The Plow-Woman Part 8

"I'll be hanged! Robert," cried his superior, annoyed. "Most men, just out of West Point, have an eye to killing redskins, not coddling 'em."

The other crimsoned. "I'm sorry you look at it that way, Colonel," he said. "I'm ready to punish or kill in the case of bad ones. But--you'll pardon my saying it--I don't see that it's the duty of an officer to harm a good one."

Squaw Charley raised his head, and s.h.i.+fted timidly from foot to foot.

"Well, Robert," replied Colonel c.u.mmings, quietly, "you still have the Eastern view of the Indian question. However, let me ask you this: Has this man a story, and what is it? For all you know, he may deserve being 'banged around.'"

Lieutenant Fraser was shaking his head in answer, when swift came one from the pariah. He searched in his bosom, under the tattered waist, drew out the rag-wound paper and handed it to the commanding officer.

Very carefully the latter read it, his interest growing with every line.

Finally, giving it over to the lieutenant, he smiled at Squaw Charley.

"That tells the tale," he said. "I knew the man that wrote that when I was with Sibley in Minnesota, the summer after the ma.s.sacre. He's a man that writes the truth. He talks the truth, too, and I wish I had him here, now, so that he could interpret for me."

"Why, sir!" exclaimed the younger man, "it says this chap knows Englis.h.!.+"

"By all the G.o.ds! Of _course_ it does. Robert, I'll make him my interpreter." The colonel strode up and down in his excitement, pausing only to contend with the other for the paper. "Red Moon," he said at last, motioning the pariah forward, "do you know what I am saying to you?"

Squaw Charley nodded.

"Good! good! This is fortunate. Now we can have a talk with these Sioux." He addressed the Indian again. "And you speak English?" he asked.

There was a second grave nod.

"You shall be my interpreter, Red Moon. You shall have a log house near the scouts, and the Great Father at Was.h.i.+ngton will pay you. You shall have double rations for yourself and your squaw, and more, if you have papooses. What do you say to that?"

Squaw Charley had not taken his eyes from the other's face for an instant while he was talking. Now, for answer, he shook his head slowly and sadly from side to side.

"Don't want to?" cried the colonel.

"I'll tell you, sir," interposed Lieutenant Fraser, studying the paper, "I don't believe he ever speaks. You'll notice that it says here: '_but he has never_.' I can't be sure, but I think the next word is '_spoken_.'"

"Vow of silence?"

"Something of the kind. Captain Oliver has been telling me about these bucks that are degraded; and I don't believe that, even if this fellow spoke, the rest of the tribe would treat with us through him."

"That's probably true."

"They've made a squaw of him, sir."

Deep humiliation instantly showed in the pariah's eyes and posture. He looked at Lieutenant Fraser imploringly, and drew his blanket still more closely about him. Then, as, with a sign, he was bidden to put it off, he suddenly let it drop to the floor.

"Great Scott!" cried the colonel. "He's _dressed_ like one!"

"His punishment, sir. And he won't be taken back as a warrior till he does some big deed."

"What does that paper say again? _'Out of the weakness of the flesh he wept under the tortures of the sun-dance.'_ So _that's_ the cause of his trouble! What did they do to you, Red Moon?"

To reply, Squaw Charley quickly divested himself of the calico waist and turned about. And Colonel c.u.mmings, uttering his horror, traced with tender finger the ragged, ghastly seams that lined the pariah's back.

"Muscles torn loose," he said. "Not old wounds, either." As Squaw Charley resumed waist and blanket, he looked on pityingly.

"I'll give him his freedom," he said, when the outcast stood ready to depart. "He can come and go in the post as he likes. Robert, see that the adjutant understands my order. Now, let him get something to eat in the kitchen."

When Squaw Charley's hunger had disappeared before the enforced, and rather nervous, generosity of Colonel c.u.mmings' black cook, and Lieutenant Fraser had left him, he hurried away from headquarters.

Making his way to the sentry line north of Brannon, he gathered firewood along the Missouri until dark.

The lantern had been out for an hour in the cottonwood shack. Father and daughters were asleep. But, at the end of that time, Dallas was suddenly awakened by the sound of loud stamping and rending in the lean-to. Ben and Betty, roused by the fear of something, were plunging and pulling back on their halter-ropes. Startled, her heart beating wildly, the elder girl crept softly to the warped door.

Her father and sister still slept, undisturbed by the noise in the stable, which now quieted as abruptly as it had begun. Dallas heard the team begin to feed again. And from outside the shack there came only a faint rustle. Was it the uncovered meadow-gra.s.s of the eaves as the wind brushed gently through it? Or the whisper of moccasins on snow?

Later, when The Squaw entered the sliding panel of the stockade, he crept noiselessly toward the s.h.i.+ngle roof. But he was not to gain it unseen. Afraid-of-a-Fawn, who had been looking about for him, hailed him savagely as he neared.

"Wood for the morning fire," she demanded.

By the light streaming out of a near-by lodge she saw that Squaw Charley was looking at her defiantly. She set upon him, cursing and kicking, and drove him before her to the shelter.

"The pig!" she cried. "Running free since the sun was at the centre of the sky, and yet not a stick! May a thousand devils take the coward! He quakes like an aspen!"

Squaw Charley was indeed trembling, but only with the cold, and soon, under the s.h.i.+ngle roof, the snuggling dogs would warm him. Blows and abuse counted nothing this night. He was fed; freedom was his; and he had paid a debt of grat.i.tude.

CHAPTER VI

FROM DODGE CITY

"Dad, what's the day after to-morrow?"

Evan Lancaster pursed out his mouth and thoughtfully contemplated his elder daughter.

"Ah c'd figger it out," he declared after a puzzled silence, "ef Ah had th' almanac." He hunted about, found the pamphlet and began to study the December page. "Trouble is," he said at last, "Ah don' know no day t'

figger fr'm--Ah los' track 'way back yonder at th' fore part o' th'

month. 'Sides, Ah kain't say whether this is Tuesday er Wednesday er Thursday. Mar'lyn, d' you remember w'at day o' th' week it is?"

Marylyn left the farther window and walked slowly forward. As she halted beside her sister, the latter put an arm about her tenderly and drew her close. A change had recently come over the younger girl--a change that Dallas had not failed to see, yet had utterly failed to understand.

Marylyn still performed her few tasks about the house, but with absent-minded carelessness. Her work done, she took up the long-neglected vigil at the windows, spending many quiet, and seemingly purposeless, hours there--all unmindful that the beaded belt lay dusty and unfinished on a shelf. Only by fits and starts was the shack enlivened by her happy chatter. At all other times, she was wistful and distrait. Now, as she answered her father, a faltering light crept into her eyes.

"The last time Mr. Lounsbury was here," she said, hesitatingly, "it was the 6th, and to-day is----"

"Ah c'n git it," the section-boss interrupted. After a moment's tallying on his fingers, he sat back and clapped his knees in excitement. "W'y, Dallas!" he cried, "th' day after t'-morrow's the end o' thet man's six months!"