“Haven’t I always urged you to go with us back to civilization, Joseph?”
“With you for a wife? You don’t know what you are talking about.”
Then—but it was not the first time since Wahnetta had become his property by purchase—he fired himself up with the vile whiskey his company held in stock, and, taking advantage of the English common law, at that time an acknowledged authority in every State and Territory in the Union, he provided himself with a stick, no thicker than his thumb, and beat Wahnetta, his wife, long and brutally.
Captain Ranger had allowed his anger to cool before the sun went down. To his credit be it spoken, he was very much ashamed of himself. “I was like an enraged, unreasoning animal,” he exclaimed aloud. “I might at least have repulsed Joe with kindness. I will write to my father and mother and tell them that my brother who was lost is alive and is found. But I’ll say nothing about the domestic side of his history. It would only grieve them all, and they couldn’t help matters. It is none of my business, anyhow.”
But he could not sleep. The memory of his and Joseph’s boyhood days reproached him, and he thought lovingly, in spite of himself, of the younger brother of whom he had been so proud. Many incidents of their childhood, long forgotten, passed before him with startling vividness.
“Joe saved my life once,” he said, half audibly. “I would have been drowned as sure as fate, when I broke through the ice that day, if he hadn’t saved me at the risk of his own life. Dear boy! I’ll saddle Sukie and go back to see him in the morning.” With this resolution settled in his mind, he fell asleep; but his sleep was fitful. Sometimes the sad, sweet face of his gentle Annie would bend over him, awakening him with a start. A conviction settled more and more strongly upon his mind that he had cruelly wronged his brother, and he would be allowed no rest till he should atone.
Once, long before morning, he saw himself face to face with a raging buffalo bull. It was without eyes, and gazed at him through sightless sockets, and shook its formidable head at him with as much certainty of aim as though its thick and darkened skull were ablaze with light. The beast held the only vantage-ground,—an open plain,—and at his back rose a sheer and inaccessible mountain, up which there was no chance of escape.
XXIII
THE SQUAW ASSERTS HER RIGHTS
The morning found the post-trader with a raging headache. For several minutes after awakening to consciousness he remained motionless, not realizing time or place.
“Oh, mother! my head, my head!” he exclaimed, as he locked his fingers above his throbbing temples. Never before since his marriage had he uttered a cry of pain without bringing Wahnetta to his side. Now no one noticed his groaning. He raised himself upon his elbow and gazed through the open door of his sleeping apartment upon the broad and dusty plain. The sun was already an hour high. Numerous campers had struck their tents, and the teams were moving toward the farther West. He turned his gaze within the tent and regarded Wahnetta with a look and feeling of disgust. She had prepared his breakfast while he slept, and had fed their ravenous brood,—all save the baby in its Indian basket, which was whining pitifully as it blinked its eyes in a helpless attempt to drive away the flies.