“Yes, John. You see, when a fellow is in hiding among the Indians, with a price set upon his head, and is therefore afraid to go home, he’s nothing but a fugitive from justice; he expects to spend his life there, and never see the face of another white woman; and when there are scores of pretty Indian girls in sight—”
John Ranger jumped to his feet, his fists clinched and his eyes glaring.
“You don’t mean to tell me that my brother is married to—to a—squaw?”
There was ineffable scorn in his tone and manner. It was now Joe’s turn to sink upon the ground and bury his face in his hands. When he again looked at his brother, there was an expression of age and anguish upon his face which had not been there before.
“I am the husband of an Indian woman, and the father of seven half-breed children,” he said with the air of a guilty man on trial for his life. “But there are extenuating circumstances, John. My wife was no common squaw. If you care for me at all, you will not apply that epithet to the mother of my children. She was the daughter of a Mandan chief, who had large dealings with the Hudson Bay Company, and who sent her to England to be educated. You’d hardly think it to see her now, though; for the Indian women fall back into aboriginal customs when they leave the haunts of civilization to return to their people and take up life, especially as mothers, among their own kind and kin. At least, that is what Wahnetta did.”
John Ranger groaned. “My God! has it come to this?” he cried, looking the picture of despair.
“If you had been in my place, you would have married her yourself, John. Nobody has a right to judge another; for no one knows what he will do till he is tried.”
“Don’t you regret the marriage, Joe?”
“It is too late for regrets. The deed is done, and I cannot get away from my fate. Shall we part as friends and brothers? Or is there an impassable gulf between us?”
There was an unspoken appeal in his tone, far stronger than words, which John Ranger remembered for many a day. But he refused his brother’s proffered hand, and said hoarsely, as he sprang to his feet: “Don’t, at your peril, let anybody know that you are my brother!”