At that moment the door of a near-by shanty opened. A man came out, waving a letter. "Say! h.e.l.lo!" he bawled; "don"t you want your mail?"
Dallas checked the mules.
"I got a letter for you," he went on. It was Al Braden of Sioux Falls.
Dallas gave Marylyn the reins and reached for the letter, noting that the real-estate man did not doff the floppy hat, or make any swinging bows.
"A letter?"
"Yep, from Lounsbury. I told him I was going to lope back down to the Bend--but I didn"t." He snickered.
"Where"s he gone?" she asked, slitting the envelope with a shaking hand.
"Dunno," answered Braden. He was leaning on a wheel now, surveying Ben and Betty with a critical, and somewhat disdainful, eye. For each was hanging upon three legs to rest a fourth. Presently, he glanced up at Marylyn, and his eye lit impudently. "Dunno," he repeated. "You"re his girl. _You_ ought to know."
But Dallas did not hear him. She was scanning a page, closely written and addressed to herself.
"A telegram has come calling me home [ran the letter]. It says my mother is ill--"seriously ill"--and I am afraid it"s put that way to hide something worse. It is the only thing that could take me out of Dakota now. But I am not leaving you unprotected. Before I left Brannon, I arranged to have Matthews watched every hour of the day and night. And he is the only thing that might make you trouble. For if the Indians get nasty, I know Oliver will insist on bringing you in. Still, I shall worry terribly till I get back. I wish I could write all I would like to. But it would be what I have already told you--you will understand."
Thus, it ended.
Dallas thrust it into the pocket of her skirt, took the reins and lifted the black-snake. Ben saw the threatening movement from behind his bridle blinds. He sprang forward. The wheel rolled from under Braden"s elbow.
"Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned!" he growled. "Ain"t you going to say ta-ta?" He strode along at the tailboard, smirking up at the two in an attempt to be friendly. "Maybe you"d like company going home," he said. "Lonely trip for girls, "specially when they ain"t got a gun." He gave Marylyn a bold wink.
"Thank you," replied Dallas, shortly. "We don"t want company--and we _have_ got a gun." She lifted the pistol from the seat.
Braden fell behind. "Stop and drink some beer, anyway," he called. "Got some in here. You mustn"t be mad at me because Johnnie"s mamma sent for him. Come on back."
To this, no answer was made. Dallas gave the team a few smart cuts. The wagon rumbled out of the street.
And now began the return journey. Five hours had been consumed in reaching Clark"s. Ten minutes had been wasted there. Another five would be pa.s.sed at the first clear water. But allowing for the team"s faster gait when they were headed for home, and for twelve miles of downgrade, they should not take more than four hours to reach the bend. Twilight would be settling then.
Dallas figured the return thus--but it was soon plain to her that sunset would find them miles from the shack. Poor feed, with the plowing and the harrowing, had thinned the mules. After the first spurt, they paid no heed to the whip, and fairly crawled. Marylyn, tired, gave way to pa.s.sionate complaining. Dallas folded a blanket in the bottom of the wagon and coaxed her sister to lie down upon it, her face shielded by the seat. To further dishearten the elder girl, Ben and Betty showed signs of sore-footedness. Guided out upon the gra.s.s, they travelled better.
It took three precious hours to gain the summit. The afternoon was then far gone. Across the wide valley, dark clouds were piling upon the western range; they added to its height, and augured the day"s early closing. When the Throat gaped alongside, the fleecy horizon had rolled still higher, and beneath it the setting sun showed through like a harvest moon, blood-red.
Swiftly the day withdrew and the stars came out. Then, the breeze lulled, and a mist rose from the coulee"s wooded bottom. From it came the tremulous call of an owl. Dallas slipped to her feet and wielded the black-snake vigorously.
The mules shot forward for a wagon-length. The sudden jolt awakened Marylyn. She got to her knees--and there were the cottonwoods with the laden boughs!
"s.p.u.n.ky little sister," encouraged the elder girl, and helped the other to the seat.
The road was so dark, now, that it took on the aspect of a standing man, who was no sooner overridden than he rose again in the lead. This was a beginning for all manner of fears. Dallas fought her own. But she could not conquer them. For they enlarged enormously, and changed to a premonition that ran riot.
Listening and watching, she had suffered the previous night. Yet that suffering was nothing compared to the agony that stole into her heart and held it--till she forgot Marylyn"s presence. She seemed to see a figure skulking through the dusk about the shack; it entered the lean-to and crouched in hiding. She saw it come forth again, keeping close to the logs. Its eyes shone in the dark!
Her father was beside the door, where she had left him. He was gazing straight ahead, as if he expected the enemy to approach only from the front; as if he had no thought of treachery. His figure was relaxed wearily. His face was drawn. But his eyes--like the other"s--were strangely luminous.
_Ah!_--the figure was creeping toward him--noiselessly--step by step!
"Go in! Go in! _Daddy!_"
The cry was torn from her, though she strove to keep it back. The strain of the past night and day was telling. Frantically, she begged Ben and Betty to hasten. Knowing home was not far, they obeyed her voice, and, presently, were setting back in their collars to block the descent of the wagon; were splashing through the backwater at the coulee-crossing, and jerking their load out upon the level. Eastward, the shack stood out dimly in the starlight. They made for it at a trot.
But all at once they stopped, and began stepping this way and that, as if ready to leap the tongue. Dallas and Marylyn recoiled, forsaking the seat for the shelter of the box.
There was a moment"s wait, in a stillness as vast as the prairie. The mules, sidled to the left, shifted their long ears nervously. The girls listened, the younger shielded by the elder"s arms.
Then, across the bend, from the deserted houses of Shanty Town, sounded the long, soul-chilling howl of a dog.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SPIRIT OF THE FRONTIER
A broken crutch lying close to the shack on the river side, a blood-bespattered pane in the window just above, a rifle ball, embedded deep at a gun"s length beyond the pane--these were the traces that, on the following morning, gave an inkling of a deadly clash.
Squaw Charley found them, when the day was yet so young that no human eyes, save those of an Indian, could have used its scanty light. Four raps upon the warped door had brought no answer. Loudly repeated, they had set the wooden latch to shaking lonesomely. Mistrustful, he had entered and groped about the dark room. Table and benches were in place.
The blankets hung before the bunk. To one side, rolled up neatly, was the mattress upon which Dallas and Marylyn slept. But nothing else met his expectant hand and foot. Next, he had visited the lean-to, where he felt his way carefully from stall to stall, discovering no occupant.
Then, he had gone out to pry around the yard. And lit upon the marks that told of the struggle.
The absence of the wagon was a clue. He stole along the out-going tracks, between which, small, circular and clearly stamped, were the hoof-prints of two mules. Near the coulee-crossing, the tracks ran into others, and fresher ones, that diverged sharply into the corn. The hoof-prints between these pointed eastward. He forsook the out-going and turned back across the field.
At first, the course of the wagon puzzled. After veering north until the canyon yawned, the team had made along the brink, keeping perilously near it; farther on, at the upper end of the plowed strip, the direction abruptly changed. The mules had swung out to the right upon the open prairie, travelling straight for the middle of the gap. So far they had gone at a furious gallop. Now, however, they slowed to a walk. When the course no longer puzzled. To and fro, it wended, this way for a few feet, then, the other--proof that Ben and Betty had fed.
The Squaw halted. The horizon was faintly yellow. Upon it was a moving black object, which presently took the clearer form of a wagon and span.
He set off, his loose hair whipping at his back. The team was also travelling rapidly. Behind was a reddish follower that lowed in protest of the speed.
When the mules came by, Dallas was standing at the dashboard, plying the lash. Her face was ashen, her eyes were hollow. She did not see the Indian, for her gaze was upon the shack. He swung himself into the rattling box. There lay Marylyn, still in the grasp of the stupor that had bound them, brain and body, through the night.
Before the mules brought up at the lean-to, Dallas was over a wheel and tottering in quest of her father. Out of the shack, as she searched it, sounded her plaintive cry: "Daddy! daddy! where are you? Oh, Daddy!
_daddy!_ come back!"
Squaw Charley, bringing Marylyn in, found the elder girl kneeling behind the part.i.tion, her arms thrown out to grasp the vacant bunk.
He put his load down gently; then, unbidden, rushed through the door for Brannon.
When Captain Oliver arrived, with Fraser, a surgeon and a detachment of mounted men, Dallas was seated in the doorway, rocking Marylyn against her breast. She looked up, dry-eyed, as he hurried to her.
"What"d they do it for?" she asked him, brokenly. "How could they hurt you, dad? Oh, the land wasn"t worth it! the land wasn"t worth it!"
Something to quicken life in Marylyn was the first thought. Then, food and drink were given the girls. Meanwhile, the troopers were sent out under Fraser to range the bend and beat the coulee.
Oliver stayed. But to his questions, Dallas, her reason tottering like her steps, could only return others that were heartrending: