CHAPTER XXIII
IN JEAN'S LAND
All these regiments made history and left records of unfading glory.
While the Kansas volunteers had been floundering in the snow-heapedsand-dunes of the Cimarron country, General Sheridan's anxiety for oursafety grew to gravest fears. General Custer's feeling was that ofimpatience mingled with anxiety. He knew the tribes were getting fartheraway with every twenty-four hours' delay, and he shaped his forces for aspeedy movement southward. The young general's military genius was asstrong in minute detail as in general scope. His command was welldirected. Enlisted under him were a daring company of Osage scouts, ledby Hard Rope and Little Beaver, two of the best of this ever loyaltribe. Forty sharpshooters under Colonel Cook, and a company of citizenscouts recruited by their commanding officer, Pepoon, were added to theregular soldiery of the Seventh Cavalry.
These citizen scouts had been gathered from the Kansas river valleys.They knew why they had come hither. Each man had his own tragic pictureof the Plains. They were a silent determined force which any enemy mightdread, for they had a purpose to accomplish--even the redemption of theprairie from its awful peril.
The November days had slipped by without our regiment's appearance. Thefinding of an Indian trail toward the southwest caused Sheridan to looseCuster from further delay. Eagerly then he led forth his willing commandout of Camp Supply and down the trail toward the Washita Valley,determined to begin at once on the winter's work.
The blizzard that had swept across the land had caught the Indian tribeson their way to the coverts of the Wichita Mountains, and forced theminto winter quarters. The villages of the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, and theArapahoe extended up and down the sheltering valley of the Washita formany miles. Here were Black Kettle and his band of Cheyenne braves--theyof the loving heart at Fort Hays, they who had filled all the fairnorthern prairie lands with terror, whose hands reeked with the hotblood of the white brothers they professed to love. In their snug tepeeswere their squaws, fat and warm, well clothed and well fed. Danglingfrom the lodge poles were scalps with the soft golden curls of babyhood.No comfort of savage life was lacking to the papooses here. And yet, inthe same blizzards wherein we had struggled and starved, half a score oflittle white children torn from their mothers' clinging arms, theseIndians had allowed to freeze to death out on the Plains, while thetribes were hurrying through the storm to the valley. The fathers ofsome of these lost children were in that silent company under Pepoon,marching now with the Seventh Cavalry down upon the snow-draped tepeesof Black Kettle and his tribe.
Oh, the cost of it all! The price paid out for a beautiful land andsheltered homes, and school privileges and Sabbath blessings! It was forthese that men fought and starved and dared, and at last died, leavingonly a long-faded ripple in the prairie sod where an unmarked graveholds human dust returned to the dust of the earth.
In the shelter of the Washita Valley on that twenty-seventh day ofNovember, God's vengeance came to these Indians at the hands of GeneralCuster. He had approached their village undiscovered. As the Indians hadswooped down on Forsyth's sleeping force; as the yells of Black Kettle'sbraves had startled the sleeping settlers at dawn on Spillman Creek, thedaybreak now marked the beginning of retribution. While the SeventhCavalry band played "Garry Owen" as a signal for closing in, Custer'ssoldiery, having surrounded the village, fell upon it and utterlydestroyed it. Black Kettle and many of his braves were slain, the tepeeswere burned, the Indians' ponies were slaughtered, and the squaws andchildren made captives.
News of this engagement reached Sheridan's garrison on the day after ourarrival, with the word also that Custer, unable to cope with the tribesswarming down the Washita River, was returning to Camp Supply with hisspoils of battle.
"Did you know, Phil," Bud Anderson said, "that Cuthter'th to have agrand review before the General and hith thtaff when he geth hereto-morrow, and that'th all we'll thee of the thircuth. My! but I wish wecould have been in that fight; don't you?"
"I don't know, Bud, I'd hate to come down here for nothing, after allwe've gone through; but don't you worry about that; there'll be plentyto be done before the whole Cheyenne gang is finished."
"It'll be a sight worth seein' anyhow, this parade," O'mie declared. "Doyou remember the day Judge Baronet took his squad out av Springvale,Phil? What a careless set av young idiots we were then?"
Did I remember? Could I be the same boy that watched that line ofblue-coats file out of Springvale and across the rocky ford of theNeosho that summer day? It seemed so long ago; and this snow-clad valleyseemed the earth's end from that warm sunny village. But Custer's reviewwas to come, and I should see it.
It was years ago that this review was made, and I who write of it havehad many things crowded into the memory of each year. And yet, I recallas if it were but yesterday that parade of a Plains military review. Itwas a magnificent sunlit day. The Canadian Valley, smooth and white withsnow, rose gently toward the hills of the southwest. Across this slopeof gleaming whiteness came Custer's command, and we who watched it sawone of those bits of dramatic display rare even among the stirringincidents of war.
Down across the swell, led by Hard Rope and Little Beaver, came theOsage scouts tricked out in all the fantastic gear of Indian warcoloring, riding hard, as Indians ride, cutting circles in the snow,firing shots into the air, and chanting their battle songs of victory.Behind them came Pepoon's citizen scouts. Men with whom I had marchedand fought on the Arickaree were in that stern, silent company, and myheart thumped hard as I watched them swinging down the line.
And then that splendid cavalry band swept down the slope riding abreast,their instruments glistening in the sunlight, and their horses steppingproudly to the music as the strains of "Garry Owen to Glory" filled thevalley.
Behind the band were the prisoners of war, the Cheyenne widows andorphans of Black Kettle's village riding on their own ponies in anirregular huddle, their bright blankets and Indian trinkets of dressmaking a division in that parade, the mark of the untrained anduncivilized. After these were the sharpshooters led by their commander,Cook, and then--we had been holding our breath for this--then rode bycolumn after column in perfect order, dressed to the last point ofmilitary discipline, that magnificent Seventh Cavalry, the flower of thenation's soldiery, sent out to subdue the Plains. At their head wastheir commander, a slender young man of twenty-nine summers, lackingmuch the fine physique one pictures in a leader of soldiers. But hisface, from which a tangle of long yellow curls fell back, had in it themark of a master.
This parade was not without its effect on us, to whom the ways of warwere new. Well has George Eliot declared "there have been no greatnations without processions." The unwritten influence of that thrillingact of dramatic display somehow put a stir in the blood and loyalty andpatriotism took stronger hold on us.
We had come out to break the red man's power by a winter invasion. CampSupply was abandoned, and the whole body made its way southward to FortCobb. To me ours seemed a tremendous force. We were two thousandsoldiers, with commanders, camp officials, and servants. Our wagon trainhad four hundred big Government wagons, each drawn by six mules. Wetrailed across the Plains leaving a wide and well marked path wheretwenty-five hundred cavalry horses, with as many mules, tramped thesnow.
The December of the year 1868 was a terror on the Plains. No fiercerblizzard ever blew out of the home of blizzards than the storms thatfell upon us on the southward march.
Down in the Washita Valley we came to the scene of Custer's lateencounter. Beyond it was a string of recently abandoned villagesclustering down the river in the sheltering groves where had dweltKiowa, Arapahoe, and Comanche, from whose return fire Custer savedhimself by his speedy retreat northward after his battle with BlackKettle's band.
A little company of us were detailed to investigate these desertedquarters. The battle field had a few frozen bodies of Indians who hadbeen left by the tribe in their flight before the attack of the SeventhCavalry. There were a
lso naked forms of white soldiers who had met deathhere. In the villages farther on were heaps of belongings of everydescription, showing how hasty the exodus had been. In one of thesevillages I dragged the covering from a fallen snow-covered tepee.Crouched down in its lowest place was the body of a man, dead, with aknife wound in the back.
"Poor coward! he tried hard to get away," Bud exclaimed.
"Some bigger coward tried to make a shield out of him, I'll guess," Ireplied, lifting the stiff form with more carefulness than sentiment. AsI turned the body about, I caught sight of the face, which even in deathwas marked with craven terror. It was the face of the Rev. Mr. Dodd,pastor of the Springvale Methodist Church South. In his clenched deadhands he still held a torn and twisted blanket. It was red, with acircle of white in the centre.
On the desolate wind-swept edge of a Kiowa village Bud and I came uponthe frozen body of a young white woman. Near her lay her two-year-oldbaby boy. With her little one, she had been murdered to prevent herrescue, on the morning of Custer's attack on the Cheyennes, murderedwith the music of the cavalry band sounding down the valley, and withthe shouts and shots of her own people, ringing a promise of life andhope to her.
Bud hadn't been with Forsyth, and he was not quite ready for this. Hestooped and stroked the woman's hair tenderly and then lifted a whiteface up toward me. "It would have happened to Marjie, Phil, long ago,but for O'mie. They were Kiowath, too," he said in a low voice.
After that moment there was no more doubt for me. I knew why I had beenspared in Colorado, and I consecrated myself to the fighting duty of anAmerican citizen, "Through famine and fire and frost," I vowed tomyself, "I give my strength to this work, even unto death if God willsit."
Tenderly, for soldiers can be tender, the body of the mother and herbaby were wrapped in a blanket and placed in one of the wagons, to becarried many miles and to wait many days before they were laid to restat last in the shadow of Fort Arbuckle.
I saw much of O'mie. In the army as in Springvale, he was everybody'sfriend. But the bitter winter did not alleviate that little hackingcough of his. Instead of the mild vigor of the sunny Plains, that we hadlooked for was the icy blast with its penetrating cold, as sudden in itsapproach as it was terrible in its violence. Sometimes even now onwinter nights when the storms sweep across the west prairie and I hearthem hurl their wrathful strength against this stanch stone house withits rounded turret-like corners, I remember how the wind blew over ourbivouacs, and how we burrowed like prairie dogs in the river bank, wherethe battle with the storm had only one parallel in all this campaign.That other battle comes later.
But with all and all we could live and laugh, and I still bless the men,Reed and Hadley and John Mac and Pete, whose storm cave was near mine.Without the loud, cheery laugh from their nest I should have died. Butnobody said "die." Troop A had the courage of its convictions and abreezy sense of the ludicrous. I think I could turn back at Heaven'sgate to wait for the men who went across the Plains together in thatyear of Indian warfare.
This is only one man's story. It is not an official report. The books ofhistory tell minutely how the scattered tribes submitted. Overwhelmed bythe capture of their chief men, on our march to Fort Cobb, inducedpartly by threatened danger to these captive chiefs, but mostly bybewilderment at the presence of such a large force in their country inmidwinter, after much stratagem and time-gaining delays they came atlast to the white commander's terms, and pitched their tepees justbeyond our camp. Only one tribe remained unsubdued: the Cheyennes, whowith trick and lie, had managed to elude all the forces and escape tothe southwest.
We did not stay long at Fort Cobb. The first week of the new year foundus in a pleasanter place, on the present site of Fort Sill. It was notuntil after the garrison was settled here that I saw much of theseIndian tribes, whom Custer's victory on the Washita, and diplomatichandling of affairs afterwards, had brought into villages under the gunsof our cantonment.
I knew that Satanta and Lone Wolf, chief men of the Kiowas, were held ashostages, but I had not been near them. Satanta was the brute for whomthe dead woman with her little one had been captured. Her form wasmouldering back to earth in her grave at Fort Arbuckle, while he, wellclothed and well fed, was a gentleman prisoner of war in a comfortablelodge in our midst.
The East knew little of the Plains before the railroads crossed them.Eastern religious papers and church mission secretaries lauded Satantaas a hero, and Black Kettle, whom Custer had slain, as a martyr; whilethey urged that the extreme penalty of the civil law be meted out toCuster and Sheridan in particular, and to the rest of us at wholesale.
One evening I was sent by an officer on some small errand to Satanta'stent. The chief had just risen from his skin couch, and a long band ofblack fur lay across his head. In the dim light it gave his recedingforehead a sort of square-cut effect. He threw it off as I entered, butthe impression it made I could not at once throw off. The face of thechief was for the moment as suggestive of Jean Pahusca's face as everFather Le Claire's had been.
"If Jean is a Kiowa," I said to myself, "then this scoundrel here mustbe his mother's brother." I had only a few words with the man, but acertain play of light on his cunning countenance kept Jean in my mindcontinually.
When I turned to go, the tent flap was pulled back for me from theoutside and I stepped forth and stood face to face with Jean Pahuscahimself, standing stolidly before me wrapped in a bright new redblanket. We looked at each other steadily.
"You are in my land now. This isn't Springvale." There was still thatFrench softness in his voice that made it musical, but the face wascruel with a still relentless, deadly cruelty that I had never seenbefore even in his worst moods.
The Baronets are not cowardly by nature, but something in Jean alwaysmade me even more fearless. To his taunting words, "This isn'tSpringvale," I replied evenly, "No, but this is Phil Baronet still."
He gave me a swift searching look, and turning, disappeared in theshadows beyond the tents.
"I owe him a score for his Arickaree plans," I said to myself, "and hisscalp ought to come off to O'mie for his attempt to murder the boy inthe Hermit's Cave. Oh, it's a grim game this. I hope it will end heresoon."
As I turned away I fell against Hard Rope, chief of the Osage scouts. Ihad seen little of him before, but from this time on he shadowed mypathway with a persistence I had occasion to remember when the soldierlife was forgotten.
The beginning of the end was nearer than I had wished for. All aboutFort Sill the bluffy heights looked down on pleasant little valleys.White oak timber and green grass made these little parks a delight tothe eye. The soldiers penetrated all the shelving cliffs about them insearch of game and time-killing leisure.
The great lack of the soldier's day is seclusion. The mess life and tentlife and field life may develop comradeship, but it cannot developindividuality. The loneliness of the soldier is in the barracks, not inthe brief time he may be by himself.
Beyond a little brook Bud and I had by merest chance found a small covein the low cliff looking out on one of these valleys, a secluded nookentered by a steep, short climb. We kept the place a secret and calledit our sanctuary. Here on the winter afternoons we sat in the warmsunshine sheltered from the winds by the rocky shelf, and talked of homeand the past; and sometimes, but not often, of the future. On the dayafter I saw Jean at the door of Satanta's tent, Bud stole my cap andmade off to our sanctuary. I had adorned it with turkey quills, and madea fantastic head-gear out of it. Soldiers do anything to kill time; andjokes and pranks and child's play, stale and silly enough in civil life,pass for fun in lieu of better things in camp.
It was a warm afternoon in February, and the soldiers were scatteredabout the valley hunting, killing rattlesnakes that the sunshine hadtempted out on the rocks before their cave hiding-places, or tramping upand down about the river banks. Hearing my name called, I looked out,only to see Bud disappearing and John Mac, who had mistaken him for me,calling after him. John Mac, leading the other three, H
adley and Reedand Pete, each with his hands on the shoulders of the one before him,were marching in locked step across the open space.
"The rascal's heading for the sanctuary," I said to myself. "I'llfollow and surprise him."
I had nearly reached the foot of the low bluff when a pistol shot, clearand sharp, sounded out; and I thought I heard a smothered cry in thedirection Bud had taken. "Somebody hunting turkey or killing snakes,"was my mental comment. Rifles and revolvers were popping here and there,telling that the boys were out on a hunting bout or at target practice.As I rounded a huge bowlder, beyond which the little climb to our covebegan, I saw Bud staggering toward me. At the same time half a dozen ofthe boys, Pete and Reed and John Mac among them, came hurrying aroundthe angle of another projecting rock shelf.
Bud's face was pallid, and his blue eyes were full of pathos. I leapedtoward him, and he fell into my arms. A hole in his coat above his hearttold the story,--a bullet and internal bleeding. I stretched him out onthe grassy bank and the soldiers gathered around him.
"Somebody's made an awful mistake," John Mac said bitterly. "The boysare hunting over on the other side of the bluff. We heard them shootingturkey, and then we heard one shot and a scream. The boys don't knowwhat they've done."
"I'm glad they don't," I murmured.
"We were back there; you can't get down in front," Reed said. They didnot know of our little nest on the front side of the bluff.
"I'm all right, Phil," Bud said, and smiled up at me and reached for myhand. "I'm glad you didn't come. I told O'mie latht night where to findit." And then his mind wandered, and he began to talk of home.
"Run for the surgeon, somebody," one of the boys urged; and John Mac wasoff at the word.
"It ain't no use," Pete declared, kneeling beside the wounded boy. "He'sgot no need for a surgeon."
And I knew he was right. I had seen the same thing before on reekingsands under a blazing September sky.
I took the boy's head in my lap and held his hand and stroked that shockof yellow hair. He thought he was at Springvale and we were in the DeepHole below the Hermit's Cave. He gripped my hand tightly and begged menot to let him go down. It did not last long. He soon looked up andsmiled.
"I'm thafe," he lisped. "Your turn, now, Phil."
The soldiers had fallen back and left us two together. John Mac and Reedhad hastened to the cantonment for help, but Pete knew best. It wasuseless. Even now, after the lapse of nearly forty years, the sorrow ofthat day lies heavy on me. "Accidental death" the official record wasmade, and there was no need to change it, when we knew better.
That evening O'mie and I sat together in the shadowy twilight. There wasjust a hint of spring in the balmy air, and we breathed deeply,realizing, as never before, how easy a thing it is to cut off thebreath of life. We talked of Bud in gentle tones, and then O'mie said:"Lem me tell you somethin', Phil. I was over among the Arapahoes thisafternoon, an' I saw a man, just a glimpse was all; but you never see aface so like Father Le Claire's in your life. It couldn't be nobody elsebut that praist; and yet, it couldn't be him, nather."
"Why, O'mie?" I asked.
"It was an evil-soaked face. And yet it was fine-lookin'. It was justlike Father Le Claire turned bad."
"Maybe it was Father Le Claire himself turned bad," I said. "I saw thesame man up on the Arickaree, voice and all. Men sometimes lead doublelives. I never thought that of him. But who is this shadow of JeanPahusca's--a priest in civilization, a renegade on the Plains? Not onlythe face and voice of the man I saw, but his gait, the set of hisshoulders, all were Le Claire to a wrinkle."
"Phil, it couldn't have been him in September. The praist was atSpringvale then, and he went out on Dever's stage white and sick,hurrying to Kansas City. Oh, begorra, there's a few extry folks more 'n Ican use in this world, annyhow."
We sat in silence a few minutes, the shadow of the bowlder concealingus. I was just about to rise when two men came soft-footed out of thedarkness from beyond the cliff. Passing near us they made their wayalong the little stream toward the river. They were talking in low tonesand we caught only a sentence or two.
"When are you going to leave?" It was Jean Pahusca's voice.
"Not till I get ready."
The tone had that rich softness I heard so often when Father Le Clairechatted with our gang of boys in Springvale, but there was an insolencein it impossible to the priest. O'mie squeezed my hand in the dark andrising quickly he followed them down the stream. The boy never did knowwhat fear meant. They were soon lost in the darkness and I waited forO'mie's return. He came presently, running swiftly and careless of thenoise he made. Beyond, I heard the feet of a horse in a gallop, a soundthe bluff soon shut off.
"Come, Phil, let's get into camp double quick for the love av all thesaints."
Inside the cantonment we stopped for breath, and as soon as we could bealone, O'mie explained.
"Whoiver that man with Jean was, he's a 'was' now for good. Jean fixedhim."
"Tell me, O'mie, what's he done?" I asked eagerly.
"They seemed to be quarrellin'. I heard Jean say, 'You can't get off tooquick; Satanta has got men hired to scalp you; now take my word.' An'the Le Claire one laughed, oh, hateful as anything could be, and says,'I'm not afraid of Satanta. He's a prisoner.' Bedad! but his voice islike the praist's. They're too much alike to be two and too differentsomehow to be one. But Phil, d'ye know that in the rumpus av Custer'swid Black Kittle, Jean stole old Satanta's youngest wife and made offwid her, and wid his customary cussedness let her freeze to death inthem awful storms. Now he's layin' the crime on this praist-renegade andtrying to git the Kiowas to scalp the holy villain. That's the row as Imade it out between 'em. They quarrelled wid each other quite fierce,and the Imitation says, 'You are Satanta's tool yourself'; and Jean saidsomethin' I couldn't hear. Then the Imitation struck at him. It wasdark, but I heard a groan and something like the big man went plunk intothe river. Then Jean made a dash by me, and he's on a horse now, and amile beyont the South Pole by this time. 'Tain't no pony, I bet you, buta big cavalry horse he's stole. He put a knife into what went into theriver, so it won't come out. That Imitation isn't Le Claire, but natheris he anybody else now. Phil, d'ye reckon this will iver be a dacentcivilized country? D'ye reckon these valleys will iver have orchards andcornfields and church steeples and schoolhouses in 'em, and littlehomes, wid children playin' round 'em not afraid av their lives?"
"I don't know," I answered, "but orchards and cornfields and churchsteeples and schoolhouses and little homes with children unafraid, havebeen creeping across America for a hundred years and more."
"So they have; but oh, the cost av it all! The Government puts the landat a dollar and a quarter an acre, wid your courage and fightin'strength and quickest wits, and by and by your heart's blood and a gravewid no top cover, like a fruit tart, sometimes, let alone a tomb-stone,as the total cost av the prairie sod. It's a great story now, aven ifnobody should care to read it in a gineration or so."
So O'mie philosophized and I sat listening, whittling the while a pieceof soft pine, the broken end of a cracker box.
"Now, Phil, where did you get that knife?" O'mie asked suddenly.
"That's the knife I found in the Hermit's Cave one May day nearly sixyears ago, when I went down there after a lazy red-headed Irishman. Ifound it to-day down in my Saratoga trunk. See the name?" I pointed tothe script lettering, spelling out slowly--"Jean Le Claire."
"Well, give it to me. I got it away from the 'good Injun' first." O'miedeftly wrenched it out of my hand. "Let me kape it, Phil. I've a sortof fore-warnin' I may nade it soon."
"Keep it if you want to, you grasping son of Erin," I repliedcarelessly.
We were talking idly now, to hide the heaviness of our sorrow as wethought of Bud down under the clods, whose going had left us two solonely and homesick.
Two days later when I found time to slip away to our sanctuary and bealone for a little while, my eye fell upon my feather-decked hat,crushed and shapeless
as if it had been trampled on, lying just at thecorner where I came into the nook. I turned it listlessly in my handsand stood wrapped in sorrowful thought. A low chuckle broke the spell,and at the same moment a lariat whizzed through the air and encircled mybody. A jerk and I was thrown to the ground, my arms held to my sides.Almost before I could begin to struggle the coils of the rope weredeftly bound about me and I was helpless as a mummy. Then Jean Pahusca,deliberate, cruel, mocking, sat down beside me. The gray afternoon wasgrowing late, and the sun was showing through the thin clouds in thewest. Down below us was a beautiful little park with its grove ofwhite-oak trees, and beyond was the river. I could see it all as I layon the sloping shelf of stone--the sky, and the grove and the bit ofriver with the Arapahoe and Kiowa tepees under the shadow of the fort,and the flag floating lazily above the garrison's tents. It was apeaceful scene, but near me was an enemy cutting me off from all thisserenity and safety. In his own time he spoke deliberately. He had satlong preparing his thought.
"Phil Baronet, you may know now you are at the end of your game. I havewaited long. An Indian learns to wait. I have waited ever since thenight you put the pink flowers on her head--Star-face's. You are strong,you are not afraid, you are quick and cunning, you are lucky. But youare in my land now. You have no more strength, and your cunning andcourage and luck are useless. They don't know where you are. They don'tknow about this place." He pointed toward the tents as he spoke. "Whenthey do find you, you won't do them any good." He laughed mockingly butnot unmusically. "They'll say, 'accidental death by hunters,' as theysaid of Bud. Bah! I was fooled by his hat. I thought he was you. But hedeserved it, anyhow."
So that was what had cut him off. Innocent Bud! wantonly slain, by onethe law might never reach. The thought hurt worse than the thongs thatbound me.
"Before I finish with you I'll let you have more time to think, and hereis something to think about. It was given to me by a girl who loved you,or thought she did. She found it in a hole in the rock where Star-facehad put it. Do you know the writing?"
He held a letter before my eyes. In Marjie's well known hand I read theinscription, "Philip Baronet, Rockport, Cliff Street."
"It's a letter Star-face put in the place you two had for a long time. Inever could find it, but Lettie did. She gave it to me. There wasanother letter deeper in, but this was the only one she could get out.Her arm was too short. Star-face and Amos Judson were married ChristmasDay. You didn't know that."
How cruelly slow he was, but it was useless to say a word. He had noheart. No plea for mercy would move him to anything but fiendish joythat he could call it forth. At last he opened the letter and readaloud. He was a good reader. All his schooling had developed his powerover the English language, but it gave him nothing else.
Slowly he read, giving me time to think between the sentences. It wasthe long loving letter Marjie wrote to me on the afternoon that Racheland I went to the old stone cabin together. It told me all the storiesshe had heard, and it assured me that in spite of them all her faith inme was unshaken.
"I know you, Phil," she had written at the end, "and I know that you areall my own."
I understood everything now. Oh, if I must die, it was sweet to hearthose words. She had not gotten my letter. She had heard all themisrepresentation, and she knew all the circumstances entanglingeverything. What had become of my letter made no difference; it waslost. But she loved me still. And I who should have read this letter outon "Rockport" in the August sunset, I was listening to it now out onthis gray rock in a lonely land as I lay bound for the death awaitingme. But the reading brought joy. Jean watching my face saw his mistakeand he cursed me in his anger.
"You care so much for another man's wife? So! I can drive away yourhappiness as easily as I brought it to you," he argued. "I go back toSpringvale. Nobody knows when I go. Bud's out of the way; O'mie won't bethere. Suddenly, silently, I steal upon Star-face when she least thinksof me. I would have been good to her five years ago. I can get her awaylong and long before anybody will know it. Tell Mapleson will help mesure. Now I sell her, on time, to one buck. When I get ready I redeemher, and sell her to another. You know that woman you and Bud found inSatanta's tepee on the Washita? I killed her myself. The soldiers wentby five minutes afterwards,--she was that near getting away. That'swhat Star-face will come to by and by. Satanta is my mother's brother. Ican surpass him. I know your English ways also. When you die a littlelater, remember what Star-face is coming to. When I get ready I willtorture her to death. You couldn't escape me. No more can she. Rememberit!"
The sun was low in the west now, and the pain of my bonds was hard tobear, but this slow torture of mind made them welcome. They helped menot to think. After a long silence Jean turned his face full toward me.I had not spoken a word since his first quick binding of my limbs.
"When the last pink is in the sky your time will come," he laughed. "Andnobody will know. I'll leave you where the hunter accidentally shot you.Watch that sunset and think of home."
He shoved me rudely about that I might see the western sky and the levelrays of the sun, as it sank lower and lower. I had faced death before. Imust do it sometime, once for all. But life was very dear to me. Homeand Marjie's love. Oh, the burden of the days had been more grievousthan I had dreamed, now that I understood. And all the time the sun wassinking. Keeping well in the shadow that no eye from below might seehim, Jean walked toward the edge of the shelf.
"It will be down in a minute more; look and see," he said, in that softtone that veiled a fiend's purpose. Then he turned away, and glancingout over the valley he made a gesture of defiance at the cantonment. Hisback was toward me. The red sun was on the horizon bar, half out ofsight.
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear noevil." The arm of the All Father was round about me then, and I put mytrust in Him.
As Jean turned to face the west the glow of the sinking ball of firedazzled his eyes a moment. But that was long enough, for in that instanta step fell on the rock beside me. A leap of lightning swiftness put aform between my eyes and the dying day; the flash of a knife--Jean LeClaire's short sharp knife--glittered here; my bonds were cut in atwinkling; O'mie, red-headed Irish O'mie, lifted me to my feet, and Iwas free.
The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas Page 26