The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 50

She greeted him joyously. "I am starting a big canvas this morning," she said. "Come in and see it."

He stepped inside to see, but the canvas only had a few rude, reddish lines upon it, and Elsie laughed at his blank look as he faced the easel.

"This thing here," she pointed with her brush, "is a beautiful purple b.u.t.te; this yellow circle is the sun; these little crumbly looking boxes are trees; this streak is a river. This jack-in-the-box here is Crow Wing on his horse."

Her joking helped to clear his brain, though his blood was throbbing in his ears.

"Ah! I'm glad to know all that. Will you tag each anomalous hump?"

"Certainly. You will recognize everything by number or otherwise." She turned a suddenly serious face upon him. "I am determined to get back to work. These last few days have been so exciting. Is there any news?"

"Yes. The murderer proclaimed himself at a big council last night."

"He did! Oh, tell me about it! When?"

"I don't know exactly the hour, but the chieftains came to me about nine o'clock. I know him well; he is a reckless, handsome, half-crazy young man--" He broke off suddenly as Heavybreast, one of the policemen, profoundly excited, darkened the door-way. "Cut Finger is on the hill,"

he signed, and pointed away with trembling finger to a height which rose like a monstrous bee-hive just behind the school-house. On the rounded top, looking like a small monument on a colossal pedestal, sat a mounted warrior.

"What is he there for?" asked Curtis.

"He wants to die like Raven Face. He wants to fight the cowboys, he says. He don't want to hurt any one else, he says; only the cowboys and their war chief, so he says."

"Where is Crow? I want this man arrested and brought to me."

"Now he will shoot any one who goes up the hill; he has said so. All the people are watching."

Curtis mused a moment. "Can you send word to him?"

"Yes; his wife is here."

"Then tell him I will not let him fight. Tell him that shooting will do no good, and that I want him to come down and see me."

The officer trotted away.

"What did he say?" asked Elsie. "What is that man on the hill for?"

"That is Cut Finger, the guilty man. He proclaimed himself the murderer last night and now he is willing to die, but wants to die on his horse."

The whole agency was again tremulous with excitement. The teachers, the scholars, the native employes were all gathered into chattering groups with eyes fixed on the motionless figure of the desperate horseman, and in the camps above the agency an almost frenzied excitement was spreading. The stark bravery of the boy's att.i.tude had kindled anew the flame of war, and behind Cut Finger on the hills two groups of mounted warriors had gathered suddenly. Several of the more excitable old women broke into a war-song, whose wail came faintly to the ears of the agent.

"Two Horns, silence those singers," said Curtis, sternly.

Elsie and Jennie and the Parkers joined the group around the agent, and Miss Colson, the missionary, came flying for refuge at the side of her hero.

"What are you going to do?" asked Parker. "If the fellow really means to shoot, of course no man can go up to him. You might send some soldiers."

"Silence in the ranks!" commanded Maynard, and, though he smiled as he said it, Parker realized his mistake. He turned to Elsie and his wife.

"I tell you, we'd better get out of here. I feel just like a man sitting on a powder-mine. There's no telling what's going to happen next."

Lawson turned towards him with a sarcastic grin. "I wish I'd realized the state of your nerves, Parker; I should have invited you to Asbury Beach instead of the Indian country."

Maynard brought his field-gla.s.ses to bear on the desperado. "He has dismounted," he said. "He is squatted beside his horse, the bridle-rein on his arm, a rifle across his knees, and is faced this way. His att.i.tude is resolute and 'sa.s.sy.'"

Curtis quietly said: "Now, friends, I wish you would all go in and pay no further attention to this man. Miss Colson, go back to your work. So long as he sees us looking at him he will maintain his defiant att.i.tude.

He will grow weary of his bravado if ignored."

"Quite right, Captain," replied Lawson, and the little knot of visitors broke up and dispersed to sheltered points of observation.

Under the same gentle pressure the employes went back to work, and the self-convicted warrior was left to defy the wind and the sky. Even the Tetongs themselves grew tired of looking when nothing seemed likely to happen, and the forenoon wore away as usual, well filled with duties.

Maynard's men got out for drill an hour later, and their bugle's voice pulsed upward to the silent and motionless watcher on the hill like mocking laughter. The clink of the anvil also rose to him on the hot, dry air, and just beneath him the children came forth at recess to play.

He became tired of sitting on the ground at last, and again mounted his horse, but no one at the agency seemed to know or to care. The sun beat remorselessly upon his head, and his throat became parched with thirst.

Slowly but surely the exaltation of the morning ebbed away and a tremulous weakness seized upon him, so that, when his wife came bringing meat and water, he who had never expected to eat or drink again seized upon the food and ate greedily.

Then, while she sat on the ground and repeated the agent's message, he stood beside his horse, sullen and wordless. The bell rang for noon, and as the children came rus.h.i.+ng out they pointed up at him again, and the teachers also stood in a group for a moment, with faces turned upward, but only for a moment, then went carelessly away to their meals.

An hour pa.s.sed, the work-bell rang, the clerks returned to their duties, and the agent walked slowly across the road towards the office. Cut Finger lifted his rifle and pointed it. "I could shoot him now," he muttered. "But he is a good man; I do not want to kill him." Then the heat and silence settled over hill and valley, and no sound but the buzzing of flies and the clatter of gra.s.shoppers broke the hot, brooding hush of the mid-day. The wind was from the plain and brought no coolness on its wings.

But he was not entirely forgotten. Elsie, from her studio door, kept close watch upon him. "There's something fine about him after all," she said to Curtis.

"It's like the old Mosaic times--an eye for an eye. He knows he must die for this, but he prefers to die gloriously, as a warrior dies."

A dust down the road caught Curtis's attention. "The mail will soon be in and then we will see how all this affects the press of the State; the Chicago dailies will not reach us for a couple of days yet."

"Send the papers over here, please!" cried Elsie, "I'm wild to see them."

"Why not all a.s.semble at 'the parsonage' and I'll bring them there?"

"Very well; that will do as well," she replied. "It will be such a joy to read our obituaries."

As he entered the library with his armful of papers a half-hour later Curtis exclaimed: "Well, now, here is a feast! The commotion on the outside is prodigious. Here are the Copper City and Alta papers, and a dozen lesser 'lights and signals of progress' in the State. Help yourselves." He took out a handful of letters and telegrams. "And here are the prayers of anxious relatives. A telegram for you, Miss Brisbane; and two for you, Lawson."

Elsie's message from her father was brief. "Have no word from you; am en route for Pinon City. Not finding you there will cross to agency at once. Why do you not come out?"

Looking at the date she said: "Papa is coming; he is probably on his way to the agency at this moment."

Curtis looked a little troubled. "I hope not; the roads are dusty and the sun is hot."

"By George! this is fierce stuff," said Parker, looking up from his paper.

"Cut Finger has left the hill," announced Jennie from the door-way; "he is nowhere to be seen."

"Now he will submit to arrest," exclaimed Curtis. "His fine frenzy is gone."

"I'm sorry," Elsie soberly exclaimed. "Must you give him up to that stupid sheriff?"

"Yes, it must be done," replied Curtis. "My only claim to consideration lies in executing the law. I fought lawlessness with the promise that when the sheriff came with proper warrant I would act."

As the young officer went back to his duties the head-lines of the papers he had but glanced at began to burn into his brain. Hitherto his name had been most inconspicuous; only once or twice had it achieved a long-primer setting; mainly it had kept to the security and dignity of brevier notices in the _Army and Navy Journal_. Now here it stood, blazoned in ill-smelling ink on wood-pulp paper, in letters half an inch in height: