CHAPTER X
THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED
It was late, very late on the prairie, when How Landor returned that evening. The herd safely corralled for the night, he rode slowly toward the ranch house, and, without leaving the pony's back, opened and closed the gate of the barb wire fence surrounding the yard and approached the house. There was a bright light in the living-room, and, still without dismounting, he paused before the uncurtained window and looked in. Mrs. Landor, looking even more faded and helpless than usual, sat holding her hands at one side of the sheet-iron heater, and opposite her, his feet on the top rim of the stove, sat Craig. The man was smoking a cigarette, and even through the tiny-paned glass the air of the room looked blue. Obviously the visitor and his aunt were not finding conversation easy, and the former appeared distinctly bored. Neither Landor himself nor the girl was anywhere visible, and, after a moment, the spectator moved on around the corner. The dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the kitchen, and the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing at last under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim light was burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the barebacked broncho hesitated, looking up; then rolling his wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder he moved very close to the weather-boarded wall. The building was low, and, by stretching a bit, the tip of the roll in his hand reached the second story. He tapped twice on the bottom of the pane.
No answer, but of a sudden the room went dark.
Tap! tap! repeated the hat brim gently.
Still no answer.
Again the man hesitated, and, the night air being a bit frosty, the pony stamped impatiently.
"Bess," said a low voice, "it is I, How. Won't you tell me good-night?"
This time there was response. The curtain lifted and the sash was opened; a face appeared, very white against the black background.
"Good-night, How," said a voice obediently.
The man settled back in his seat and the sombrero was unrolled.
"Nothing wrong, is there, Bess?" he hesitated. "You're not sick?"
"No, there's nothing wrong," monotonously. "I'm a bit tired, is all."
For a long minute the man said nothing, merely sat there, his black head bare in the starlight, looking up at her. Repressed human that he was, there seemed to him nothing now to say, nothing adequate. Meanwhile the pony was growing more and more impatient. A tiny hoof beat at the
half-frozen ground rhythmically.
"All right, then, Bess," he said at last. "You mustn't sit there in the window. It's getting chilly. Good-night."
The girl drew back until her face was in shadow.
"Good-night," she echoed for the second time, and the shade closed as before.
For five minutes longer the Indian sat as he was, bare of head, motionless; but the light did not return, nor did he hear a sound, and at last he rode slowly out the gate and toward his own quarters.
The place where he lived was exactly a half mile from the Buffalo Butte ranch house, and due north. Originally a one-room shack, grudgingly built according to government requirements to prove up on a homestead, it had recently been enlarged by the addition of a second larger room, and as a whole the place further improved by the building of a sod and weather-board barn. The reason for this was obvious, to one acquainted with the tenant's habits particularly so. Just how long the Indian had remained separate, just why he had first made the change, Landor himself could hardly have told. Suffice it to say it had been for years, and in all that time, even in the coldest weather, the voluntary exile had never lived under a roof. Primitive or evolved as it might be, as youth and as man, the Indian was a tent-dweller. Just now the little house was being fitted up for occupancy, How himself doing it at odd moments of the day and at evenings; but as yet he still lived, as always, under eight by ten feet of canvas near at hand.
A lighted tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against a dark horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house yard the man on the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that he had company; yet, characteristic in his every action, he did not hurry. Methodically he put up the pony in the new barn, fed and bedded him for the night. From the adjoining stall, out of the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish whine and the protest of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an observer would have seen a woolly grey ball with a pointed nose and a pair of sharp eyes tugging at the end of that tether; but as it was, two gleaming eyes, very close together, were all that were visible. It was to the owner of these eyes that the man gave the scraps from his lunch remaining in the saddlebag. For it, as for the pony, he made a bed; then—though the little beast was only a grey prairie wolf, it was a baby and lonely—he knelt down and for a moment laid his own face against the other's softly shaggy face.
When, a bit later, he arose and went toward the light there was a moist spot on his cheek where a rough little tongue had inscribed its affection.
On the tent wall was a shadow such as that made by a big man with his back to the light, and as the newcomer opened the flap and stepped inside the maker of the shadow roused himself in the manner of one whose thoughts had been far away.
"You're late to-night," he commented.
"Yes."
Characteristic of the two men, no explanation was offered or expected, and the subject dropped.
There was a small soft-coal stove in one corner, and in silence the Indian threw in fresh fuel. The lantern hanging opposite was burning low, and, turning it higher, he shifted the tin reflector so that the light would play on the scene of operations. Leaving the tent for a moment, he returned with a young grouse, and, dressing it skilfully, put it in a skillet to fry. From the chest where he had been sitting he produced a couple of cold boiled potatoes and sliced them into the opposite side of the same pan. He did not hurry, he rather seemed to be dawdling; yet almost before the observer awoke to the fact that supper was under preparation a tiny folding table with a turkey red cloth was set, the odour of coffee—cheap coffee, yet surprisingly fragrant—was in the air, and the bird and potatoes were temptingly brown. It was almost uncanny the way this man accomplished things. Landor himself never ceased to marvel. How always seemed unconscious of what he was doing, seemed always thinking of something else; yet he never wasted a motion, and when the necessity arose the thing required was done. It was so in small things. It was identical in large.
Up to this time, since that first perfunctory greeting not a word had been spoken. Now, the meal complete, its maker halted hospitably.
"Better join me," he invited simply. "You must have had an early supper. I noticed the kitchen was dark at the house."
"Yes. I'm not hungry, though." The big man sank lower into his seat wearily. "I'm not feeling very well to-night."
In silence the younger man sat down to eat alone. He did not press his invitation, he did not express sympathy at the other's admission. Either would have been superfluous. Instead he ate with the hearty appetite of a healthy human, and thereafter, swiftly and methodically as he had prepared the meal, cleared the table and put all in order. Then at last, the fire replenished and a couple of long-haired buffalo robes thrown within the radius of its heat, he stretched full length thereon in the perfect contentment of one whose labor for the day is done, and awaited the something he knew had brought the other to him at this unusual hour. "There's a pipe and tobacco in the drawer of the little table at your right," he assisted.
Landor roused with a trace of surprise.
"I didn't know you ever smoked," he commented.
"I don't," simply. Again there was no suggestion of the superfluous, the obvious explanation.
Nervously, almost jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and pressed the brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match he lit crackled explosively, and he started at the unexpected sound as one whose nerves were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still sat for a moment puffing hard.
"How," he initiated then abruptly, "I wish you would do me a favour. Will you promise me?"
The younger man did not hesitate, did not question. "If in my power, yes, sir," he said.
That was all, yet better than a complete chapter it told the relation of the two men; the unquestioning confidence of the younger, the trace of almost patriarchal respect that never left his manner when, addressing the elder. "If in my power, yes, sir."
"It isn't much I'm going to ask," continued Landor hurriedly. "It's simply that you and Bess be married at once instead of waiting until the day set." Puff, puff went the pipe as though the speaker were uncertain whether or no to say more. "I have a particular reason for wishing it," he completed inadequately.
For a moment the Indian hesitated; but even then no question was voiced; there was no probing of the confidence the other preferred not to give.
"I will speak to Bess to-morrow if you wish," he said.
Landor lit another match absently and held it to the already glowing bowl; then threw it away, unconscious of what he had done.
"Another thing," he introduced hurriedly. "I'm pretty strong now, but nevertheless I'm getting to be an old man, and so to-day while I was in
town I had Bob Manning witness my will. I know it's all form, but I feel better to have things settled." With forced matter of factness he knocked the burned contents of the pipe into the grate and filled the bowl afresh. "Mary isn't used to having any responsibility, so I left practically everything to Bess. I know that if anything should happen to me you'd take care of her mother."
No answer, though Landor waited expectantly.
"I don't need to ask your promise to be good to Bess." Very different from his usual peremptory self was the big rancher to-night, very obvious, pathetically so, his effort to appear natural. "I know you'll make her happy, my boy."
Even yet there was no response, and the visitor shifted uncomfortably. As well as he knew his own name he knew that his secret was secret no longer. Yet with the instinct of the wild thing that hides itself to die alone he avoided direct mention of the fact, direct wording of the inevitable. But something in the attitude of the motionless figure before him prevented further dissimulation. Some influence urged him to hasten the dénouement which he knew was but postponed. With an effort he straightened in his seat and for the first time met the other's black eyes steadily.
"I did right, don't you think, How?" he questioned directly.
"Right, perhaps; I don't know." A pause. "What I do know is that I'm sorry you did as you did."
"Sorry, How?"
"Yes, sir. Very sorry."
"And why?"
No answer.
The light from the tin reflector had been playing full upon the Indian's face, and now, rising, he shifted it until the corner by the stove was in shadow. "I will tell you why." He returned to his place and stretched himself as before, his hands locked beneath his head. "You are a rich man, Mr. Landor, and Bess is human. She doesn't know what money is yet, but you will compel her to learn. From what I have read and the little I have seen, I think she would be happier if she never knew."
For the third time Landor filled the pipe bowl and lit it with a fragment of coal from the grate.
"I don't see why, How," he refuted.
"You do, though, sir."
"No. Tell me."
There was a long pause, so long that Landor fancied the other would not answer; then of a sudden he found the intense black eyes fixed upon him unshiftingly.
"The reason is because not only Bess but others are human. As we are now I can make her happy, very happy. I know it because—I love her." He paused, and into the tent there came the long-drawn-out wail of the baby prisoner. Silence returned. "As surely as that little wolf is lonely, Bess will know the trouble money brings if you do as you intend. Not myself, but other men will teach her."
Landor was not smoking now. The pipe had gone dead in his fingers.
"Once more I ask why, How?"
The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.
"Because she is white and they are white, and I—am an Indian."
At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true. Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing—as they would do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make it possible!
Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last he turned.
"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and understand the way you feel. God knows I wish it were different, wish I did not believe what you say true; but things are as the are. What we have to do now is the best thing possible under the circumstances." He sat down in the chair again heavily, his hands still locked in his lap. "If wrong has been done I am to blame, I myself, in raising you and Bess together. I might have known that it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for each other; but I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess—"
"Mr. Landor—"
The big man halted. For the first time he realised the admission of what he had been saying, the inevitable implication—and he was silent. For seconds likewise the Indian was still; but in them he was looking at the other steadily, in a way he had never looked at him before, with an intensity that was haunting.
"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There was no anger in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes, pathos—terrible, gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else felt so—everyone except Bess herself; but you—you—I did not know that before, Mr. Landor."
Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the bottom of his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in self-defence; but he could not. There was nothing to say.
"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the repressed voice, "not even when at first you were slow to give your consent to our marriage. I fancied it was merely because you thought me impractical, because I cared nothing for a life that was different, was not my own. Nor again, even a bit ago when you asked me to promise—what I did promise—I did not suspicion such a thing. I thought it a compliment, the sincerest compliment I had ever received in my life: the fact that you should trust me so, with all that was dear to you in the world." Just perceptibly he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's face. "But I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You are like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that we've lived together for half a generation makes no difference. You're square, square to the end. You even like me in a way. You've given your word and won't go back on it; but nevertheless you're sorry. Even while you urge us to marry, to have the thing over, to have a responsibility off your mind, you feel you are sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a second, and even at this time Landor was conscious that it was infinitely the longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't blame you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your race; but nevertheless, nevertheless—"
The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes were of a sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at the roof of the tent. No power on earth could have made him complete that sentence, made him admit the deadly hurt it suggested. From the unusual confidence of a bit ago he merely lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive self. Yet as plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the difference, realised as well that while outwardly there would be no change, from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to exist. He had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the knowledge for the first time in the years they two had lived together he realised how much after all he had grown to depend upon this laconic human, how much he had lost. It was the last drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing straw. His great ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in his hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with his deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them, silence that by word of mouth was to remain unbroken. In it from the stable there sounded again the wail of the lonely baby, and a moment later, muffled, echo-like from the distance, the answering call of one of its own kind free upon the infinite prairie; but apparently neither man noticed, neither man cared—and the silence returned. Long minutes passed. The fire in the stove burned lower and lower. Into the tent crept a suggestion of the coolness without. Then at last Landor roused. Without a word he put on his hat and buttoned his coat. His fingers were unnaturally clumsy and he found the task difficult. Just for a moment he had a wild idea of asking the other's forgiveness, of attempting an explanation where none was possible; but he realised it would but make matters worse, and desisted. The Indian, too, had arisen, and repressedly co urteous, stood ready to open the flap of the tent for the other to pass. For a moment, the last moment they were ever to see each other alive, they stood so, each waiting for the other to speak, each knowing that the other would not speak; then heavily, shufflingly, Landor took a step forward.
The tent curtain opened before him, was held back while he passed; then closed again, shutting him out.
For five long dragging minutes after he was gone the other man remained as he stood, motionless as a bronze statue, as an inanimate thing. The kerosene lamp was burning low now and sputtered dismally; but he did not notice, did not hear. For the third time, tremulous against the background of night and of silence, came the wail of the lonely little captive. It was a kindred sound, an appealing sound, and at last the figure responded. Hatless as he was he left the tent, returned a minute later with something tagging at his heels: a woolly, grey, bright-eyed something, happy as a puppy at release and companionship. Methodically the man banked the coal fire and put out the lantern. He did not make a bed, did not undress. Instead, weary as Landor himself, he dropped amid the buffalo robes, lay still. "Sniff, sniff," sounded a pointed, inquiring nose in the darkness, "sniff, sniff, sniff." There was no response, and becoming bolder, its owner crept close to the face of the silent being on the ground, squirmed a moment contentedly—and likewise became still.