CHAPTER XVIII
REWARD
The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried. Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.
Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.
Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor, Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy queensware proceeded.
"Good-evening," recognised the Yankee laconically. He hitched along his chair until a space was clear at his elbow. "Draw up and fall to, stranger. Bring the gentleman a chair, Pete."
In silence the Mexican obeyed, and in equal silence returned to his work.
Appetites are keen on the prairie, and not until the meal was complete was there further conversation. Then after, one by one, the cowmen had filed out of doors, the host produced two corn-cob pipes from a shelf on the wall and tendered one across the littered table.
"Smoke?" he again invited laconically.
The visitor fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a couple of cigars.
"Better have one of these instead," he suggested.
Hawkins accepted in silence, and thereafter—for cigars were a rarity on the frontier—puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content. The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of blue, disappeared likewise out of doors. Then, and not until then, the visitor introduced himself.
"My name's Manning, Bob Manning," he said. "I run the store over at the Centre."
The host scrutinised his guest, deliberately, reminiscently
"I thought there was something familiar about you," he commented at last. "I haven't seen you for twenty years; but I remember you now. You're one of the bunch who was with Bill Landor that time he picked up the two kids."
It was the guest's turn to make critical inspection.
"You wouldn't remember me," explained the rancher. "I came in while you were gone, and only saw you the day you returned." The reminiscent look reappeared. "I used to know Landor pretty well when we were on the other side of the river, before the country settled up; but when we came over here we got too far apart and lost track of each other."
The visitor smoked a full minute in meditative silence. At last he glanced up.
"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
"Yes. And the two youngsters grew up and got married and—" Hawkins laughed peculiarly—"made a fizzle of it."
"Knew them personally, did you?" queried Manning.
"No. I haven't seen the young folks for ten years, and I haven't even heard anything of them for six months now." He twirled the cigar with his fingers in the self-consciousness of unaccustomed gossip. "The girl went East with Landor's nephew, Craig, afterward, I understood."
"Yes."
Hawkins puffed at the cigar fiercely; then blew an avenue in the cloud of smoke obscuring his companion's face.
"I'm not usually so confoundedly curious," he apologised, "but, knowing the circumstances, I've often wondered how the affair ended. Did they hit it off well together?"
Manning settled farther back in his chair. One of his gnarled old hands fastened of a sudden upon the arm tightly.
"While the money lasted, yes."
"Money! Did they sell the ranch?"
"Mortgaged it, Craig did, until he couldn't get another cent."
"And then—"
"It's the old story."
"They went to pieces?"
"Craig left her—for another woman." The clawlike hands closed tighter and tighter. "He never really cared for Bess. He couldn't. It seems he was supporting the other woman all the time."
Hawkins sat chewing the stump of the cigar in silence. In a lean-to the cowboys were going to bed. Muffled by the intervening wall came the mocking sound of their intermittent laughter.
"And then what?" asked the rancher at last.
"Bess came back."
"Alone?"
Manning had sunk deeper and deeper into his seat. His face was concealed by the straggling grey beard, but beneath his shaggy brows his old eyes were blazing.
"Yes, she was alone," he said.
The cigar had gone dead in Hawkins's lips, and he lit it jerkily. The blaze of the match illumined a face that was not pleasant to look upon.
"And Craig himself," he suggested, "where is he?"
"He's back at the ranch by this time. He went through town yesterday, just before I left, with a man who wants to buy."
The rancher looked at the other meaningly.
"Back at the ranch—with the Indian?"
Equally directly Manning returned the look.
"Evidently you didn't hear all the story," he said. "The Indian is not there."
"No?" swiftly. "Where is he?"
Manning's free hand, his distorted hand, caught at the table before him.
"That's what I came to ask you," he returned equally swiftly. "He came here, to work for you, six months ago, when he left Bess. Do you mean to tell me you don't know where he is gone?"
Face to face the two men sat staring at each other. The sounds from the lean-to had ceased. In the silence they could hear each other breathing. For perhaps a minute they sat so; while bit by bit on the rancher's face incredulity merged into belief, and belief into understanding perfect.
"Know where he is? Of course I do—now." He leaned back in his chair. "To think that I never suspicioned who he was all the time he was here, or even when he left. I'm an ass, an ass!"
He did not now. "Tell me where he is, if you know."
"About twelve miles from here, unless he's changed camp in the last week." The rancher looked at the other understandingly. "He worked for me until about a month ago. Then he left and started away alone. We never got a word out of him while he was here, not even his name." Of a sudden came realisation complete, and his great bony fist crashed on the board. "I'm dull as a post, but I begin to understand at last, and I'm with you absolutely. I'll take you there to-night, it won't be a two-hour drive. I'll hitch up right now if you're ready."
For the first time in the last tense minutes Manning relaxed. The hand on the chair arm loosened its grip.
"I'm glad you know where he is," he said unemotionally. "I don't think we'll go to-night, though." He fumbled in his pocket and produced two fresh cigars. One he slid across the table to the other man and lit its mate carefully. "I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded things a bit on the way up."
For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly, unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty miles, and there's plenty of time."
Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
"Yes, there's plenty of time—after How Landor knows," he said.
In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam. In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet, they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho had no terror. A rough blind, ingeniously fashioned from weeds and grasses, stood at the water's edge; yet again even of this they were unsuspicious. Now and anon, at long intervals, something happened, something startlingly sudden, bewilderingly loud; and in blind terror they would take wing and vanish temporarily, like smoke. But this something never pursued them, never repeated itself the same day, and invariably after a time they came back, to take up anew, with the confidence of children, the careless thread of their life where it had been interrupted.
Thus it had been for days past. Thus it was of a certain morning in late September. Though it was ten of the clock, they were still there: sleepy brown mallards, glossy-winged teal, long-necked shovellers, greyish speckled widgeon: these and others less common, representatives of all the native tribe. Happy as nature the common mother intended, as irresponsibly idle, they dawdled here and there, back and forth while time drifted swiftly by; and unknown to them, concealed from view within the blind, a dark-skinned man lay watching.
Since before daylight, ere they were yet awake, he had been there. On soundless moccasined feet he had come. Motionless as an inanimate thing, he had remained. Not two rods away the flock were feeding. More than once the water they carelessly spattered had fallen upon him; but he did not stir. He had no gun or weapon of any kind. Though they were within stone's throw, he had not brought even a rock. Unbelievable to an Anglo-Saxon sportsman, he merely lay there observing them. With that object he had come; for this purpose he remained. A long dark statue, he peered through the woven grasses steadily, admiringly; with an instinctive companionship, a mute forbearance, that was haunting in its revelation. Lonely as death itself were the surrounding unbroken prairies. Lonely as a desert of sand, their absolute isolation. Lonely beyond comparison, beyond the suggestion of language, was that silent human in their midst this autumn day.
How long he would have remained there so, idly watching, no one could have told; the man himself could not have told; for at last, interrupting, awakening, a new actor appeared. Answering, with a great quacking and beating of webbed feet, the flock sprang a-wing; and almost before the shower of water drops they scattered in their wake had ceased, a road waggon, with a greybearded old man on the seat, drew up beside the tent.
Then, for the first time in hours, the Indian arose and stretched himself. Still in silence he came back to where the newcomer was waiting.
They exchanged the conventionalities, and thereafter the white man sat eyeing the other peculiarly, analytically.
"Well, where's your game?" he queried at last. "There seemed to be enough around when I came."
The Indian smiled; the smile of one accustomed to being misunderstood.
"I wasn't hunting," he said. "I was merely watching."
A moment longer Manning continued the inspection; then with an effort he dismounted.
"I was over to see Hawkins yesterday on business," he digressed abruptly, "and he said you were out here somewhere, so I thought before I went back I'd look you up." The man was not accustomed to dissimulation, and the explanation halted lamely. "If you don't mind I'll go inside and smoke a bit."
In silence the Indian led the way to the tent and buttoned back the flap. There was but one chair and he indicated it impassively.
"I'm very glad to see you," he said then simply.
Manning lit a pipe clumsily with his crippled hand, and thereafter drew on it deliberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then, however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied, well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this, that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice, with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal, with wh ose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal—if the other wished; but it was for the Indian to request, not him to proffer. With the decision he aroused. In the interval his pipe had gone dead and he lit it afresh suggestively.
"I lied to you a bit ago, How," he confessed abruptly. "It was not Hawkins I came to see at all, but you."
The dark statue did not turn, showed no sign of surprise.
"I thought so," it said simply.
Puff, puff went the white man's pipe, until even though it was daylight, the glow lit up his face.
"You did me a service once," he continued at last, "a big service—and I've not forgotten. I'll go now, or stay, as you wish."
Still the Indian stood in the doorway looking out into the careless, smiling infinite.
"I understand. You have something to tell me, something you think I should know."
The old man thumbed the ashes in the pipe bowl absently.
"I repeat, it is for you to choose."
Silence fell; a lapse so long that, old man as he was, Manning felt his heart beat more swiftly in anticipation. Then at last the Indian moved. Deliberately, noiselessly he turned. Equally deliberately he drew a robe opposite his visitor and, still very erect, sat down on the ground—his long fingers locked across his knees.
"I choose to listen," he said. "Tell me, please."
For the second time, because he needs must be doing something, the white man filled his pipe. The hand that held the tobacco pouch shook a bit now involuntarily, and a tiny puff of the brown flakes fell scattering outside the bowl onto his knee.
"About a month ago"—the speaker cleared his throat raspingly—"on August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker. "It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white."
Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued.
"Go on, please," requested a voice.
"Early yesterday morning"—again the narrator halted perforce, to clear his throat—"just before I left three men went through town on their way to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch house closing the bargain now."
"Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening."
The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by request.
"I have nothing more to say—unless you wish," he repeated in the old formula.
For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the sound, came a question.
"Why,"—the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they looked immovably into those of his companion,—"why, please, was not the mother of the child at least at the funeral?"
"Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two days old."
"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"
"Yes. Several weeks."
"She returned alone?"
"Yes."
"And to stay?"
Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.
"Yes," answered Manning.
"She, Bess, had left her husband?"
"No, Craig had left her."
Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither man noticed the change.
"There was a reason?"
"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."
The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as the sunlight without.
"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"
"It is her ranch no more. It is his."
"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had done? You mean to tell me this?"
Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white man got to his feet, stood so silent.
"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"
"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."
"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come. "There could be but one other way!"
Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted, waiting, postponing the inevitable.
"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly, repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"
To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow fell.
"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."