The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 38

"I don't think it generous of you to make fun of us at this time, Bee Bee," Mrs. Parker replied, reproachfully.

"Oh, let her go on. Her Latin Quarter English doesn't disturb me,"

Parker answered, savagely.

Curtis at this moment appeared. "My message was from the farmer at Willow Spring. He says all his employes, with one or two exceptions, have disappeared; that the band of Crawling Elk was threatened by a mob of white men early this morning, and that they are all breaking camp in order to flee to the hills. All the settlers on the Willow are hurrying their women and children down towards Pinon City. The whole country has been alarmed by the menace of the coroner's inquest, which is camped below the agency at Johnson's ranch, waiting the sheriff's return. The deputies had not reached there when this letter was written," added Curtis. "The sheriff's message will disperse the crowds, and I am sending a note of rea.s.surance to the farmers and to the settlers."

"It's getting mighty serious, don't you think so?" asked Parker. "I wish the troops were here. Can't we hurry them up?"

"No, all that can be done has been done. I am telling you all that goes on, and I must request you not to repeat it. I wish you would all be specially guarded in the presence of the sheriff. You might engage him in a game of 'cinch' after dinner. Anything to keep him out of my way."

"We'll absorb him," said Jennie.

One by one Curtis called in his most trusted employes, and, quieting their fears, put them to their duties. Special policemen were uniformed and sent to carry messages to the encampments on the hills, asking the head men of each band to come at once to the agency for council, and to order their people into camp. The tranquillizing effect of the agent's bearing made itself felt immediately. The threads of the whole tangle were soon in his hands and made straight, and when he received the sheriff at six o'clock he was confident and serene of bearing.

Two Horns came down from the hills, and at the agent's order gathered his band close around his own tepee to camp until the trouble was ended.

Together they made a tour of the village, and Curtis made it plain that he would protect them, and that no more armed men would come among them to incite violence.

"They have turned back, for fear of the Little Father and of Was.h.i.+ngton," said Two Horns to the old men, and they were glad of his words.

Curtis was by no means at ease. As he recalled the threats of the cattlemen, the encroachments of their flocks, the vicious a.s.saults made on Crow Killer and Yellow Hand, he divined a growing antagonism which could go but little further without producing war. His mind dwelt on the hurrying figure of Crane's Voice. Much depended on him. He saw him as he faced the sentry. "If he should fail to reach the Colonel! But he will not fail, and troops will be instantly despatched."

From these considerations he turned to the growing trust and confidence which Elsie was displaying. That movement towards him, slight as it was, and the softened look in her eyes, quickened his breath as he allowed his inward self to muse on their meaning. She was looking to him for protection, and this att.i.tude was not only new, it was disturbing; and the soldier found it necessary to put away his pipe and fall savagely upon some work to keep his mind from ranging too far afield.

XXII

A COUNCIL AT NIGHT

The sheriff came to dinner rather shamefacedly, but Calvin, being profoundly pleased, was on his very best behavior. "This being deputy suits me to the ground," said he to Wilson, as he rose in answer to the call to dinner.

As they were crossing the road he said, confidentially: "Now see here, you mustn't talk politics round the ladies over there, sheriff."

"Politics?"

"You know what I mean. You keep to the weather and the crops, and let this murder case alone for a minute or two, or I'll bat you one for luck."

Winters took this threat as a sign of their good understanding, and remarked, jocosely, "You d.a.m.ned young cub, I'd break you in two for a leather cent."

"That's all right, but what I say goes," replied Calvin. And remembering old Joe Streeter's political pull, the sheriff did not reply.

Jennie kept the talk pleasantly inconsequential during dinner by a cheery tale of the doings of a certain Chinaman she had once tried to train into a cook, and Calvin, laughing heartily, matched her experience with that of his mother while keeping house in Pinon City one winter.

This left Elsie to a little conversation with Curtis.

"You must let me see this council to-night," she said, and her request had the note of a command.

"I know how you feel," he said, "and I wish I could do so; but I can't make an exception in your favor without offending the Parkers."

"Are you not the general?" she asked, smilingly. "If you see fit to invite me and leave them out, they can only complain. I'm going to stay here with Jennie, anyhow."

"In that case we can manage it."

"Do you know what I think? You've instigated this whole affair to convert me to your point of view. Really, the whole thing is like a play. I'm not a bit frightened--at least, not yet. It's precisely like sitting in a private box and seeing the wolves tear holes in Davy Crockett's cabin. You are the manager of the show."

"Well, why not? When the princess tours the provinces it is customary to present historical pageants in her honor. This drama is your due." And as he spoke he observed for the first time the absence of the ring from her significant finger. The shock threw him into a moment's swift surmise, and when he looked up at her she was flushed and uneasy. She recovered herself first, and though her hand remained on the table it had the tremulous action of a frightened small animal--observed yet daring not to seek cover.

"I hope this council to-night will not fail. I am eager to see what you will do with them," she hastened to say.

"They will come!" he replied.

Calvin was relating a story of a mountain-lion he had once treed for an Eastern artist to photograph.

"Just then the dern brute jumped right plum onto the feller and knocked him down, machine and all; for a minute or two it was just a mixture o'

man and lion, then that feller come up top, and the next thing I seen he batted the lion with his box, and that kind o' stunted the brute, and he hit him again and gla.s.s began to fly; he was game all right, that feller was. When the lion stiffened out, he turned to where I was a-rollin' on the pine-needles, and says, quiet-like, 'Give me your revolver, please.'

I give it to him, and he put it to the lion's ear and finished him. When he got up and looked at his machine he says, 'How much is a mountain-lion skin worth?' ''Bout four dollars, green,' I says. He looked at the inwards of his box, which was scattered all over the ground. Says he, 'You wouldn't call that profitable, would you--a seventy-dollar instrument in exchange for a four-dollar pelt?'"

Everybody laughed at this story, and the dinner came to an end with the sheriff in excellent temper. Lawson offered cigars, and tolled him across the road to the office, leaving Curtis alone in his library.

He resolutely set to work to present the situation of the sheriff's presence concisely to the department in a telegram, and was still at work upon this when Jennie entered the room, closed the curtains, and lit the lamp.

Elsie came in a little later to say, sympathetically:

"Are you tired, Captain Curtis?"

He pushed his writing away.

"Yes, a little. The worst of it is, I keep saying: _If so and so happens, then I must do thus and thus_, and that is the hardest work in the world. I can deal with actual, well-defined conditions--even riots and mobs--but fighting suppositions is like grappling with ghosts."

"I know what you mean," she replied, quickly. "But I want to ask you--could father be of any help if I telegraphed him to come?"

He sat up very straight as she spoke, but did not reply till he turned her suggestion over in his mind. "No--at least, not now. What troubles me is this: the local papers will be filled with scare-heads to-morrow morning; your father will see them, and will be alarmed about you."

"I will wire him that I am all right."

"You must do that. I consider you are perfectly safe, but at the same time your father will think you ought not to be here, and blame me for allowing you to come in; and, worst of all, he will wire you to come out."

"Suppose I refuse to go, would that be the best of all?" Her face was distinctly arch of line.

His heart responded to her lure, but his words were measured as he answered: "Sometimes the responsibility seems too great; perhaps you would better go. It will be hard to convince him that you are not in danger."

She sobered. "There really is danger, then?"

"Oh yes, so long as these settlers are in their present mood, I suppose there is. Nothing but the life of an 'Injun' will satisfy them. Their hate is racial in its bitterness."

"You think I ought to go, then?"