THEY TWAIN
Even as we were putting together our small belongings for the resumption
of our journey, I looked up and saw what I took to be a wolf, stalking
along in the grass near the edge of our encampment. I would have shot
it, but reflected that I must not waste a shot on wolves. Advancing
closer toward it, as something about its motions attracted me, I saw it
was a dog. It would not allow me to approach, but as Ellen came it lay
down in the grass, and she got close to it.
"It is sick," she said, "or hurt," and she tossed it a bone.
"Quick," I called out to her, "get it! Tame it. It is worth more than
riches to us, that dog."
So she, coaxing it, at last got her hands upon its head, though it would
not wag its tail or make any sign of friendship. It was a wolfish
mongrel Indian dog. One side of its head was cut or crushed, and it
seemed that possibly some squaw had struck it, with intent perhaps to
put it into the kettle, but with aim so bad that the victim had escaped.
To savage man, a dog is of nearly as much use as a horse. Now we had a
horse and a dog, and food, and weapons, and shelter. It was time we
should depart, and we now were well equipped to travel. But whither?
"It seems to me," said I, "that our safest plan is to keep away from the
Platte, where the Indians are more apt to be. If we keep west until we
reach the mountains, we certainly will be above Laramie, and then if we
follow south along the mountains, we must strike the Platte again, and
so find Laramie, if we do not meet any one before that time." It may be
seen how vague was my geography in regard to a region then little known
to any.
"My father will have out the whole Army looking for us," said Ellen
Meriwether to me. "We may be found any day."
But for many a day we were not found. We traveled westward day after
day, she upon the horse, I walking with the dog. We had a rude travois,
which we forced our horse to draw, and our little belongings we carried
in a leathern bag, slung between two lodge poles. The dog we did not yet
load, although the rubbed hair on his shoulders showed that he was used
to harness.
At times on these high rolling plains we saw the buffalo, and when our
dried meat ran low I paused for food, not daring to risk waste of our
scanty ammunition at such hard game as antelope. Once I lay at a path
near a water hole in the pocket of a half-dried stream, and killed two
buffalo cows. Here was abundant work for more than two days, cutting,
drying, scraping, feasting. Life began to run keen in our veins, in
spite of all. I heard her sing, that day, saw her smile. Now our worldly
goods were increasing, so I cut down two lodge poles and made a little
travois for the dog. We had hides enough now for a small tent, needing
only sufficient poles.
"Soon," said she to me, "we will be at Laramie."
"Pray God," said I to myself, "that we never may see Laramie!" I have
said that I would set down the truth. And this is the truth; I was
becoming a savage. I truly wanted nothing better. I think this might
happen to many a man, at least of that day.
We forded several streams, one a large one, which I now think must have
been the North Platte; but no river ran as we fancied the Platte must
run. So we kept on, until we came one day to a spot whence we saw
something low and unmoving and purple, far off in the northwest. This we
studied, and so at length saw that it was the mountains. At last our
journeying would change, at least, perhaps terminate ere long. A few
more days would bring us within touch of this distant range, which, as I
suppose now, might possibly have been a spur of what then were still
called the Black Hills, a name which applied to several ranges far to
the west and south of the mountains now so called. Or perhaps these were
peaks of the mountains later called the Laramie Range.
Then came a thing hard for us to bear. Our horse, hobbled as usual for
the night, and, moreover, picketed on a long rope I had made from
buffalo hides, managed some time in the night to break his hobbles and
in some way to pull loose the picket pin. When we saw that he was gone
we looked at each other blankly.
"What shall we do?" she asked me in horror. For the first time I saw her
sit down in despair. "We are lost! What shall we do?" she wailed.
I trailed the missing horse for many miles, but could only tell he was
going steadily, lined out for some distant point. I dared not pursue him
farther and leave her behind. An hour after noon I returned and sullenly
threw myself on the ground beside her at our little bivouac. I could
not bear to think of her being reduced to foot travel over all these
cruel miles. Yet, indeed, it now must come to that.
"We have the dog," said I at length. "We can carry a robe and a little
meat, and walk slowly. I can carry a hundred pound pack if need be, and
the dog can take twenty-five--"
"And I can carry something," she said, rising with her old courage. "It
is my part." I made her a pack of ten pounds, and soon seeing that it
was too heavy, I took it from her and threw it on my own.
"At least I shall carry the belt," she said. And so she took my belt,
with its flask and bullet pouch, the latter now all too scantily filled.
Thus, sore at heart, and somewhat weary, we struggled on through that
afternoon, and sank down beside a little water hole. And that night,
when I reached to her for my belt that we might again make our fire, she
went pale and cried aloud that she had lost it, and that now indeed we
must die!
I could hardly comfort her by telling her that on the morrow I would
certainly find it. I knew that in case I did not our plight indeed was
serious. She wept that night, wept like a child, starting and moaning
often in her sleep. That night, for the first time, I took her in my
arms and tried to comfort her. I, being now a savage, prayed to the
Great Spirit, the Mystery, that my own blood might not be as water, that
my heart might be strong--the old savage prayers of primitive man
brought face to face with nature.
When morning came I told her I must go back on the trail. "See, now,
what this dog has done for us," I said. "The scratches on the ground of
his little travois poles will make a trail easy to be followed. I must
take him with me and run back the trail. For you, stay here by the water
and no matter what your fears, do not move from here in any case, even
if I should not be back by night."
"But what if you should not come back!" she said, her terror showing in
her eyes.
"But I will come back," I replied. "I will never leave you. I would rise
from my grave to come back to you. But the time has not yet come to lie
down and die. Be strong. We shall yet be safe."
So I was obliged to turn and leave her sitting alone there, the gray
sweep of the merciless Plains all about her. Another woman would have
gone mad.
But it was as I said. This dog was our savior. Without his nose I could
not have traced out the little travois trail; but he, seeing what was
needed, and finding me nosing along and doubling back and seeking on the
hard ground, seemed to know what was required, or perhaps himself
thought to go back to some old camp for food. So presently he trotted
along, his ears up, his nose straight ahead; and I, a savage, depended
upon a creature still a little lower in the order of life, and that
creature proved a faithful servant.
We went on at a swinging walk, or trot, or lope, as the ground said, and
ate up the distance at twice the speed we had used the day before. In a
couple of hours I was close to where she had taken the belt, and so at
last I saw the dog drop his nose and sniff. There were the missing
riches, priceless beyond gold--the little leaden balls, the powder, dry
in its horn, the little rolls of tow, the knife swung at the girdle! I
knelt down there on the sand, I, John Cowles, once civilized and now
heathen, and I raised my frayed and ragged hands toward the Mystery, and
begged that I might be forever free of the great crime of thanklessness.
Then, laughing at the dog, and loping on tireless as when I was a boy, I
ran as though sickness and weakness had never been mine, and presently
came back to the place where I had left her.
She saw me coming. She ran out to meet me, holding out her arms.... I
say she came, holding out her arms to me.
"Sit down here by my side," I commanded her. "I must talk to you. I
will--I will."
"Do not," she implored of me, seeing what was in my mind. "Ah, what
shall I do! You are not fair!"
But I took her hands in mine. "I can endure it no longer," I said. "I
will not endure it."
She looked at me with her eyes wide--looked me full in the face with
such a gaze as I have never seen on any woman's face.
"I love you," I said to her. "I have never loved any one else. I can
never love any one again but you." I say that I, John Cowles, had at
that moment utterly forgotten all of life and all of the world except
this, then and there. "I love you!" I said, over and over again to her.
She pushed away my arm. "They are all the same," she said, as though to
herself.
"Yes, all the same," I said. "There is no man who would not love you,
here or anywhere."
"To how many have you said that?" she asked me, frowning, as though
absorbed, studious, intent on some problem.
"To some," I said to her, honestly. "But it was never thus."
She curled her lip, scorning the truth which she had asked now that she
had it. "And if any other woman were here it would be the same. It is
because I am here, because we are alone, because I am a woman--ah, that
is neither wise nor brave nor good of you!"
"That is not true! Were it any other woman, yes, what you say might be
true in one way. But I love you not because you are a woman. It is
because you are Ellen. You would be the only woman in the world, no
matter where we were nor how many were about us. Though I could choose
from all the world, it would be the same!"
She listened with her eyes far away, thinking, thinking. "It is the old
story," she sighed.
"Yes, the old story," I said. "It is the same story, the old one. There
are the witnesses, the hills, the sky."
"You seem to have thought of such things," she said to me, slowly. "I
have not thought. I have simply lived along, enjoying life, not
thinking. Do we love because we are but creatures? I cannot be loved
so--I will not be! I will not submit that what I have sometimes dreamed
shall be so narrow as this. John Cowles, a woman must be loved for
herself, not for her sex, by some one who is a man, but who is beside--"
"Oh, I have said all that. I loved you the first time I saw you--the
first time, there at the dance."
"And forgot, and cared for another girl the next day.' She argued that
all over again.
"That other girl was you," I once more reiterated.
"And again you forgot me."
"And again what made me forget you was yourself! Each time you were that
other girl, that other woman. Each time I have seen you you have been
different, and each time I have loved you over again. Each day I see you
now you are different, Ellen, and each day I love you more. How many
times shall I solve this same problem, and come to the same answer. I
tell you, the thing is ended and done for me."
"It is easy to think so here, with only the hills and skies to see and
hear."
"No, it would be the same," I said. "It is not because of that."
"It is not because I am in your power?" she said. She turned and faced
me, her hands on my shoulders, looking me full in the eye. The act a
brave one.
"Because I am in your power, John Cowles?" she asked. "Because by
accident you have learned that I am a comely woman, as you are a strong
man, normal, because I am fit to love, not ill to look at? Because a
cruel accident has put me where my name is jeopardized forever--in a
situation out of which I can never, never come clean again--is _that_
why? Do you figure that I am a woman because you are a man? Is that why?
Is it because you know I am human, and young, and fit for love? Ah, I
know that as well as you. But I am in your hands--I am in your power.
That is why I say, John Cowles, that you must try to think, that you
must do nothing which shall make me hate you or make you hate yourself."
"I thought you missed me when I was gone," I murmured faintly.
"I did miss you," she said. "The world seemed ended for me. I needed
you, I wanted you--" I turned toward her swiftly. "Wanted me?"
"I was glad to see you come back. While you were gone I thought. Yes,
you have been brave and you have been kind, and you have been strong.
Now I am only asking you still to be brave, and kind, and strong."
"But do you love me, will you love me--can you--"
"Because we are here," she said, "I will not answer. What is right, John
Cowles, that we should do."
Woman is strongest when armored in her own weakness. My hands fell to
the ground beside me. The heats vanished from my blood. I shuddered. I
could not smile without my mouth going crooked, I fear. But at last I
smiled as best I could, and I said to her, "Ellen! Ellen!" That was all
I could find to say.