CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I [I Am Saved from Myself]
II [The Wilderness Trail]
III [The Shawnee Scalp-Hunters]
IV [A Meeting in the Wilderness]
V [The Father of Waters]
VI [We Cross the Great River]
VII [The Country of the Dakota]
VIII [The Fight for the Herd]
IX [The Horse Stealers]
X [The Wolf-Brothers]
XI [The Mountain That Was God]
XII [The Altar of Tamanoas]
XIII [We Turn Back]
XIV [The Squat Bowmen]
XV [Kachina]
XVI [In Homolobi]
XVII [The Web of Destiny]
XVIII [Tawannears' Search Is Ended]
XIX [Peter's Boulder]
XX [The Spotted Stallion]
XXI [The Stampede]
XXII [Our Trade with the Tonkawas]
XXIII [My Orenda Saves Us]
XXIV [A Prophet in Spite of Himself]
XXV [Homeward]
XXVI [The End of the Trail]
BEYOND THE SUNSET
CHAPTER I
I AM SAVED FROM MYSELF
There is none like your wanderer to settle himself coseywise by a warm hearth. An outcast and adventurer from boyhood, exiled from England for adherence to the Pretender, my estates forfeited, dependent for bread upon the earnings of my sword in a foreign service, Fate tossed me across the broad Atlantic to this New World of ours—and in one short year I had found Marjory and fortune!
I became straightway as sedate as any Dutch burgher betwixt Port George and the stockade of the Outward. Camp-bred and forest-schooled, I yet discovered zest in the problems of merchantry and exulted in the petty tasks of the householder. I was a model of husbandry. But Fate was not satisfied with its work. Two years of joy I had; then came the fever that the Portuguese snow brought north from the Main to scourge New York. In a week my joy was turned to ashes. She, who had braved the perils of the wilderness with me, wilted and died.
But there is justice in Fate. Give it time, and 'twill rebuild what it has marred, provided always that we who are its toys keep heads up and courage undaunted—easier deeds to write of than to perform, God knows. And truly, the day Fate stepped forward to redress the balance found me with head bowed and spirit breaking, treading bitterly the narrow groove of duties I lacked the will to escape.
I sat at my desk in the counting-room, fumbling through a file of papers. There was a breath of Spring in the air, and outside in the trees of Pearl Street the bluebirds and robins bickered together, and the people who passed the door were no less irresponsibly gay. In all New York, it seemed, none save I lacked cause for pleasure. John Allen, the young Dorset bondman whose liberty I had purchased when I hired him for clerk, whistled between his teeth as he labored his quill across the ledgers—when he was not glancing askance at me. Upstairs I heard the crooning of Scots Elspeth, and the strident plaint of my son objecting to her ministrations.