"She's a fine woman," was the response in the younger man's consciousness. "I must speak to the agent about her. I've given her such protection as I could, but he is the man; it is his duty. Duty isn't Ladd's strong point, but perhaps I can ram it gently down his throat. If he doesn't do it, it will lead to trouble," and he looked grim and his teeth set.
He reined in his horse for a moment to take in the beauties of the view. His men had already descended from the mesa into the huge basin that opened out suddenly at their feet, disclosing a dreary waste that was beautiful and absolute, for not a dwarfed tree or a sage-brush or a twig lived there. The wind and rain had cut and carved the hills and mounds into strange and sometimes grotesque shapes, and merged and blended the colored sands, so that they presented versions of the spectrum, sand rainbows, giving brilliancy and color to this dead desolation.
The Bad Lands were buttressed by a ring of sandstone battlements, twisted, tortured, pock-marked, broken away here and there in huge masses, weird and fantastic. Time had painted them the Indian colors—a dull red at the top blending into a faded yellow, then half-way to the valley the dirty drab of earth, looking as if it had been polished with sandpaper, escarped to the plain. He had crossed this trail many times, but never failed to pause on this brink to wonder and admire. It was lucky for the chief of police that just at that moment he raised his hat to wipe his dripping brow, for the report of a rifle rang out, and reverberated again and again among the hills, pockets, and gullies of the Bad Lands. Instantly every policeman sat erect, unslung his rifle from the pommel of his saddle, but with unanimity that told of unusual discipline, they turned and waited for their commander's orders. The latter made a gesture which in the sign language meant "Wait." The men deployed and waited, their eyes sweeping the broken ground before them. Calthorpe looked at his hat, and laughed as he replaced it on his head.
"By Jove," he muttered; "he picked his place. What a mark I was on this sky-line! Don't know how he could have missed me!"
When he had rejoined his men in the valley below, he called to his interpreter:
"Chavanaugh, I think these boys savey my English pretty well by now, but you make sure; explain it again to them when I am not by. You savey Wah-na-gi?"
Chavanaugh signified that he did.
"Well, I want some of my men always near her, pretty close by. Good woman, Wah-na-gi. Pretty bad men all time round loose. No father, no mother, Wah-na-gi! No harm come to Wah-na-gi, savey? Bad come to Wah-na-gi? Well, you kill 'em, kill 'em; anybody; me too! I do wrong, me too. You savey me?"
Chavanaugh paused for a long while, then wiped his brow with painful deliberation, and they rode on.
CHAPTER II