THE CAPTURE OF THE MAN
The east was saffron and pale-blue as Crow and the agent drove out of the corral and up the road to the south. Two Horns was the driver. Crow alone was armed, and he wore but his official revolver. Maynard had been purposely left out of the expedition, for Curtis did not wish to seem to question in the slightest degree the obedience of his people. He preferred to go unarmed and without handcuffs or rope, as a friend and adviser, not as an officer of the law.
The morning was deliciously cool, with a gentle wind sliding down from the high peaks, which were already glowing with the morning's pink and yellow. From some of the tepees in Grayman's camp smoke was already rising, and a few old women could be seen pottering about the cooking lodges, while the morning chorus of the dogs and coyotes thickened. There was an elemental charm in it all which helped the young soldier to shake off his depression.
Passing rapidly through the two villages, Two Horns turned to the left and entered upon a road which climbed diagonally up the side of a long, low ridge. This involved plodding, and by the time they reached the summit the sun met them full-fronted. In the smaller valley, which lay between this ridge and the foot-hills, a rough trail led towards the mountains. This way Two Horns took, driving rapidly and silently, and soon entered the pines and pinons which form the lower fringe of the vast and splendid robe of green which covers the middle heights of the Rocky Mountains.
After an hour of sharp driving, with scarcely a word or gesture, Crow turned and said: "Cut Finger there. Black Wolf, his tepee."
The trail here took a sharp curve to the left to avoid a piece of stony ground, and from a little transverse ridge Curtis could look down on a small, temporary village, the band of Black Wolf, who had located here to cut hay on the marsh.
"We must surprise him if we can," said Curtis to Crow. "We must not shoot. I will talk to him. If he cocks his gun kill him; but I don't think he will want to fight."
The lads could be heard singing their plaintive songs as they climbed the hills for their ponies. Smoke was rising from each lodge, and children, dogs, and hens were outdoing each other in cheerful uproar as Two Horns drove up to where Black Wolf stood, an old man with thin, gray hair, shielding his eyes with the scant shadow of his bony wrist.
"Ho, agent!" he cried. "Why do you come to see us so early?"
"Is Cut Finger here?"
"Yes; he is in there." He pointed to a tepee near.
"Be silent!" commanded Curtis, as he alighted swiftly, but without apparent haste or excitement. Crow instantly followed him, alert and resolute. As they entered the tepee Cut Finger, still half asleep on his willow hammock, instinctively reached for his rifle, which lay beneath him on the ground, dangerous as a half-awakened rattlesnake.
Curtis put his foot on the weapon, and said, pleasantly: "Good-morning, Cut Finger; you sleep late."
The young man sat up and blinked stupidly, while Crow took the gun from beneath the agent's foot.
Curtis signed to Black Wolf. "This boy has killed a herder and I have come for him. You knew of his deed."
"I have heard of it," the old man replied, with a gesture.
"It is such men who bring trouble on the tribe," pursued Curtis. "They must be punished. Cut Finger must go with me down to the agency. He must not make more trouble."
The news of the agent's mission brought every soul hurrying to the tent, for Cut Finger had said, "I will fight the soldiers if they come."
Curtis heard them coming and said: "Crow, tell all these people outside that Cut Finger has done a bad thing and must be punished. That unless such men are cast out by the Tetongs they will always be in trouble."
Crow lifted up his big, resounding voice and recounted what the agent had said, and added: "You shall see we will take this man. I, Crow, have said it. It will be foolish for any one to resist."
The agent, sitting before Cut Finger, addressed him in signs. "I am your friend, I am sorry for you. I am sorry for any man who does wrong and suffers punishment; but you have injured your people, you made the white man very angry; he came ready to shoot—you saw how I turned him away. I said: 'I will find the man who shot the herder. I will bring him—I do not want any one else to suffer.' Then you proclaimed yourself. You said: 'I alone did this thing.' Then you went on the hill to fight—I cannot allow that. No more blood will be shed. I will not lie; I have come to take you. You will be punished; you must go with me to the white man's strong-house."
A whimpering cry arose, a cry which ended in a sighing moan of heart-piercing, uncontrollable agony, and Curtis, turning his face, saw the wife of Cut Finger looking at him from her blanket on the opposite side of the tepee. A shout of warning from Crow made him leap to his feet and turn.
Cut Finger confronted him, his eyes glowing with desperate resolution.
"Sit down!" commanded the Captain, using his fist in the sign, with a powerful gesture. The fugitive could not endure his chief's eyes; he sank back on his couch and sat trembling.
"If you touch the Little Father I will kill you," said Crow, gruffly, as he stood with drawn revolver in his hand. "I, Crow, have said it!"
Black Wolf was looking on with lowering brow. "He says the white man was driving his sheep on our land."
"So he was," replied Curtis, "but it is bad for the Tetongs when a white man is killed. It is better to come and tell me. When a redman kills a white man the white men say: 'Let us kill all the Tetongs—spare no one.' Cut Finger said he was ready to die. Well, then, let him go with me, and I will make his punishment as light as I can. I am his friend—a friend to every Tetong. I will tell the war chief at Pinon City how it was, and he will say Cut Finger was not alone to blame—the white man was also to blame. Thus the punishment will not be so heavy. Cut Finger is a young man; he has many years to live if he will do as I tell him. He will come back to his tribe by-and-by and be a good man."
So, by putting forth all his skill in gesture he conveyed to Cut Finger's mind a new idea—the idea of sacrificing himself for the good of the tribe. He also convinced the members of Black Wolf's band that their peace and safety lay in giving him up to their agent, and so at last the young desperado rose and followed his chief to the wagon wherein Two Horns still sat, impassive and unafraid.
As he put his hand on the carriage-seat a convulsive shudder swept over Cut Finger. He folded his arms and, lifting his eyes to the hills, burst forth in a death-song, a chant so sad, so passionate, and so searching, that the agent's heart was wrenched. Answering sobs and wails broke from the women, and the young wife of the singer came and crouched at his feet, her little babe in her arms, and this was his song:
"I am going away.
I go to my death.
The white man has said it—
I am to die in a prison.
I am young, but I must go—
I have a wife, but I must go
To die among the white men
In the dark.
So says the soldier chief."
Curtis, looking into the eyes of Black Wolf, perceived that the old man wavered. The wailing of the women, the young man's song, had roused his racial hatred—what to him was the killing of a "white robber"?
"Be quiet!" commanded Curtis, and the song ceased. "Get in, quick! No more singing."
The ending of the song left the prisoner in a mood of gloomy yet passive exaltation. He took the place indicated and sat with bowed head, his hands limply crossed.
"Go on!" commanded Curtis, and Two Horns brought the whip down on the horses. As they sprang forward a wail of agony burst from the lips of the bereaved young wife. At this cry Cut Finger again turned upon the agent with hands opened like the claws of a bear—his face contorted with despair. Curtis seized him in a grip whose crunching power made itself felt to the marrow of the Tetong's bones, and his eyes, piercing with terrible determination, shrivelled the resolution of the half-crazed man. He sank back into his seat, a hopeless lump of swaying flesh, his face a tragic mask, and uttered no further word till the sound of a galloping horse made them all turn to see who followed.
"My wife!" the prisoner said. "She carries my baby."
This was indeed true. The sad little wife was galloping after, riding a strong bay pony, the reins flapping loose, while across the pommel of her saddle she held her small pappoose, whose faint wailing told of his discomfort and terror.
"Wait—me take pappoose," the prisoner said, in English, with a note of command.
Curtis was deeply touched. He ordered Two Horns to halt, and Crow got out and took the babe and handed it to Cut Finger, who received it carefully in his long arms. No woman could have been tenderer.
As they drove on, a big lump rose in the soldier's throat. It seemed a treacherous and sinful thing to hand this man over to a savage throng of white men, perhaps to be lynched on the road. "I will not do it," he said; "I will take him to Pinon City myself. He shall have trial as if he were white. I will yield him to the law, but not to vengeance."
Cut Finger thereafter spoke no word, did not even look back, though Curtis detected him turning his head whenever the sound of the galloping horse grew faint or died away for a few moments. The baby ceased to wail, and on the rough ground, when the wagon jarred, the father held the little one high as in a sling.
Upon entering the camp of Crawling Elk they found all the people massed, waiting, listening, and their presence excited the prisoner greatly, and he began again to sing his death-chant, which now seemed infinitely more touching by reason of the small creature he cradled so lovingly in his arms.
"Be silent!" commanded Curtis. "You must not sing. Drive fast, Two Horns!"
Answering wails and fragments of chanting broke from the women; one or two cried out, "Take him from the agent!" But the men shook their heads and sadly watched them pass. "He has done a foolish thing; he must now suffer for it," said Crawling Elk.
As they drew up before the door of the parsonage Curtis sprang out and said to Cut Finger:
"Give me the baby; he shall be well cared for."
The father gave up the child passively, and Curtis called to Jennie:
"Here is a babe that is tired and hungry—be good to it."
"Where is the mother?" asked Jennie, as she tenderly received the little brown boy.
"She is coming," he said, and the mother galloped up in a few moments and fairly tumbled off her horse. "See!" Curtis said to her and to the father, "My sister will give the baby milk, and its mother shall also be fed. You need not fear; both will be taken care of. We are your friends."
Cut Finger watched Jennie as she carefully carried the baby into the house, and as he turned away, a look of apathetic misery, more moving than any cry, settled on his face.
Maynard, who had been standing in the door, said, in a tone of astonishment, "Did that wild Injun carry his papoose all the way down?"
"Yes, and was as tender of it as a woman, too."
"Well, I'll be hanged! There's a whole lot for me to learn about Injuns yet. Want a guard?"
"Yes; I think it safer. There is a good deal of sympathy for this poor chap."
"I don't blame 'em very much," said Maynard. "Take him right down to our guard-house, and I'll have Payne detail a squad of men to take care of him."
"I intend taking him to Pinon myself. I can't find it in my heart to give him over into the hands of these whites—they'd lynch him, sure."
"I believe it," replied Maynard, with conviction.
As they passed the agency gate, Winters and the county attorney stepped out as if they expected to receive the prisoner; but the savage grin on the sheriff's face died out as Curtis nodded coldly and drove past.
"That fellow is a wolf. Did you have any trouble?" asked Maynard.
"Not a bit. We surprised him in bed, as I planned to do."
"Nice thing, your leaving me out in this way!"
"Have the Brisbanes gone?"
"Yes. Got away about eight o'clock. Lawson went with them, though he's coming back to see you clear of this war. He's a crackerjack, is Lawson; but the old man has you marked for slaughter."
It was good to be able to turn his prisoner over to the blue-coats and feel that he would not be taken away except properly and in order. Lynching does not flourish under the eyes of a commander like Maynard. As Curtis led his man into the guard-house and motioned him to a seat, he said, in signs:
"You are safe now from the cattlemen. I am your friend, remember that. I myself will take you to the white chief's big village. I will not let the war chief have you. I will turn you over to the wise man—the man who will judge your case. I will let your wife and your little son go with you. So you see I am still your Little Father. I am very sorry you have shot this man, but you must be punished. I cannot prevent that."
As he met the sheriff he said, quietly, "I have decided to accompany you to Pinon City."
The sheriff was not greatly surprised.
"Oh, very well. But I don't see the need of it."
"I do!" replied Curtis, and his tone silenced opposition.
Going immediately to the house, Curtis flung himself down in his chair and submitted to Jennie's anxious care. She brought him some coffee and biscuit, and stood with her hand on his shoulder while he ate. "Well, they're gone—Lawson and all. I never saw a greater change in any one than in that girl. Do you remember how she was last fall? I never supposed I should come to love her. I hated her for the treatment of you then, but—I think she has a different feeling towards us now—not excepting you. I think—she was crying because she was—going—away—from—you."
He looked up at her and smiled incredulously. "Your loyalty to me, sis, is more than I deserve!"
Curtis seized a moment to cross the square to Elsie's studio, eager to see whether she had regarded his wishes or not. It was an absurd thing to ask of her, and yet he did not regret having done so. It would serve as a sort of test of her regard, her sympathy. Now as he stood at the door he hesitated—if it should be bare!
He turned the knob and entered. The effect of the first impression was exalting, satisfying. All was in order, and the air was deliciously cool and fragrant, infilled with some rare and delicate odor. Each article was in its place—she had taken nothing but the finished pictures and some sketches which she specially needed. Scraps of canvas covered with splashes of color were pinned about on the walls, the easel stood in the centre of the room, and her palette and brushes were on the table. The young soldier closed the door behind him and took a seat in deep emotion. At that moment he realized to the full his need of her, and his irreparable loss. All he had suffered before was forgotten—swallowed up in the empty, hungry ache of his heart. The curtains and draperies were almost as much a part of her as her dress, and he could not have touched them at the moment, so intimately personal did they seem.
It appeared that he had not fully understood himself, after all. This empty temple, where she had lived and worked, these reminders of her beautiful self, were not to be a solace and a comfort, after all, but a torture. He felt broken and unmanned, and the aching in his throat grew to an intolerable pain, and with a reaction to disdain of himself he rose and went out, closing and locking the door.