Marylyn watched him go. When, having disappeared into the ravine, he came into sight again on the farther side, he turned in his saddle and saw her. He took off his hat and waved it. She answered with a farewell signal, and stood, looking after him, until distance dwarfed horse and rider to a dot.
On the storekeeper's departure, the shack became a scene of action. Lancaster gave over walking the floor and collected bedding for a journey. Marylyn was called in to prepare a box of food for her father—potatoes from the coals of the fireplace, cured pig-meat from the souse-barrel, bread, and a jug of coffee. While Dallas caught the mules, gave them some grain and a rubbing-down with straw wisps, and greased the wagon wheels. All being made ready, the section-boss took leave of his daughters, urging them to keep within the next day when the surveyors came up, and to deny his going. Then, with Ben and Betty at a smart trot, he set off for Bismarck and the land-office.
When he was gone, the squat shack on the bend became vigilant. Ceaselessly its eyes covered the stretch of road between ferry-landing and coulée—ceaselessly, though Dallas alone kept watch for wayfarers. Not until night fell, and the cloud-masked moon disappeared behind the western bluffs, were small blankets pinned into place across the windows, and the peering shock head made sightless.
But even with the house darkened, the early supper eaten and Marylyn asleep in her bed before the hearth, the elder girl still kept on the alert. A nervousness born of loneliness had taken possession of her. If the doorlatch rattled, she raised herself, listening. If Simon rubbed himself against the warm outer stones of the fireplace, she sprang up, a startled sentinel, with wide eyes and clenched hands.
But an hour passed. The wind lulled. Simon lay down. She fell to thinking of the storekeeper. She felt surer than ever, now, that he did not covet the bend. Setting aside the fact that he had brought them good news, she was glad he had come. It gave them a neighbour. And, yes, she forgave him the smile that had provoked her resentment. After all, the name Dallas did sound Texas.
With morning, and the rising of the sun, she was up and doing the few chores about lean-to and shack. But when the surveyors arrived, making short work of their last few miles, she and Marylyn shut themselves in and escaped being seen. The engineers gone toward Clark's, Dallas again took up her watch.
Twice before night she was rewarded. The mail-sergeant passed, bringing a batch of letters to a grateful post; and, late in the afternoon, an Indian runner came into sight from up the Missouri. Scorning to use the ferry, he dropped into the river, where the coulée emptied, and swam across.
The arrival of the scout Dallas associated instinctively with the expected return of the troopers, and felt a relief that she would not have cared to confess to her father. The unusual bustle that marked the next three days at Brannon seemed to justify her belief. Below the barracks, on the level bottom-land, men were busy erecting a strange structure. Tall cottonwoods were hauled from the river and set on end in the sandy ground. As time passed, these came to form a tight, circular pen.
The night of the third day there was activity on the other bank of the Missouri. Unknown to shack and fort, the squalid line of shanty saloons that stretched itself like a waiting serpent along a high bench opposite the new stockade, sprang into sudden life. Two wagons filled with men and barrels crossed the bend and emptied themselves into the dilapidated buildings. And far into the early hours, loud laughter, the click of chips and the clink of glasses disturbed the quiet of the night. At dawn, an officer, standing, field-glass in hand, on the gallery at headquarters, saw two wagons drawn up in front of Shanty Town and called down a curse upon the heads of the sleeping revellers.
"Just see there!" he exclaimed. "Some vermin got wind of the paymaster's coming and are here to fleece the men."