At nightfall, a detachment landed on the east bank, divided, and went on a scout in opposite directions. It was only part of Oliver's plan of guarding, for he did one thing more—spoke plainly to Matthews in regard to the bend.
"I advise you to relinquish all claim to the Lancaster place," he said. "I shall allow no warring on girls."
Matthews gave his promise.
During the first few days that followed, Marylyn's heart beat pendulum-like between grief and dread. It was grief when, in a moment of forgetfulness, she found that she had set the table for three; or when, missing her father sorely—for in the past year he had been much with her—she spoke of him to Dallas. At such times, with sweet impartiality, she mourned him as sincerely as she had mourned her mother. But at night, when the detachment came back from its scouting, she felt a terrible dread—dread least the hunt had been successful, and the troopers should ride across the prairie to the shack door, bearing something solemnly home.
Those first days past, however, the sharp edge of her sorrow, together with her fears, wore gradually away. She had the elastic spirit of eighteen. And she was impatient of this new heartache, which possessed none of the romantic qualities of the old. A doubt of her father's death, fostered by Dallas, grew until it became a conviction. He had been taken away, or he had fled; he would return. Meanwhile, though nothing could have induced her to leave the shack after dark, it fretted her sorely, that, in the daytime, she was not permitted to go as far as the grove.
That restriction was the only hardship that the elder girl allowed the younger to bear. Dallas believed that their father had come to mortal harm. But she never shared that belief with Marylyn.
"We got to keep a stiff upper lip, baby sister," she would say, with an encouraging pat. And her smile was always hopeful and cheering.
Mrs. Oliver came daily, and spent her time with Marylyn. She did not feel that Dallas needed buoying—Dallas, quiet, self-poised, and staunch. Yet, all the while, the elder girl was growing wan under the strain. For, having given generously of her strength, there was no one from whom, in turn, she might take. And so her thoughts came often to be of the one who had faithfully watched over them, how faithfully, shown by the fact that catastrophe had followed swift upon his leaving. And in her heart she cried out for him.
The tragedy on the bend furnished a nine days' wonder for Brannon. But the garrison felt little grief over it. Lancaster had earned their dislike by insults open and veiled, and by his determination to cut his family off from every friendly influence. The enlisted men were even inclined to treat his disappearance facetiously. When they heard about the pole, they declared that in his fright over it, he had fired a shot, cut a finger, broken a crutch—and "lit out." One wag announced that the section-boss was mired in some alkali mud-hole; another, that he had been bitten by a polecat; a third composed some doggerel lines in which Lancaster was described as having gone "over the range." Notwithstanding this, the troopers had deep sympathy for the bereaved girls.
Oliver, never too popular, they scored roundly for his treatment of Matthews, and vowed to the latter that he had ample grounds for walking off and leaving the whole "shooting-match." But Matthews gently chided them, reminding them that any moment an interpreter might be badly needed. Furthermore, he said, he would disregard the unfairness shown him, for he knew his duty.