again she coloured sensitively, and hastened to swing the team around
until Betty stood in the furrow. "My father's coming," she said.
Instantly Lounsbury was all regret, for he saw that she had
misunderstood him. "You don't _look_ Texas," he said earnestly. "It's
just the name. And--and I think Dallas is pretty, too."
The implied jest on her native State did not do away with her
displeasure. She nodded gravely and, turning, put the lines about her
shoulders. The mules started.
"Now I've got you down on me," he said penitently. "Honest, I didn't
mean----"
She paid no heed.
He clapped on his hat, whipped his horse and followed alongside, waiting
for her to look up. Opposite the shack, Lancaster and his other daughter
were standing by the furrow. Here she drew rein. "This is Marylyn," she
said, as the storekeeper leaned to grasp her father's hand.
Lounsbury again lifted his hat and looked down, long and admiringly,
upon the younger girl. Her fair hair, framing in soft waves a pale, oval
face, and her blue eyes, watching him in some confusion, were strongly
in contrast with the straight, heavy braids--brown, and showing
burnished tints in the light--and the unwavering eyes of her sister.
Looking at her, he was reminded of girls he had seen beyond the
Alleghanies--girls who knew little, or no, toil, and who jealously
guarded their beauty from sun and wind. Answering Lancaster's blunt
questions, that followed close upon each other, he paid her prettiness
constant and wondering homage; and she, noting the attention, retreated
a little and was quiet and abashed.
"Who's you' party?" the elder man demanded, indicating the distant camp
with one crutch, and leaning heavily upon the other.
"Surveyors," replied Lounsbury.
"Surveyors!" There was alarm in Lancaster's tone. He suddenly recalled
how, slighting Dallas' advice, he had delayed a trip to the land-office
for the purpose of filing on the claim. "W'at they doin'?"
"Something right in your line, sir. They're laying out a railroad."
"A railroad? You don' say! How'll it come?"
"Why, right this way."
Lancaster caught the other by the bootstrap. "Shore?" he asked.
"Sure," repeated Lounsbury; "sure as death and taxes. It's bound to run
somewhere between the coulee and Medicine Mountain, and it'll stop--at
least for a few years--at the Missouri. With those sloughs in the way at
the south end of the gap, it can't reach the river without coming over
your land. First thing you know, you'll have stores and saloons around
your house. There's going to be a town on the Bend, sir."
The elder man scanned the younger's face. Lounsbury was smiling half
teasingly, yet undoubtedly he was in earnest.
"W'y, Lawd!" breathed the section-boss, realising the whole import of
the news. A railroad would mean immeasurable good fortune to the trio of
settlers who, like young prairie-chickens that fear to leave the side of
their mother, had chosen quarter-sections near the guarding fort. And to
him, penniless, with motherless girls, it meant----
"The ferrying's so good right here," went on the storekeeper. "Why, it's
a ten-to-one shot the track'll end on your claim."
With one accord all looked across the level quarter, where the new green
was creeping in after the late rains.
"A railroad! An' a town!" The section-boss pulled at his grizzled
goatee. "They'll make this piece worth a heap!"
"They will," agreed Lounsbury. "But road or no road, seems to me you've
got about the cream of this side of the river."
"You' right," said Lancaster. But the girls were silent, except that
Dallas gave a sigh, deep and full of happiness.
Lounsbury glanced at her. "You like the place, don't you?" he asked;
"even if----" He suddenly paused. Her palms were open and half turned
upward. Across each lay a crimson stripe--the mark of the plow-handle.
For the second time she read his meaning. "Yes, I like the prairie," she
answered, "if I do have to plow." And she stepped from the furrow to the
unturned sod.
As she stood there, Lounsbury caught the clear outline of her firmly
drawn face. Beside her, Marylyn, slight and colourless, was for the
moment eclipsed. The hat of the elder girl was brushed back, displaying
a forehead upon which shone the very spirit of the unshackled. Her
hands, large, yet not too large for the splendid figure of which they
were the instruments, were clasped upon her breast. Watching her, it
seemed to Lounsbury that she must have sprung as she was from the plains
one day--grave, full-grown and gallant.
Her father's voice broke in harshly. "_Ah_ didn' want she should plow,"
he protested. "Ah figgered t' git someone on tick, but seems like
Dallas, she----"
"We like it here," she interrupted, "because the air 's so cool, and
there's lots of grass." Then after bending to gather a purple flower,
she stepped back to the plow.
"You're planning to stay, then," said Lounsbury.
"Stay!" burst forth the section-boss. "Don' it look like it?"
Lounsbury made no reply, only smiled genially.
"Maybe y' reckon we-all ain't safe?" continued Lancaster. "Wal, th'
nesters 'roun' Fort Sully's safe 'nough."
The storekeeper pointed across the river to where a flag was flying at
the centre of the post quadrangle. "You're in sight of that," he said
simply.
The other snorted. Then, stifling a retort, he searched Lounsbury's face
with his milky-blue eyes. "Ah'd like t' ast w'y y' didn' tell me 'bout
th' track when Ah seen y' las'," he observed suspiciously.
The storekeeper gave a hearty laugh. "And why didn't you say you had
daughters?" he demanded.
Instantly a change came over the elder man. He darkened angrily. His
breath shortened, as if he had been running. Visible trembling seized
him, body and limbs.
Mystified, Lounsbury turned to Dallas, and saw that her eyes were
fastened upon her father imploringly. "No, no, dad," he heard her
whisper; "no, no."
The storekeeper hastened to speak. "Joking aside," he said, "the reason
is this: The railroad company wants the right kind of people to settle
on the land along the survey. It doesn't want men who'd file just to get
a price. So the story hasn't leaked much."
Lancaster was fumbling at his crutches. "Ah see, Ah see," he said
sulkily. Then, with an attempt at being courteous, "Come up t' th'
shack, Lounsb'ry. Y' brung good news; y' got t' hev you' dinner."
"I ate back there," said Lounsbury, dismounting; "but I'll stop off for
a while, just the same." As he slipped the reins over his horse's head,
Marylyn remembered the meal she had abandoned and started homeward. The
storekeeper, leading his mount, strode away beside her.
Dallas clucked to the mules.
"Ain't you comin'?" called her father. "W'y, my gal, you worked 'nough
this mornin'."
"I'll keep at it just a little longer," she answered.
"We don' hear ev'ry day thet we live on a town site with a railroad
a-comin'," Lancaster said, following her a few steps. "Better come."
Dallas did not reply. When she was some rods farther on, her father
called to her again.
"Come, Dallas," he urged, "an' stop plowin' up th' streets."
She shook her head, slapped the reins along Ben and Betty's dusty backs
and leaned guidingly on the handles of the plow. And as she travelled
slowly riverward, Simon trotted close behind, tossing his stubby horns
at the red of her underskirt and bawling wearily.
CHAPTER II
A TRIP AND TROUBLE AHEAD
Before Dallas reached the end of her furrow she knew that, for at least
some days to come, her work on the plowed strip must cease. Far and
wide, frontiersmen may have heard of the railroad's coming, and their
first move would be, perhaps had been, a rush to the land-office to file
upon quarter-sections touching the survey. And so, no hour dared be
wasted before her father started on his long-deferred trip. The claim on
the peninsula--the claim which the storekeeper had named as the terminus
of the proposed line, as the probable site for a new town--must at once
be legally theirs.
When the mules were turned eastward again, Dallas brought them up for a
breathing spell and, going apart a little distance, sat down, her knees
between her hands. A short space of time had made incredible changes in
their plans, in the possibilities of their prairie home. Before the
cutting of the last two sods, there had stretched ahead only a
succession of uneventful years, whose milestones would be the growing
record of beeves and bushels. But now--she could not have credited her
senses had it not been for a glimpse of Lounsbury's horse, industriously
cropping beside the lean-to.
She looked across at the shack, squatting on a gentle rise at the
centre of the claim as if it had fled there for refuge out of the grassy
sea whose dry waves lapped up to its very door. Its two small windows,
looking riverward, the narrow door of warped lumber between, and the
shock roof of meadow-grass held down by stones, gave it the appearance
of a grotesque human head that was peering from out the plain. As
Dallas, for the first time, noted the curious resemblance, the shack
seemed to smile back at her--a wise, reassuring smile.
A moment later the north wind hooded the sky with clouds, putting the
bend in gloom. She got to her feet and hastened toward the plow. So
brief had been her meeting with the storekeeper that, immediately
following it, his features had escaped her. Now she recalled them, and
thought she recalled that, when he had accosted her, they had worn a
mocking expression. What if her father, in his sudden excitement and
concern, should tell Lounsbury that the claim was not yet filed upon!
should confide in this stranger, who might then take advantage of the
ignorance, age and crippled condition of the section-boss! Hurriedly,
she unhitched Ben and Betty, hung their bridles on the hames, and turned
the team loose to graze. Then she started homeward, with Simon close
upon her heels, and as she crossed the cloud-darkened claim, she glanced
again at the shack. Its windows were in shadow, its door almost
obscured. There was a smirk on its twisted face.
But when, entering the house, she met Lounsbury's kind, level look, the
distrust she had felt unconsciously vanished.
He was seated astride a bench to the left of the fireplace, his hat
flung down in front of him, his shoulders against the wall, his booted
legs thrust out restfully across the floor. Dallas, seeing him out of
the saddle for the first time, was struck by his splendid length, next
by his heaviness--a round, but muscular, heaviness that she had never
noted in a Texan. Leaning back with folded arms, he showed, however,
despite his weight and rotundity, the pliance and the litheness of the
Westerner. His hair was dark and thick and worn in a careless part, his
throat was bronzed above the lacings of his shirt, his face
clean-shaven, somewhat square--yet full--and set with blue eyes that
showed an abiding glint of merriment.
If Dallas, as she crossed the sill, formed, with the swift keenness of
the plainswoman, a new and truer estimate of Lounsbury, he, saluting
cordially, failed not to measure her. The dirt-floored shack,
partitioned by Navajo blankets and furnished with unplaned benches, was
a background totally unsuited to Marylyn's delicate beauty; but for the
elder daughter of the section-boss, its very rude simplicity seemed
strangely fine and fitting.
Many women had come under the storekeeper's notice during his frontier
life: Roughly reared women of pure ways who toiled and bore with the
patience of beasts; the women of the army, matching, in dress and
habits, those he had known as a boy; and, last of all, the kind that
always follows in the track of soldier, scout and gambler. Yet never
before on the sundown side of the Mississippi had he seen one who
possessed, along with the reserve a lonely bringing-up enjoins, the
dignity and poise that are counted the fruits of civilisation.
"It's good blood," he said to himself, "and"--with a glance at the
section-boss--"it's from the mother's side."
Lancaster, at that moment, was truly anything but a picture of repose.
His season of delight over the morning's news had been brief, and was
now succeeded by thorough disquiet. He hobbled to and fro, from the
hearth, where hung a pail of fragrant coffee, to the farther front
window. Lounsbury remarked his evident worry and, not understanding it,
bent down inquiringly toward Marylyn.
She was seated on a buffalo robe before the fire, zealously tending the
coffee. As she felt the storekeeper's look upon her, she glanced up,
and, meeting his eyes, something other than the firelight swept her
throat, neck and brow with crimson touch.
"There's no fretting in that quarter," was Lounsbury's mental comment.
He turned on the bench to face Dallas.
She was standing quietly beside the warped door, her arms hanging
tensely at her side, her chin up, her eyes gazing straight at him. And
in them, as well as in her whole attitude, Lounsbury read determination
and anxiety.
"What's the matter, I wonder," he thought. He leaned toward her, resting
an elbow on the bench. "You're getting ready for spring seeding, Miss
Lancaster," he said.
"Yes."
The section-boss giggled nervously. "Ef th' town was right here, it
would n' make no difference t' Dallas. Ah'll bet she'll spen' th' winter
shellin' cawn fer plantin', an' pickin' cockle outen th' wheat." He fell
to tugging at his goatee.
Again there was silence. Then, with a deep breath, Dallas straightened
to speak. It was borne to her of a sudden that they were in need--of one
in whom they might confide, of one from whom good advice might come; she
felt impelled to tell this stalwart young man, whose eyes read kindness
and whose face read right, who seemed to bear them nothing but
good-will, that they had not filed the claim. And then----
The fire crackled cosily, the blackened pail steamed from the
cross-piece. Lounsbury spread out his hands before the blaze. "I wish I
lived on a quarter, like you folks," he said. "I hate the dickering in a
store. Been at it ten years. Was in the fur business, at first--bought
from the Indians and the skin-hunters up and down. Well, the country got
into my blood. You get the West, you know, and it's the only disease out
here that you can't shake. So I've stayed, and I guess I'll keep
a-staying. But sometimes I get a notion to throw my stores up and go
into the cow business or farming."
Dallas sank back, checked, not by Lounsbury's words, but by her father.
The section-boss, one hand behind a hairy ear, was glowering at the
storekeeper. "Eh, what?" he asked suspiciously.
"I say I've a notion to take up some land," repeated Lounsbury. "Right
east of you wouldn't be a bad idea. The soil's wonderful hereabouts. No
stumps, no stones, and the loam's thick. Look in the coulee--you can see
there how far it is to the clay. That's why she wore down so deep----"
"Thet arroyo?"
"Yes. I believe I'll just pick out a quarter near it. Could plant a
store anyway, when the track comes."
"Yas, certainly," said Lancaster. He passed Dallas, giving her a
helpless, apprehensive stare. "But, shucks! Ah wouldn' be in sech a
tarnel hurry, ef Ah was you. Spring's plenty o' time."
Lounsbury swung round sharply. "Spring!" he exclaimed in amazement. "I
hope that hasn't been your plan, sir. A man can't file too soon."
Dallas leaned toward Lounsbury again, and her lips parted. But a quick,
peremptory gesture from her father interrupted. "Mar'lyn," he cried, his
eyes warning the elder girl, "look out fer thet coffee; it's a-bilin'
over."
And Dallas saw that her father did not trust the storekeeper--perhaps
feared him--and that he did not wish his own neglect to be known.
But a hint of the state of affairs at the shack had already entered
Lounsbury's mind. As Marylyn rose to pour the coffee, he quickly changed
the subject. "Fort 's a quiet place, these days," he observed, accepting
a cup. "Wonder when the troops'll be back."
The section-boss sipped at his saucer. "Ah don' carry on no dealin's
with Yankee soldier trash," he answered curtly. "They keep they side o'
th' river, an' we-all keep ourn."
Lounsbury laughed. "Well," he said, "you'll find when the redskins get
nasty that the army blue looks pretty good."
The other shrugged.
The storekeeper tapped the holster hanging upon a thigh. "I carry a
pop-gun regular." He set down the cup, pulled at his boot-legs and
arose.
"Ah reckon Ah c'n hol' my own, sah." Lancaster's pride was touched.
"No doubt of it," assured the younger man, preparing to go. "I hope," he
continued, "that you'll call on me at any time--if you need more
provisions, say."
Lancaster did not misunderstand the offer of credit. "Thank y'," he
replied stiffly, "but we certainly got 'nough t' las' through."
Lounsbury remembered how small--compared with the orders of other
wintering settlers--was the Lancaster stock; and thought, too, how
likely it was that every passerby would be fed with true Southern
hospitality, thus diminishing the supply. But he refrained from making
any further suggestion. He bade the family good-by, lingering a little
at parting beside the younger girl.
"Miss Marylyn," he said, "before another winter you'll be the belle of
the town of Lancaster."
She put her hand in his bashfully.
"And, Miss Dallas?" His voice entreated a little.
"I hope you'll be the biggest storekeeper," she said.
To Lounsbury's surprise, he saw a trace of fun lurking in her eye. "Ah!
you've forgiven me!" he declared triumphantly.
But she made no answer as she turned away.
The next moment he was galloping toward the coulee crossing.
Marylyn watched him go. When, having disappeared into the ravine, he
came into sight again on the farther side, he turned in his saddle and
saw her. He took off his hat and waved it. She answered with a farewell
signal, and stood, looking after him, until distance dwarfed horse and
rider to a dot.
On the storekeeper's departure, the shack became a scene of action.
Lancaster gave over walking the floor and collected bedding for a
journey. Marylyn was called in to prepare a box of food for her
father--potatoes from the coals of the fireplace, cured pig-meat from
the souse-barrel, bread, and a jug of coffee. While Dallas caught the
mules, gave them some grain and a rubbing-down with straw wisps, and
greased the wagon wheels. All being made ready, the section-boss took
leave of his daughters, urging them to keep within the next day when the
surveyors came up, and to deny his going. Then, with Ben and Betty at a
smart trot, he set off for Bismarck and the land-office.
When he was gone, the squat shack on the bend became vigilant.
Ceaselessly its eyes covered the stretch of road between ferry-landing
and coulee--ceaselessly, though Dallas alone kept watch for wayfarers.
Not until night fell, and the cloud-masked moon disappeared behind the
western bluffs, were small blankets pinned into place across the
windows, and the peering shock head made sightless.
But even with the house darkened, the early supper eaten and Marylyn
asleep in her bed before the hearth, the elder girl still kept on the
alert. A nervousness born of loneliness had taken possession of her. If
the doorlatch rattled, she raised herself, listening. If Simon rubbed
himself against the warm outer stones of the fireplace, she sprang up, a
startled sentinel, with wide eyes and clenched hands.
But an hour passed. The wind lulled. Simon lay down. She fell to
thinking of the storekeeper. She felt surer than ever, now, that he did
not covet the bend. Setting aside the fact that he had brought them good
news, she was glad he had come. It gave them a neighbour. And, yes, she
forgave him the smile that had provoked her resentment. After all, the
name Dallas did sound Texas.
With morning, and the rising of the sun, she was up and doing the few
chores about lean-to and shack. But when the surveyors arrived, making
short work of their last few miles, she and Marylyn shut themselves in
and escaped being seen. The engineers gone toward Clark's, Dallas again
took up her watch.
Twice before night she was rewarded. The mail-sergeant passed, bringing
a batch of letters to a grateful post; and, late in the afternoon, an
Indian runner came into sight from up the Missouri. Scorning to use the
ferry, he dropped into the river, where the coulee emptied, and swam
across.
The arrival of the scout Dallas associated instinctively with the
expected return of the troopers, and felt a relief that she would not
have cared to confess to her father. The unusual bustle that marked the
next three days at Brannon seemed to justify her belief. Below the
barracks, on the level bottom-land, men were busy erecting a strange
structure. Tall cottonwoods were hauled from the river and set on end in
the sandy ground. As time passed, these came to form a tight, circular
pen.
The night of the third day there was activity on the other bank of the
Missouri. Unknown to shack and fort, the squalid line of shanty saloons
that stretched itself like a waiting serpent along a high bench opposite
the new stockade, sprang into sudden life. Two wagons filled with men
and barrels crossed the bend and emptied themselves into the dilapidated
buildings. And far into the early hours, loud laughter, the click of
chips and the clink of glasses disturbed the quiet of the night. At
dawn, an officer, standing, field-glass in hand, on the gallery at
headquarters, saw two wagons drawn up in front of Shanty Town and
called down a curse upon the heads of the sleeping revellers.
"Just see there!" he exclaimed. "Some vermin got wind of the paymaster's
coming and are here to fleece the men."
A lieutenant sauntered up, putting out his hand for the glasses. "There
wasn't a soul in those huts yesterday," he said.
"No, of course not," sputtered the other. "The devils stayed at Clark's
till the punchers got back from Kansas City. Now, they're on hand to
keep our guard-house and hospital full. By gad! if I commanded here, I'd
have the whole street fired."
"Well," said the lieutenant, "the men have a way of disciplining that
kind, themselves. Some day, when a favourite is cut in a brawl or
cheated at cards, they'll shoot up the place. If there's anything left,
it'll move on."
"It won't do any harm to keep an eye on Shanty Town, all the same,"
declared his companion, fiercely. "Remember the man that ran it last
year? Slick, by gad! Why, the paymaster might just as well have stopped
over there--he and his ilk got every cent! He wasn't a 'bad' man, mind
you--not brave enough for that, but keen-nosed as a moose, conceited as
an Indian----"
"What was his name?"
"Oh, Dick or Vic Something-or-other, I don't know what. He's a bragging
renegade, anyway."
Unaware of a reconnoitre, the occupants of the line of shanties
slumbered serenely on; and not until noon did high plumes of smoke,
straight as the flag-pole on the parade-ground, announce, to the
secretly delighted troopers at Brannon, their tardy rising.
Dallas, too, saw the busy chimneys. But while watching them intently
from an open window, her attention was attracted, all at once, in the
opposite direction. She heard, coming out of the coulee, a chorus of
shrill talking, like the pow-wow of a flock of prairie-chickens. Then, a
horse snorted, and there was a low rumble of wheels. Thinking that it
was her father, she leaned into sight. As she did so a team came
scrambling over the scarlet brink, dragging a wagon full of men and
women.
As the horses gained the level prairie, their driver laid aside a huge
black-snake whip with which he had been soundly whacking them, and
looked about. The next moment, Dallas saw him rein in his team and
spring to his feet. He was looking toward the shack, and he raised his
whip-hand menacingly.
"Look at that! Look at that!" he cried wildly, his voice carrying
through the clear air.
All looked where he pointed, and someone in the back of the wagon
cursed.
"What d' you call _that_ for luck?" yelled the man, shaking his mittened
fist. "If Nick knew that!"
Dallas could not hear the mingled answers of his companion.
"Well, I call it damned----"
A woman reached up and pulled him into his seat. There was another
shrill chorus, the man whacked the horses till they reared, and the
wagon went rumbling on.
Dallas watched it until it disappeared into the cut at the landing. Then
she sank upon a bench. For a long time she sat, dumb and immovable, her
eyes on the floor. When, finally, she got up, she felt about her, as if
overcome by blindness.
Marylyn had not seen or heard the threatening wagon-driver. Seated
comfortably on the robe by the fire, she strung beads and hummed
contentedly.
Dallas started toward her--stopped--then moved slowly back to the
window, where she took up her watch.
Late that night she sprang from fitful, troubled sleep to hear Simon
lowing and moving about restlessly. A few moments afterward, there came
a mule's long bray from below the shack, followed by the voice of the
section-boss, urging on the team. She found her long cloak and hastened
out.
She could not wait for the wagon to stop before calling anxiously to her
father. "Did you file?" she asked, walking beside Betty.
Lancaster did not answer, but scolded feebly, as if worn with his long
trip. "W'y d' y' fret a man 'fore he c'n git down an' into th' house?"
he demanded. "Ah'm plumb fruz t' death, an' hungry."
She helped him over the wheel and through the door. Then she went back
and, in feverish haste, stabled the mules. On entering the shack, now
dimly lighted by a fire, she did not need to repeat her question. She
read the answer in her father's face.
"No use," Lancaster told her, raising wet, tired eyes to hers. "Th'
claim was gone 'fore ever we got here--filed on las' July." He lay down,
muttering in a delirium of grief and physical weariness.
The fire, made only of dry grass, began to die, the room to darken.
Dallas' face shadowed with it. She was thinking of the level quarter
that was to have blossomed under her eager hands; that was to have
brought comfort to Marylyn and her crippled father. And now the land was
gone from them, had never been theirs--they were only squatters.
Any hour, a nameless man--perhaps he who had gone by that day--might
descend upon them and----
The bail of a bubbling pot slipped down the bar that held it, and the
vessel clattered upon the hearth. She started as if a gun had exploded
at her elbow.