A tall young Tetong slipped from his tired horse and approached the Captain. In his extended hand lay an envelope, which gleamed in the firelight. As Curtis took this letter the messenger, squatting before him, began to roll a cigarette. His lean and powerful face was shadowed by a limp sombrero and his eyes were hidden, but his lips were grave and calm. A quirt dangled from his right wrist, and in the two braids of his hair green eagle-plumes were twisted. The star on the lapel of his embroidered vest showed him to be a police-officer. From the intensity of his att.i.tude it was plain he was studying his agent"s face in order to read thereon the character of the message he had brought.
Curtis turned the paper slowly and without excitement. With rapid signs he dismissed the courier. "I have read it. You will camp with Two Horns.
Go get some food. Mary will give you meat."
Turning to his guests, he then said: "It is nothing special--merely some papers I forgot to sign before leaving."
"By George! what a picture the fellow made, sitting there!" said Parker.
"It was like an ill.u.s.tration in a novel. Why don"t you paint that kind of thing, Bee Bee?"
"Because I can"t," she replied. "Don"t you suppose I saw it? I"d need the skill of Zorn to do a thing as big and mysterious as that. Did you see the intensity of his pose? He expected Captain Curtis to show excitement or alarm. He was very curious to know what it was all about--don"t you think so?"
Curtis was amused. "Yes, I suppose he thought the paper more important than it was. The settlers have kept the tribe guessing all the spring by threats of running them off the reservation. Of course they wouldn"t openly resort to violence, but there are several irresponsibles who would strike in the dark if they found opportunity."
In spite of his rea.s.suring tone, a vague fear fell over the camping party. Parker was frankly alarmed.
"If you think there is any danger, Captain, I want to get out o" here quick. I"m not here to study the Tetong with his war-paint on."
"If there had been any danger, Mr. Parker, I would not have left my office. I shall have a report similar to this every day while I am away, so please be composed."
The policeman came back, resumed his squatting position before the fire, and began a series of vigorous and dramatic gestures, to which the Captain replied in kind, absorbed, intent, with a face as inscrutable as that of the redman himself. The contrast between the resolute, handsome young white man and the roughhewn Tetong was superb. "There"s nothing in it for me," said Parker, "but it"s great business for a painter."
Elsie seized a block of paper, and with soft pencil began to sketch them both against the background of mysterious blackness, out of which a pine bole gleamed ashy white.
Suddenly, silently, as though one of the tree-trunks had taken on life, another Tetong appeared in the circle of the firelight and stood with deep-sunk eyes fastened on the Captain"s face. Another followed, and still others, till two old men and four young fellows ranged themselves in a semicircle before their agent, with Crane"s Voice and Two Horns at the left and a little behind. The old men smoked a long pipe, but the young men rolled cigarettes, taking no part in the council, listening the while with eyes as bright as those of foxes.
It was all sinister and menacing to the Parkers, and all wondered till Curtis turned to say: "They are my mill-hands--good, faithful boys, too."
"Mill-hands!" exclaimed Parker. "They looked uncommonly like a scalping party."
"That is what imagination can do. I thought your faces were extra solemn," remarked Curtis, dryly; but Lawson knew that the agent was not so untroubled as he pretended, for old Crow Killer had a bitter story to relate of the pa.s.sage of a band of cowboys through his camp. They had stampeded his ponies and shot at him, one bullet pa.s.sing so close to his ear that it burned the skin, and he was angry.
"They wish to kill us, these cattlemen," he said, sombrely, in conclusion. "If they come again we will fight."
Happily, his vehemence did not reach the comprehension of the women nor the understanding of Parker, and Lawson smoked on as calmly as if these tell-tale gestures were the flecking of shadows cast by the leaping flames. At last the red visitors rose and vanished as silently as they came. They seemed to pa.s.s through black curtains, so suddenly they disappeared.
In spite of all rea.s.surance, the women were a little reluctant to go to bed--at least Mrs. Parker and Elsie were.
"I wish the men"s tent were not so far off," Mrs. Parker said to Elsie, plaintively.
"I"ll ask them to move it, if you wish," returned Elsie, and when Jennie came in she said: "Aren"t you a little nervous to-night?"
Jennie looked surprised. "Why, no! Do you mean about sleeping in a tent?"
"Yes," replied Mrs. Parker. "Suppose a wolf or a redman should come?"
Jennie laughed. "You needn"t worry--we have a powerful guard. I never am afraid with George."
"But the men are so far away! I wish their tent were close beside ours.
I"m not standing on propriety," Mrs. Parker added, as Jennie hesitated.
"I"m getting nervous, and I want Jerome where he can hear me if I call to him."
Perceiving that Elsie shared this feeling in no small degree, Jennie soberly conveyed their wish to Curtis.
"Very well, we"ll move over. It will take but a moment."
As she heard the men driving the tent-pegs close beside her bed Mrs.
Parker sighed peacefully.
"_Now_ I can sleep. There is no comfort like a man in case of wolves, Indians, and burglars," and the fact that the men were laughing did not disturb her.
With a little shock, Elsie realized that Curtis and not Lawson was in her mind as her defender. Of course, he was in command; that accounted for it.
Nevertheless, as she listened to the murmur of their voices she detected herself waiting for Curtis"s crisp, clear ba.s.s, and not for the nasal tenor of the man whose ring she wore. Her mind was filled, too, with the dramatic figure the young officer made as he sat in gesture-talk with his Tetong wards. In case of trouble the safest place on all the reservation would be by his side, for his people loved and trusted him.
She did not go to sleep easily; the excitement, the strangeness of being in a tent, kept her alert long after Jennie and Mrs. Parker were breathing tranquilly on their cots.
One hears everything from a tent. It seems to stand in the midst of the world. It is like being in a diving-bell under water. Life goes on almost uninterruptedly. The girl heard a hundred obscure, singular, sibilant sounds, as of serpents conferring. Mysterious footsteps advanced, paused, retreated. Whispered colloquies arose among the leaves, giving her heart disquiet. Every unfamiliar sound was a threat.
The voices of birds and beasts no longer interested her--they scared her; and, try as she would to banish these fancies, her nerves thrilled with every rush of the wind. It was deep night before she dropped asleep.
XVII
A FLUTE, A DRUM, AND A MESSAGE
Elsie dreamed she was at the theatre. The opera was "Il Trovatore," and at the moment when the prison song--that worn yet ever-mournful cry--should have pulsed forth; but in its stead another strain came floating from afar, a short phrase equally sad, which sank slowly, as a fragment of cloud descends from sky to earth to become tears of dew on the roses. Over and over again it was repeated, so sad, so sweet, so elemental, it seemed that the pain of all love"s vain regret was in it, longing and sorrow and despair, without relief, without hope, defiant of death.
Slowly the walls of the theatre faded. The gray light of morning crept into the dreamer"s eyes, and she was aware of the walls of her tent and knew she had been dreaming. But the sorrowful song went on, with occasional slight deviations of time and tone, but always the same.
Beginning on a high key, it fell by degrees, hesitating, momentarily swooping upward, yet ever falling, till at last it melted in with the solemn moan of the pines stirring above her head. Then she drowsed again, and seemed to be listening to the wailing song with some one whose hand she held. As she turned to ask whence the music came a little shudder seized her, for the eyes looking into hers were not those of Lawson. Curtis faced her, grave and sweet.
With this shock she wakened, but the song had ceased. She waited in silence, hoping to hear it again. When fully aroused to her surroundings, she was convinced that she had dreamed the music as well as the hand-clasp, and a flush ran over her. "Why should I dream in that way of _him_?"
She heard the soft lisp of moccasined feet outside the tent, and immediately after the sound of an axe. Presently the fire began to crackle, and the rising sun threw a flood of golden light against the canvas wall. Jennie lifted her arms and yawned, and at last sat up and listened. Catching Elsie"s eye she said: "Good-morning, dear. How did you sleep?"
"Deliciously--but did you hear some one singing just before sunrise?"
"No--did you?"
"I thought I did; but perhaps I dreamed it."
"Where did it seem to come from?"
"Oh, from away off and high up--the saddest song--a phrase constantly repeated."
"Oh, I know. It was some young Tetong lover playing the flute. They often do that when the girls are going for water in the morning. Isn"t it beautiful?"
"I never heard anything so sad."