A Master's Degree Part 6

"Be swift, Dennie, be quite swift. I heard that noise again. I'm afraid it's a stampede of wild horses." Trench, who had had his ear to the ground, sat up suddenly. But n.o.body paid any attention to him.

"Come, Denmark Saxon, let's close the day in song and story. You tell the story and then I'll sing the song," somebody declared.

"Aw-w-w!" a prolonged chorus. "Make your story long, Dennie; make it lengthy."

"Don't you do it, Dennie. I tell you this ground is shaking. I feel it,"

Trench insisted.

"Say, who's got the bromo-seltzer? The right guard's supper is n't treating him right. Go ahead, Dennie," the crowd urged.

They were all in a circle about the fire. Its flickering glow lighted Vic Burleigh's rugged face, and gleamed in his auburn hair. Elinor sat between him and Vincent Burgess. Dennie was just beyond Vincent, who noted incidentally the play of light and shadow on the blowsy ripples of her hair that night and remembered it all on a day long afterward.

"Once upon a time," Dennie began,

there was a beautiful Kickapoo Indian maiden--"

"Yep, any Kickapoo's a beaut. Hurry up, Dennie. I hear something coming." It was the big lazy guard again.

"Oh! Vic Burleigh, sit on his prostrate form. Go on, Dennie," the company insisted, and she continued.

"Her name was The Fawn of the Morning Light, her best lover was Swift Elk."

"You be Mrs. Swift Elk--" but Vic Burleigh's arm about Trench's throat choked his words.

"And there was a wily Sioux, named Red Fox, who loved the Fawn and wanted her to marry him. She wouldn't do it. The Kickapoos were heap-big grafters, and they had this old Corral full of ponies and junk they had relieved other tribes of caring for. And the only way to get in here, besides falling over the bluff and becoming a pin-cus.h.i.+on for poisoned arrows, was to come in by the shallows in the river where the ford is now above old Lagonda's pool, and most Indians needed a diagram for that." Although Dennie spoke lightly, she shuddered a little at the thought, and the whole company grew graver.

"An Indian doesn't forget. So, Red Fox, who had sworn to have The Fawn, came down here with hundreds of Sioux who wanted the ponies the Kickapoos had stolen, as Red Fox wanted Swift Elk's girl. The Kickapoos wouldn't give up the ponies and Swift Elk wouldn't give up The Fawn. So the siege began. Right where we are so safe and peaceful tonight those Kickapoos fought, and starved, and died, while the Sioux kept cruel watch on the top of that old stone ledge, never letting one escape. At last, after hours and hours of siege, The Fawn and Swift Elk decided to escape by the river in the night. A storm had come on suddenly, and a cloudburst up the Walnut was sending a perfect surge of water down around the bend. The two lovers were caught in its sweep and carried beyond the shallows when a flash of lightning showed them to Red Fox watching on the bluff up there. At the next flash he sent an arrow straight through Swift Elk's body and into The Fawn's shoulder, pinning the two together. The Sioux leaped into the stream to save the girl he loved, but the heavy current swept them toward the whirlpool, and before they could prevent the dying and wounded and rescuing were all caught by the fatal suction. Then the Sioux warriors rushed in from all sides, upstream, down the bluff from west prairie, and over the Corral, and slaughtered every Kickapoo here. Their fierce yells and the shrieks of the squaws and pappooses, the pounding of horses' hoofs in the stampede of hundreds of ponies, the roar of the river, the wrath of the storm made a scene this old Corral will never see again." Dennie paused.

"I think I hear something like it, right now," came Trench's irrepressible voice from the shadows in the edge of the circle. But n.o.body heeded it.

And all the while from far across the west prairie the stormcloud was rolling in, black and angry, blowing its hot breath before it, while from a cloudburst upstream an hour before a great surge of water was rus.h.i.+ng down the Walnut, turning the quiet river to a murderous flood.

But the high walls hid all this from the valley and the heedless young folk took the full time limit of their holiday in the sheltering gloom of the old Kickapoo Corral.

CHAPTER V. THE STORM

_Rock and moan, and roar alone, And the dread of some nameless thing unknown_.

--LOWELL

THE silence following Dennie's story was broken by a sudden peal of thunder overhead. At the same instant the blackness of midnight lifted itself above the stone ledges and dropped down upon the Corral, smothering everything in darkness. A rus.h.i.+ng whirlwind, a lurid blaze of lightning, and a second peal of thunder threw the camp into blind disorder. In the minute's lull following the first storm herald, there was a wild scrambling for wraps and lunch baskets. Then the darkness thickened and the storm's fury burst upon the crowd--a mad las.h.i.+ng of bending tree tops, a blinding whirl of dust filling the air, the thunder's terrific cannonade, the incessant blaze of lightning, the rattling of the distant rain; and above all these, unlike them all, a steady, dreadful roaring, coming nearer each moment.

Professor Burgess was no coward, but he had little power of generals.h.i.+p.

As the crowd huddled together under the swaying trees, Trench called to Burleigh:

"There's been a cloudburst up stream. The roar I've been hearing is a wall of water coming down. We've got to get out of this."

Then above all the cras.h.i.+ng and booming they heard Vic Burleigh's voice:

"Every fellow take a girl and run for the ford. Come on!"

In the darkness, each boy caught the arm of the girl nearest him and made a dash for the ford. A flash of lightning showed Burleigh that the white-faced girl clinging to his arm was Elinor Wream. After that, the storm was a plaything for him.

The first to reach the ford were Vincent Burgess and Dennie Saxon.

Dennie was sure-footed and she knew by instinct where to find the shallows. But the river was rising rapidly and the waters were black and angry under the lightning's glitter. As the crowd held back Vic shouted:

"You'll have to wade. It's not very deep yet. Professor, you must cross first, and count 'em as they come. Go quick! One at a time. The way is narrow. And for G.o.d's sake, keep to the upper side of the shallows.

Stand in the middle, Trench, and don't let them get down stream below you."

They were all safely across except Vic and Elinor, when Trench cried out:

"Send your girl in quick, Burleigh, and you run west. The flood is at the bend now. Hurry!"

"Run in, Elinor. Trench will take you through, and I'll follow, for I can swim and he can't. I'll be right behind you. Run!"

A vision of the whirlpool and of Swift Elk and The Fawn flashed into Elinor's mind, filling her with terror. Before Vic could push her forward, Trench shouted:

"It's too late. Don't try it. I've got to run."

He was strong and sure-footed and he fought his way gallantly to the further side as a great wave swirled around the curve of the river, engulfing the shallows in its mad surge. When he reached the east bank the count of the company numbered all but two.

"It's Vic and Elinor," Trench declared. "Vic wouldn't come till the last, and Elinor was too dead scared to trust anybody else, I guess.

n.o.body could cross there now, Professor. But Vic is as strong as an ox and he's not afraid of the devil. He'll keep both their heads above water. He wants to win out in the Thanksgiving game too much to get lost now. Trust him to get up the bluff some way, and back to town by the Main street bridge like as not, before we get there. There's no shelter between here and Lagonda Ledge. Let's all cut for it before the rain beats us into the mud."

The deluge was just beginning, so, safe, but wet, and mud-smeared, fighting wind and rain and darkness, taking it all as a jolly lark, although they had slidden into safety but a hand's breadth in front of death, the couples straggled back to town.

Vincent Burgess, anxious, angry, and jealous, found an unconscious comfort in Dennie Saxon in that homeward struggle. She was so capable and cheery that he forgot a little the girl who had as surely drawn him Kansas-ward as his interest in types and geographical breadth had done.

It dimly entered his consciousness, as he told Dennie good-bye, that maybe she had been the most desirable companion of the crowd on such a night as this. He knew, at least, that he would have shown Elinor much more attention than he had shown to Dennie, and he knew that Elinor would have required it of him.

The light from the hall was streaming across the veranda of the Saxon House, a beam as faithful and friendly at the border of the lower campus as the bigger beacon in the college turret up on the lime-stone ridge.

As Burgess started away the worst deluge of the night fell out of the sky, so he dropped down on a seat to wait for the downpour to weaken.

He was very tired and his mind was feverishly busy. Where could Burleigh and Elinor be now? What dangers might threaten them? What ill might befall Elinor from exposure to this beating storm? He was frantic with the thought. Then he recalled Dennie, the girl who was working her way through college, whom he--Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B., from Harvard--had escorted home. How cheap Kansas was making him. The boys and girls had taken Dennie as one of them today; and truly, she did add to the comfort and pleasure of the outing. It seemed all right down in the woods where all was unconventional. But now, alone, in how common a grade he seemed to have placed himself, to be forced to pay attention to the poorest girl in school. His cheeks grew hot at the very thought of it.

In the shadows, beyond him, a form straightened up stupidly:

"Shay, Profesh Burgush, that you?"

Dennie's father, half-drunken still! Oh, Shades of cla.s.sic culture! To what depths in social contact may a college man fall in this wretched land!

"Shay! Is't you, or ain't it you? You gonna tell me?" Old Bond queried.

"This is Vincent Burgess," the young man replied.

"Dennie home?" the father asked.

"Yes, sir," came the curt answer.

"Who? Who bring her home? Vic Burleigh?"