the man found dead the night the lazy s was burned out was not easily identified. he was a half-breed, but half-breeds were many west of the river, and the places where they laid their heads at night were as shifting as the sands of that rapid, ominous, changing stream of theirs, which ever cut them off from the world of their fathers and kept them bound, but restless, chafing, in that same land where their mothers had stared stolidly at a strange little boat-load tugging up the river that was the forerunner of the ultimate destiny of this broad northwest country, but which brought incidentally—as do all big destinies in the great scheme bring sorrow to some one—wrong, misunderstanding, forgetfulness, to a once proud, free people now in subjection.
at last the authorities found trace of him far away at standing rock, through the agent there, who knew him as of an ugly reputation,—a dissipated, roving profligate, who had long since squandered his government patrimony. he had been mixed up in sundry bad affairs in the past, and had been an inveterate gambler. so much only were the kemah county authorities able to uncover of the wayward earthly career of the dead man. of his haunts and cronies of the period immediately preceding his death, the agent could tell nothing. he had not been seen at the agency for nearly a year. the reprobate band had covered its tracks well. there was nothing to do but lay the dead body away and shovel oblivion over its secret.
in the early morning after the return of the men from their unsuccessful man hunt, gordon, gray and haggard from loss of sleep and from hard thought, stepped out into the kitchen to stretch his cramped limbs. he stumbled over the figure of langford prone upon the floor, dead asleep in utter exhaustion. he smiled understandingly and opened the outer door quietly, hoping he had not aroused the worn-out boss. the air was fresh and cool, with a hint of autumn sharpness, and a premature indian summer haze, that softened the gauntness of the landscape, and made the distances blue and rest-giving. he felt the need of invigoration after his night’s vigil, and struck off down the road with long strides, in pleasant anticipation of a coming appetite for breakfast.
thus it was that langford, struggling to a sitting posture, rubbing his heavy eyes with a dim consciousness that he had been disturbed, and wondering drowsily why he was so stupid, felt something seeping through his senses that told him he did not do well to sleep. so he decided he would take a plunge into the cold artesian pond, and with such drastic measures banish once and for all the elusive yet all-pervading cobwebs which clung to him. rising to his feet with unusual awkwardness, he looked with scorn upon the bare floor and accused it blindly and bitterly as the direct cause of the strange soreness that beset his whole anatomy. the lay of the floor had changed in a night. where was he? he glanced helplessly about. then he knew.
thus it was, that when mary languidly opened her eyes a little later, it was the boss who sat beside her and smiled reassuringly.
“you have not slept a wink,” she cried, accusingly.
“indeed i have,” he said. “three whole hours. i feel tip-top.”
“you are—fibbing,” she said. “your eyes look so tired, and your face is all worn.”
his heart leaped with the joy of her solicitude.
“you are wrong,” he laughed, teasingly. “i slept on the floor; and a good bed it was, too. no, miss williston, i am not ‘all in’ yet, by any means.”
in his new consciousness, a new formality crept into his way of addressing her. she did not seem to notice it.
“forgive me for forgetting, last night,” she said, earnestly. “i was very selfish. i forgot that you had not slept for nearly two days, and were riding all the while in—our behalf. i forgot. i was tired, and i went to sleep. i want you to forgive me. i want you to believe that i do appreciate what you have done. my father—”
“don’t, don’t, little girl,” cried langford, forgetting his new awe of her maidenhood in his pity for the stricken child.
“my father,” she went on, steadily, “would thank you if he were here. i thank you, too, even if i did forget to think whether or no you and all the men had any sleep or anything to eat last night. will you try to believe that i did not forget wittingly? i was so tired.”
when langford answered her, which was not immediately, his face was white and he spoke quietly with a touch of injured pride.
“if you want to hurt us, miss williston, that is the way to talk. we cowmen do not do things for thanks.”
she looked at him wonderingly a moment, then said, simply, “forgive me,” but her lips were trembling and she turned to the wall to hide the tears that would come. after all, she was only a woman—with nerves—and the reaction had come. she had been brave, but a girl cannot bear everything. she sobbed. that was too much for langford and his dignity. he bent over her, all his heart in his honest eyes and broken voice.
“now you will kill me if you don’t stop it. i am all sorts of a brute—oh, deuce take me for a blundering idiot! i didn’t mean it—honest i didn’t. you will believe me, won’t you? there is nothing in the world i wouldn’t do for you, little girl.”
she was sobbing uncontrollably now.
“mr. langford,” she cried, turning to him with something of the past horror creeping again into her wet eyes, “do you think i killed—that man?”
“what man? there was only one man killed, and one of my boys potted him on the run,” he said.
“are you sure?” she breathed, in quick relief.
“dead sure,” convincingly.
“and yet,” she sobbed, memory coming back with a rush, “i wish—i wish—i had killed them all.”
“so do i!” he agreed, so forcefully that she could but smile a little, gratefully. she said, with just the faintest suggestion of color in her white cheeks:
“where is everybody? have you been sitting with me long?”
“mrs. white is getting breakfast, and i haven’t been sitting with you as long as i wish i had,” he answered, boldly; and then added, regretfully, “dick was the man who had the luck to watch over you all night. i went to sleep.”
“you were so tired,” she said, sympathizingly. “and besides, i didn’t need anything.”
“it is good of you to put it that way,” he said, his heart cutting capers again.
“mr. gordon is the best man i know,” she said, thoughtfully.
“there you are right, miss williston,” he assented, heartily, despite a quick little sting of jealousy. “he is the best man i know. i wish you would shake hands on that—will you?”
“surely.”
he held the smooth brown hand in his firmly with no thought of letting it go—yet.
“i am not such a bad chap myself, you know, miss williston,” he jested, his bold eyes flashing a challenge.
“i know it,” she said, simply. “i do not know what i should do without you. you will be good to me always, wont you? there is no one but me—now.”
she was looking at him trustingly, confident of his friendship, innocent, he knew, of any feminine wile in this her dark hour. the sweetness of it went to his head. he forgot that she was in sorrow he could not cure, forgot that she was looking to him in all probability only as the possible saviour of her father. he forgot everything except the fact that there was nothing in all the world worth while but this brown-eyed, white-cheeked, grieving girl, and he went mad with the quick knowledge thereof. he held the hand he had not released to his face, brushed it against his lips, caressed it against his breast; then he bent forward—close—and whispering, “i will be good to you—always—little girl,” kissed her on the forehead and was gone just as gordon, filled with the life of the new day, came swinging into the house for his well-earned breakfast.
the sheriff and his party of deputies made a diligent search for williston that day and for many days to come. it was of no avail. he had disappeared, and all trace with him, as completely as if he had been spirited away in the night to another world—body and soul. that the soul of him had really gone to another world came to be generally believed—mary held no hope after the return of the first expedition; but why could they find no trace of his body? where was it? where had it found a resting place? was it possible for a man, quick or dead, even west of the river in an early day of its civilization when the law had a winking eye, to fall away from his wonted haunts in a night and leave no print, neither a bone nor a rag nor a memory, to give mute witness that this way he passed, that way he rested a bit, here he took horse, there he slept, with this man he had converse, that man saw his still body borne hence? could such a thing be? it seemed so.
after a gallant and dauntless search, which lasted through the best days of september, langford was forced to let cold reason have its sway. he had thought, honestly, that the ruffians would not dare commit murder, knowing that they were being pursued; but now he was forced to the opinion that they had dared the worst, after all. for, though it would be hard to hide all trace of a dead man, infinitely greater would be the difficulty in covering the trail of a living one,—one who must eat and drink, who had a mouth to be silenced and strength to be restrained. it came gradually to him, the belief that williston was dead; but it came surely. with it came the jeer of the spectre that would not let him forget that he should have foreseen what would surely happen. with it came also a great tenderness for mary, and a redoubled vigilance to keep his unruly tongue from blurting out things that would hurt her who was looking to him, in the serene confidence in his good friendship, for brotherly counsel and comfort.
in the first dark days of his new belief, he spoke to gordon, and the young lawyer had written a second letter to the “gal reporter.” in response, she came at once to kemah and from thence to the white homestead in the boss’s “own private.” this time the boss did the driving himself, bringing consternation to the heart of one jim munson, cow-puncher, who viewed the advent of her and her “mouse-colored hair” with serious trepidation and alarm. what he had dreaded had come to pass. ’t was but a step now to the three bars. a fussy woman would be the means of again losing man his eden. it was monstrous. he sulked, aggrievedly, systematically.
louise slipped into the sad life at the whites’ easily, sweetly, adaptably. mary rallied under her gentle ministrations. there was—would ever be—a haunting pathos in the dark eyes, but she arose from her bed, grateful for any kindness shown her, strong in her determination not to be a trouble to any one by giving way to weak and unavailing tears. if she ever cried, it was in the night, when no one knew. even louise, who slept with her, did not suspect the truth for some time. but one night she sat straight up in bed suddenly, out of her sleep, with an indefinable intuition that it would be well for her to be awake. mary was lying in a strange, unnatural quiet. instinctively louise reached out a gentle, consoling hand to her. she was right. mary was not sleeping. the following night the same thing happened, and the next night also; but one night when she reached over to comfort, she found her gentle intention frustrated by a pillow under which mary had hidden her head while she gave way guardedly to her pent-up grief.
louise changed her tactics. she took mary on long walks over the prairie, endeavoring to fatigue her into sleep. the length of these jaunts grew gradually and systematically. it came at last to be an established order of the day for the two girls to strike off early, with a box of luncheon strapped over louise’s shoulder, for—nowhere in particular, but always somewhere that consumed the better part of the day in the going and coming. sometimes the hills and bluffs of the river region drew them. sometimes a woman’s whim made them hold to a straight line over the level distance for the pure satisfaction of watching the horizon across illimitable space remain stationary and changeless, despite their puny efforts to stride the nearer to it. sometimes, when they chose the level, they played, like children, that they would walk and walk till the low-lying horizon had to change, until out of its hazy enchantment rose mountain-peaks and forests and valleys and cities. it proved an alluring game. a great and abiding friendship grew out of this wanderlust, cemented by a loneliness that each girl carried closely in the innermost recesses of her heart and guarded jealously there. it was a like loneliness in the littleness and atom-like inconsequence of self each must hug to her breast,—and yet, how unlike! louise was alone in a strange, big land, but there was home for her somewhere, and kin of her own kind to whom she might flee when the weight of alienism pressed too sorely. but mary was alone in her own land; there was nowhere to flee to when her heart rebelled and cried out in the bitterness of its loneliness; this was her home, and she was alone in it.
louise learned to love the plains country. she revelled in its winds; the high ones, blowing bold and free with their call to throw off lethargy and stay from drifting; the low ones, sighing and rustling through the already dead grass—a mournful and whispering lament for the summer gone. she had thought to become reconciled to the winds the last of all. she was a prim little soul with all her sweet graciousness, and dearly desired her fair hair ever to be in smooth and decorous coil or plait. strangely enough, the winds won her first allegiance. she loved to climb to the summit of one of the barren hills flanking the river and stand there while the wind just blew and blew. loosened tendrils of hair bothered her little these days. she relegated hats and puny, impotent hat-pins to oblivion. her hair roughened and her fair skin tanned, but neither did these things bother her. it was the strength of the wind and the freedom, and because it might blow where it listed without regard to the arbitrary and self-important will of strutting man, that enthralled her imagination. it came about that the bigness and loneliness of this big country assumed a like aspect. it was not yet subjugated. the vastness of it and the untrammelled freedom of it, though it took her girl’s breath away, was to dwell with her forever, a sublime memory, even when the cow country—unsubjugated—was only a retrospection of silver hairs.
mary, because of her abounding health, healed of her wound rapidly. langford took advantage of the girls’ absorption in each other’s company to ride often and at length on quests of his own creation. with october, louise must join judge dale for the autumn term of court. he haunted the hills. he was not looking now for a living man; he was seeking a cleverly concealed grave. he flouted the opinion—held by many—that the body had been thrown into the missouri and would wash ashore some later day many and many a mile below. he held firmly to his fixed idea that impenetrable mystery clouding the ultimate close of williston’s earthly career was the sought aim of his murderers, and they would risk no river’s giving up its dead to their undoing.
it had been ascertained beyond reasonable doubt that williston could not have left the country in any of the usual modes. his description was at all the stations along the line, together with the theory that he would be leaving under compulsion.
meanwhile, gordon had buckled down for the big fight. he was sadly handicapped, with the whole prop of his testimony struck from under him by williston’s disappearance. however, those who knew him best—the number was not large—looked for things to happen in those days. they, the few, the courageous minority, through all the ups and downs—with the balance in favor of the downs most of the time—of the hardest-fought battle of his life, the end of which left him gray at the temples, maintained a deep and abiding faith in this quiet, unassuming young man, who had squared his shoulders to this new paralyzing blow and refused to be knocked out, who walked with them and talked with them, but kept his own counsel, abided his time, and in the meantime—worked.
one day, langford was closeted with him for a long two hours in his dingy, one-roomed office on the ground floor. the building was a plain wooden affair with its square front rising above the roof. in the rear was a lean-to where gordon slept and had his few hours of privacy.
“it won’t do, paul,” gordon said in conclusion. “i have thought it all out. we have absolutely nothing to go upon—nothing at least but our own convictions and a bandaged arm, and they won’t hang a man with jesse’s diabolical influence. we’ll fight it out on the sole question of ‘mag,’ paul. after that—well—who knows? something else may turn up. there may be developments. meanwhile, just wait. there will be justice for williston yet.”
