WESTWARD AND EASTWARD OVER THE PRAIRIE.
"Fast, Tempest, fast!"
The sunshine was in his eyes, and a warmer sunshine in his heart, as
Gaspar urged the gelding forward.
Fast it was. The faithful creature recognized the burden he carried,
and his clean, small feet reeled off the distance like magic, till the
village by the lake was left far behind, and only the limitless
prairie stretched beyond. Yet still there was no sign of the Snowbird
along the horizon, nor any point discernible where an Indian
encampment might be.
At length the rider paused to consider the matter.
"It's strange I don't see her. If she were crossing the level,
anywhere, I should, for my eyes are trained to long distances. It must
be that Abel gave me the wrong direction. I'll turn north, and try."
But, keen-sighted though he was, for once the woodsman blundered.
Between him and the lowering sun the prairie dipped and rose again,
the two borders of the hidden valley seeming to meet in one unbroken
plain. It was in this little depression that the wigwams were pitched,
and among them the Sun Maid was already moving and pleading with her
friends for patience and peace.
Meanwhile, Gaspar continued on his chosen route, at a direct right
angle from that he should have followed, till the twilight came down
and the whole landscape was swathed in mist. For there had been heavy
rains of late, and the vapor rose from the soaked and sun-warmed earth
like a great white pall, filling the hunter's nostrils and blinding
his sight.
"Well, this is hopeless. I might ride over her and not find her in
this fog. But I can't stay here. It's choking. Heaven grant my Kitty's
safe under shelter somewhere. My own safety is to keep moving. Good
boy, Tempest! Take it easy, but don't stop."
After that, there was nothing to do but trust the horse's instinct to
find a path through the mist and to be grateful that the ground was so
level.
"It's a long lane that has no turning. It must be that we'll strike
something different after a while; if not a settler's house, at least
a clump of trees. Any shelter would be better than none, in this
creeping moisture. It would be easy to get lost; and what a situation!
Oh! if I knew that she was out of it. A messenger to the Indians, eh?
My little Kit, my dainty foster-sister!"
The gelding's nose was to the ground and, as a dog would have done, he
picked his way, cautiously, yet surely, straight north where lay,
though Gaspar did not know it, a settler's clearing and comfortable
cabin. The rider's thoughts passed from his present surroundings back
to the past and forward to the future; and when there sounded, almost
at his feet, a cry of distress he did not hear it in his absorption.
But Tempest did. At the second wail he stopped short, and it was this
that roused Gaspar from his reverie.
"Tired, old Tempest, boy? It won't do to rest here. Take a breath, if
you like, and get on again. Keeping at it is salvation."
"Mamma! I want--my--mamma!"
"Whew! What's that? Hello!"
The sound was not repeated, and yet Tempest would not advance.
"Hello!" shouted Gaspar; and after a moment of strained listening,
again he caught the echo of a child's sob.
"My God! A baby--here! Lost in this fog!"
He was off his horse and down upon his knees, reaching, feeling,
creeping--calling gently, and finally touching the cold, drenched
garment of the child he could not see.
In its terror at this fresh danger the little one shrieked and rolled
away; but the man lifted it tenderly, and soothed it with kind words
till its shrieks ceased and it clung close to its rescuer.
"There, there, poor baby! How came you here? Don't be afraid. I'll
take you home. Tempest will find the way. Feel--the good horse knows.
It was he that found you; we'll get on his back and ride straight to
mamma, for whom you called."
Climbing slowly back into his saddle, because of the little one he
held so carefully, Gaspar laid its cold hand upon the gelding's neck,
but it slid listlessly aside and he realized that he had come not a
moment too soon.
All night they wandered, the child lying on Gaspar's breast wrapped in
his coat, while the mist penetrated his own clothing and seemed to
creep into his very thoughts, numbing them to a sort of despair that
no effort could cast off. The wail of the child lost in that
dreariness had brought back, like a lightning's flash, the earliest
memories of his life and revived his never-dying hatred of his
parent's slayers.
"An Indian's hand was in this work!" he mused. "Doubtless, the mother
for whom it grieved has met the fate which befell my own. And Abel
said that it was among such as these my Sun Maid had gone!"
Then justice called to mind his knowledge of Wahneenah, of the Black
Partridge, old Winnemeg, and others, and his mood softened somewhat;
but still memory tormented him and the white fog seemed a background
for ghastly scenes too awful for words. Above all and through all, one
consciousness was keener and fiercer than the others:
"My Kitty is among them at this moment! O, God, keep her!"
It was the strongest cry of his yearning heart; yet underneath lay an
impotent rage at his own powerlessness to help in this preservation.
"For what is my manhood or my courage worth to her now? And even the
Deity seems veiled by this deadening, suffocating mist!"
But Tempest moved steadily on once more, and the little child warmed
to life on his breast; and by degrees the man's self-torment ceased.
Then he lifted his eyes afresh and struggled to pierce the gloom.
What was that? A light! A little yellow spot in the gray whiteness,
which the horse was first to see and toward which he now hastened with
a firmer speed.
"It's a fire. No, a lamp in a house window. There, it's gone. A
will-o'-the-wisp by some hidden pool. It shines again. Well, Tempest
sees it and believes in it."
The man lacked the animal's faith, and even when they had come to
within a short distance of the glow, the clouds of vapor swept
between it and them and Gaspar checked Tempest's advance. But at last
a slight wind rose, and the mist which rolled toward them was tinged
with the odor of smoke, so the rider knew that his first surmise had
been correct.
"It is a fire. A settler's cabin, probably once this lost child's
home. The red man's work!"
When he reached the very spot there were, indeed, the remnants of a
great burning, yet in the circle of the light Gaspar saw a house still
standing. He was at its threshold promptly, and entered through its
open door upon a scene of desolation. A woman crouched by the hearth
that was strewn with ashes, and her moans echoed through the gloom
with so much of agony in them that the stranger's worst fears were
confirmed. Then he caught her murmured words, and they were all of one
tenor:
"My baby! my baby! my baby! My one lost little child! The wolves--my
little one--my all!"
Gaspar strode into the room, lighted only by the fitful glare from the
ruins without, and gently spoke:
"Don't grieve like that! The child is safe. It is here in my arms."
"What? Safe! safe!"
The mother was up, and had caught the little one from him before the
words had left her lips, and the passion of her rejoicing brought the
tears to the man's eyes as her sorrow had not done.
After a moment, she was able to speak clearly and to demand his story.
Then she gave hers.
"I was here alone. My husband had gone hunting, and I went into the
barn to seek for eggs. The loft was dark----"
"Spare yourself. I can guess. The Indians."
"The Indians? No, indeed. Myself. My own carelessness. I carried a
candle, and dropped it. The hay caught. I barely escaped from having
my clothing burned on me; but I did. Then I forgot everything except
my terrible loss and my husband's anger when he returns. I began to
fight the fire. I remember my little one crying with fright, but I
paid no attention, and when at length I realized that it was too late
for me to save our stock I stopped to look for him. Fortunately, the
cabin was too far from the barn to catch easily, and there was a wind
blowing the other way. That's all that saved the home; yet, when I
missed my baby, I wished that it would burn, too, and me with it. Life
without him would be a living death. And he would have died, any way.
The wolves are awful troublesome this spring. We've lost more than
twenty of our hogs and the only pair of sheep we had. So husband
joined a party and went out to hunt them. What will he say, what will
he say, when he comes back!"
In Gaspar's heart there sprang up a great happiness. The ill which
had happened here was so much less than he had anticipated that he
took courage for himself. After all, the Sun Maid might be safe, as
Abel had declared she said she should be. He remembered, at last, that
not all men are evil, even red ones; and in the reaction of his own
feelings, he exclaimed:
"What can he say, but give thanks that no worse befell him!"
However, now that her child was safe within her arms, the woman began
to suffer in advance the torment she would have to undergo when she
faced her indignant husband; and she retorted sharply:
"Worse! Well, I suppose so. But I don't see why in the name of common
sense I was let to be such a fool in the first place. He won't,
neither. It's all very well when you've lost half your property to
give thanks for not losing your life, too; but I don't see any cause
for losing ary one."
This sounded so like Mercy and her philosophy that Gaspar threw back
his head and laughed; which angered his new friend first, and then
affected her, also, with something of his mirth.
"I can't see a thing to laugh at, I, for one," she remarked, trying to
be stern.
"Oh! but I can. And I'm not a laughing man, in ordinary. But there's
one thing I know--I'm powerful hungry. Can't we make another fire, one
that we can control, and get a bit of supper? If there's anything in
the house to cook, I can cook it while you tend baby. Then we'll talk
over your affairs."
"There's plenty to cook, but you'll not cook it, sir. I owe you my
child's life, and now things are getting straighter in my muddled
mind. I lost the barn for Jacob, and I must help replace it. I've been
a hard worker always, but I can stretch another point, I guess. Pshaw!
I believe it's getting daylight. It'll be breakfast instead of supper,
this time."
It was daylight, indeed; and in a half-hour the simple meal was
smoking on the table, and Gaspar sitting to eat it with the hearty
appetite of a man who has lived always out-of-doors. But he could talk
as fast as eat, when he was anxious as on that morning; and before he
had drained his last cup of the "rye coffee" he had learned from his
hostess that the Indian encampment he sought lay well to the
southwestward of her cabin, and that by a way she could direct him he
could reach it easily in a two-hours' ride. This to Tempest, who had
rested and fed, would be nothing, if he was anything the horse he used
to be, and Gaspar believed, from the past night's experience, that
sometimes even a horse can improve with age.
"Well, I'll be off, then. I'm anxious to get there. If all goes well
I'll get around this way again before long. Thank you for my
entertainment, and here's a trifle for the baby."
He tossed a gold piece on the table and was leaving the cabin. But she
restrained him.
"No, sir, I can't take that, nor let the little one. And as for
thanking me, I shall never cease to thank you, and the Lord for you,
that you lost your way last night. But let me beg you, sir, to take a
second thought. Jacob says the Indians are getting ready for an
outbreak. It is like running your neck into a halter to go among them
just now. I--I wish you wouldn't. I couldn't bear to have harm come to
you after what you've done for me."
"Thank you, but I must go. I am not much afraid for myself at any
time, for I've known the red-skins always and--trusted them never! But
a girl--did you ever hear of the Sun Maid?"
"Hear of her? Her? Well, I guess so! Who hasn't, in these parts? Why?"
"It was to find her and protect her that I started last night from the
Fort."
"To _protect_ her? Well, you could have saved your trouble. I wish
that I was as safe in this wild country as she is. There is an old
saying that her life is charmed; that nothing evil can ever happen to
her; and so far it has proved true. As for the Indians, even the
wickedest in the whole race would die to save her life. I hope you'll
find her, sir, all right; but if there's any protecting to be done,
she'll protect you, not you her. Well, good-by, and good luck!"
Gaspar bared his head and rode away, on a straight trail this time,
and with the exhilaration of the morning tingling through his
healthful veins. On every side the great clouds of white mist rose and
rolled apart. Blue violets and white windflowers began to peep upward
at him from his path, and he remembered Kitty's love for them. Then
the sun broke through, and only those who have thus ridden across a
dew-drenched prairie, at such an hour in such a season, can picture
what that ride was like.
The spirit of life and love and that glorious morning thrilled both
horse and master as they leaped forward and still forward till, on the
top of a grassy rise, a sudden halt was made.
For what was this coming out of the west?--this fair white creature on
her snowy mount, with the golden sunlight on her yellow hair, her
glowing face, her modest maiden breast. Flowers wreathed her all about
and a White Bow gleamed at her saddle horn. Behind her, and one on
either side, rode dusky warriors, brave in their finest trappings and
turning a reverent, attentive ear to the Maid's words. Their horses'
footfalls deadened by the sodden grass, slowly they came into fuller
view, as a picture grows under the painter's brush.
Still the man on the black horse facing them sat still, spellbound.
Could this be Kitty, his Kitty; to whom his thoughts had turned as to
a half-grown, playful child, and over whom he had domineered with the
masterful pride of boyhood? He was a man now, boyhood was past; but he
had quite forgotten that girlhood also passes and the child becomes a
woman.
He had grown rich and strong. After her supposed death he had devoted
himself wholly to money-getting with the singleness of purpose that
never fails of its object. He had come back to his old home to spend
the fortune he had gained, feeling himself a master among men and his
strength that of wisdom as well as wealth.
Now all his pride and arrogance passed from him before the nobility of
this woman approaching. For on her youthful face sat the dignity which
is higher than pride and from her beautiful eyes gleamed the
beneficent love more far-reaching than wealth.
After a moment Gaspar rode slowly forward again, and soon espying, but
not recognizing, him, the Sun Maid advanced. Then all at once the
black horse and the white galloped to a meet.
"Kitty! My Kitty!"
[Illustration: "KITTY! MY KITTY!" _Page 258_.]
"Gaspar!"
Their hands closed in a clasp that banished years of separation, and
the black eyes searched the blue, questioning for the one sweet answer
that rules all the world. There was a swift self-revelation in both
hearts; a consciousness that this was what the God who made them had
meant from the beginning. With a grave exaltation too deep and too
high for words, the pure man and the pure woman came to their destiny
and accepted it. Then their hands fell apart, the black Tempest
wheeled into place beside the white Snowbird, and, as on a day long in
the past, the pair passed swiftly and lightly eastward toward the
lakeside village and their home.
"Ugh! The Sun Maid has found her mate!" muttered the foremost warrior
grimly, and followed with his company at a soberer pace.