OUT OF THE SKY
When four distinct raps--Squaw Charley's familiar signal--sounded upon
the outer battens of the warped door, Dallas drew back the iron bolt
eagerly, caught the lantern that lighted the dim room from its high nail
above the hearth, and held it over her head. Then, standing in the
opening, with the icy wind fluttering the wide flame till it leaped and
smoked in its socket, she met, not the faltering eyes of the faithful
Indian, but the piercing gaze of aged David Bond.
She fell back and let the lantern drop to her waist. There she held it,
her fingers trembling despite her effort to appear calm. Many days and
nights she had waited expectantly for the man who, by voice and fist,
had displayed an enmity toward them; she had pictured his arrival, or
that of his emissary, and planned what she would say and do. Now,
certain that he had come at last--after she had long ceased to watch for
him--and reading justice and fearlessness in the stern visage before
her, she was dumb and helpless.
Her father's voice, rising from the hearth-side, brought her to action.
"Wal! wal!" he was saying, "don' keep th' door open all night."
With a defiant step forward, and as if to bar intrusion, she spread out
her arms. "You're here," she said in a low tone.
Dallas' words did not penetrate the head-covering worn by David Bond;
and the fire having died down for lack of fuel, the interior of the
shack was so dark that he could see only her gesture. He thought her
alone and frightened.
"Have no fear, daughter," he begged. "I will go somewhere else. But the
ice is so----"
His gentle address surprised and disarmed her. She advanced relentingly
as her father came up behind.
"W'y--a stranger?" cried the section-boss.
She stopped him. "Yes, but we wouldn't turn a dog away to-night, dad."
She motioned David Bond to enter.
As he crossed the sill, Dallas, for the first time, caught a glimpse of
the white horse and the pung, and saw Squaw Charley lifting his load of
chips from the wagon-box.
"You came together?" she asked.
"Charley pointed out your house to me," was the answer.
A sudden hope came to her. "Maybe I made a mistake," she said. "Tell me,
who are you?"
"David Bond--an evangelist by the grace of God."
She lifted the lantern, so that he could see the others. "My father and
my sister," she said. Then she put the light on the table, retired to a
corner and suddenly sank down.
Squaw Charley, having brought in and emptied the sack and blanket, fed
the blaze and crouched at one side of the fireplace. Evan and Marylyn
were across from him, intently examining the features and dress of the
traveller. It was Dallas who, eased, yet shaken, remembered to be
hospitable.
"Come, Charley," she said, rising, "we'll put the horse up. No, no," as
their guest would have accompanied her, "we won't need help. The mules
are used to Charley, now, and Simon's pretty ugly to strangers." She
started out. "Marylyn," she said, from the door, "you take Mr. Bond's
coat." Then, to the evangelist, "I'm glad it's you, and
not--somebody--else." A rare smile crossed her face.
The aged man, divested of his long ulster, advanced and, with fatherly
tenderness, lightly touched her braids.
"'I was a stranger, and ye took me in,'" he quoted solemnly.
Dallas lingered a moment, arrested by the picture: Lancaster was leaning
forward from his seat in unaccustomed silence; Marylyn sat beside him,
the nubia thrown across her arm; nearer was the Indian, his
copper-coloured face marvellously softened; and, before them all, stood
the evangelist, priestly, patriarchal.
When Dallas and Squaw Charley were gone, the section-boss and his
younger daughter were, for a space, tongue-tied through a lack of
something to say. Soon, however, David Bond broke the quiet to assure
Lancaster of his gratitude. And thereafter the two men talked freely.
"You need not fear any trouble with my horse," the evangelist said, as
Dallas was heard bidding Simon keep to his side of the stall. "Shadrach
is a gentle beast."
At the name, the section-boss cocked his head like an inquiring bird.
"M-m, Shadrach," he began in important reflection; "y' call y' hoss
Shadrach. Ah seem t' hev heerd thet name before."
Marylyn raised to her father a quick, warning finger. "It's in the
Bible, pa," she whispered.
"Heh?"
"It's in the Bible."
"Don' y' think Ah know?" Evan poked the fire cheerfully. He was fairly
started in a conversation. "Thet Shadrach was a prophet, ef Ah recall it
jes' right," he said tentatively.
The evangelist shot him a sorrowful glance.
"No, pa," whispered Marylyn again. "He was put in a furnace. Remember
the furnace, pa?"
"With th' lions!" cried the section-boss. "Certainly Ah do."
"Oh, pa, _that_ isn't the story."
Evan stroked his moustache. "Ah'm kinda offen th' trail, honey, ain't
Ah?" he said aside. Then, to cover his mistake and forestall any
embarrassing explanation, he poked the fire again and resolutely began:
"Pahson, how'd y' come t' name you' hoss Shadrach?"
"He had been christened Spooks," began the evangelist as if repeating an
oft-told tale, "because his last owner mistook him, one night, for a
ghost. I could not bear to call the faithful animal by that name, and,
day after day, thought over all the names I had ever heard, striving to
find one suitable. That summer something happened that decided for me.
Spooks and I awoke to find ourselves surrounded by a prairie fire. And
I, having hitched up and then gotten down into the bottom of the wagon,
my good horse was forced to meet the wall of flame alone. He came out
unscorched. I knew at once what his name should be. Henceforth, I called
him Shadrach."
The light of returning knowledge--of blessed total recall--illumined the
face of the listening section-boss. He gave the fire a glad poke that
sent the burning chips to every side, thrust out his chest proudly and
pinned the other with a triumphant eye. "Wal, how 'bout Meshach and
Abednego?" he demanded.
David Bond studied a moment, knitting his brows until their heavy
archings met in a single hoary line. "I take their place," he said at
last, with dignity.
Following supper, which Dallas prepared, all gathered before the cheery
blaze. There, the evangelist, anxious over the welfare of the people
among whom he had preached and taught, promptly began to question Squaw
Charley.
"You have not told me of your capture," he said, "or of the fight that
came before it. Were you taken in the north--in the country of the White
Mother--or in Dakota?"
The Indian nodded.
"Dakota?"
Swiftly, the pariah's whole aspect altered. A moment before, satisfied
as to food, happy and comfortable, he had squatted down in his blanket.
But, now, his shoulders bent, his chin sank to his breast, his eyes grew
dull and sullen.
"Were you in the Mauvaises Terres?" queried the evangelist.
Squaw Charley shook his head.
"On the Powder?"
There was a silent assent.
"The soldiers pursued; maybe they surprised you--which?"
To answer, the Indian rose slowly. With one of Lancaster's crutches he
raked out some ashes and levelled them upon the hearth-stones. Next,
across them, stooping and using a finger, he drew a varying line that
showed the trend of a stream. Far up toward its source, in a bend, he
placed bits of bread from the table to indicate the lodges of his
tribesmen. Slivers from a stick showed that the tepees had been set
thickly in a grove of tall cottonwoods. White beans, from a filled pan
on the floor near by him, stood for the warriors that had fought. His
fingers moved more quickly as, by means of a handful of corn that Dallas
had put in his leather pouch, he planted the United States troops on
three sides of the Indian campground, and moved them forward to the
attack.
Adroitly he manoeuvred the opposing forces, with advancing here and
retreating there, groans when the white men felt the fight too keenly,
low whoops to picture an Indian gain, little puffs of the breath to
betoken flying bullets. The onlookers saw the battle as it had raged
about the tepees. And the flickering lantern, as Squaw Charley moved it
in a semicircle, told them that the firing began at daybreak and
continued until dark.
All at once he changed the picture. Twelve beans were rapidly counted
out and laid in rows, and he mourned softly over these to show that they
were slain warriors. Five kernels of corn--a line of pale-faced
dead--were placed beside the bean rows. This done, he covered the
lantern with the grain-sack and leaned back against the logs.
"Aye, aye," cried David Bond, sadly. "Twelve braves and five troopers
perished! Seventeen souls went to their Maker to mark the greed of the
white man and the yearning to harry off the red! Why do the Indians not
stay in peace and quiet upon the lands set apart for them, and not go
abroad stealing and slaughtering? Why do my own people not give back to
their brothers the country that is rightly theirs?"
Once more Squaw Charley stooped forward and, resting his weight on one
hand, traced the return march of the troopers to a crossing of the
Missouri, where the command had buried its dead; from there he drew the
route southward, to the ferry and Fort Brannon. Here, he stuck the
splinters in a circle to picture the stockade below the barracks. At
last, rising, he drew his blanket close about him, put the grain-sack
over his tangled hair and, with a parting look toward Dallas and the
evangelist, went slowly out.
Perfect quiet followed the pariah's going. His recital of the conflict,
dumb though it was, had powerfully stirred the little audience. For, as
he had proceeded with his crude mimicry, the imagination of the others
had filled in the scenes he could not sketch.
The section-boss spoke first. Not incapable of feeling, yet disliking to
show emotion because it might be counted a weakness, he hastened to
clear the air. "Say, Dallas," he drawled, with a survey of the
battle-field, "he ought t' had some red Mexican beans fer his Injuns."
But the remark failed to appeal.
David Bond made a shake-down for himself beside Lancaster's bunk, using
an armful of hay and the robes and quilts from his pung. However, the
fact that he needed rest, or that his couch was ready, did not tempt him
from the fire. Long after his host disappeared behind the swinging
Navajo blankets, he sat by the hearth. And Dallas stayed with him,
Marylyn's sleepy head pillowed in her lap.
The elder girl felt strangely drawn to him. He returned the interest he
inspired. Like Lounsbury, he marked the unusual character of this woman
of the far frontier. But he saw further than had the younger man: With
her father and sister, she was all firmness and strength, as if she held
herself to be the mainstay of the family; yet, now and then,
unwittingly, she betrayed qualities that were distinctly opposite. Like
Lounsbury, too, when he touched upon the subject of her life it was to
inquire if she had spent any of its years in a town. He felt certain
that she had not; at the same time, his belief was curiously
contradicted by her bearing.
"I'll always live on the plains," she said, having told him of the
_mesa_ and their migration north; "if I left 'em for a while, I'd learn
things I don't know now; and when I came back, maybe I wouldn't be
satisfied with the shack, or with dad and Marylyn."
"Child, where did you get that thought?" he asked, astonished.
"I don't know--only my mother would 'a' been happy in Texas if she'd
been born there. But she wasn't, and she wanted her old home till she
died."
She wanted her old home till she died--it was only a sentence, yet the
quiet pathos of it bared to him the tragedy of that mother's exile.
"Never a great city, daughter," he advised. "Stay here, menaced by
Indians, among rough men and women, with storms and toil besetting you,
but never go to a great city. It is close and dirty and paved, and in
it no man may fill his lungs with pure air, or touch his feet to God's
green earth."
"In cities," questioned Dallas, but in a low tone, as if she wished no
one to overhear; "in cities, do--do the women dress like me?" She raised
herself a little, though without disturbing Marylyn, so that he might
see her plain, collarless waist and straight, scant skirt.
He gave her a smile--a smile as rare and transforming as her own. She
had allowed him a glimpse of her suppressed girlishness. "Would that
they did, my daughter," he answered.
"I mean in cities like--like--Bismarck," she said, a trifle consciously.
"Perhaps--some--eh--let me see." He was perplexed. He saw the eager
light in her face; saw that, for some reason, she was striving to
compare herself with the women of the settled districts--and to learn
from him the very things she had feared might bring dissatisfaction with
her life. He did not wish to teach discontent. He would not tell an
untruth. So he created a diversion by taking up his ulster and searching
in a capacious pocket.
"But they--they--don't plow."
David Bond brought forth a limp and battered Bible. "No," he said; "no,
they--they don't plow."
"Ah!" She looked into the fire. Of a sudden, two memories had
returned--one, of the passing musicians, with their nudging and insolent
smirks; the other, of a man who had leaned back in his saddle and
laughed--after all, perhaps, _not_ at her name.
"I--I suppose they're more like Marylyn," she faltered.
The evangelist adjusted his silver-bowed spectacles and smiled down at
her. "And if they are, would it worry you, daughter?"
She shook her head slowly, and looked away.
He turned his back, so that both lantern-and firelight could reach his
pages, and, opening the Book at random, began to read. The chapter done,
he turned round and glanced at her again. Her face was still averted.
He rose to retire. She put Marylyn gently aside and rose with him.
Then, and not till then, did Dallas think of their dilemma of the
morning. The evangelist's coming and their talk together had caused her
entirely to forget about the trip to the land-office. However, swift on
its remembrance, came a comforting certainty in David Bond's sympathy
and aid. At once she told him of the necessity of her father's going.
"Shadrach and I will start with him to-morrow," was his ready response.
He put out a hand to part the Navajo blankets. But an unshaped thought
made him pause. "You will be alone."
"Why, we're not afraid."
"Brave girl!" he said. Her confident answer drove away the moment's
vague uneasiness without its having taken the form or the connection he
might have given it.
"Good-night," she called softly.
"Good-night, daughter," he answered, and the swinging blankets met
behind him.