“Speak! Speak!” she cried.
“Blackburn . . . !” he gasped. “Blackburn . . . !”
“My father! Hurt! Take me to him!” said Loseis crisply. She made as if to force her way out through the crowd.
“They . . . are bringing him,” faltered the old man.
Loseis fell back against the door frame. “Bringing him?” she echoed faintly.
The old man’s chin was on his breast. “Blackburn dead!” he said.
Loseis’ arms dropped to her sides; her widened eyes were like tragic black stars. “Dead?” she repeated in quite an ordinary voice. “That is impossible!”
Speech came to the old man. “It was the black stallion,” he cried. “I tell Blackburn, many tam I tell him that horse kill him some day. He jus’ laugh. He say: ‘I lak master that horse.’ Wah! what good master when both are dead! . . . It was the high cut-bank at Swallow Bend. Blackburn, he spur that horse to edge of bank to mak’ him rear and wheel. Blackburn he is laugh lak a boy. The horse is crazy mad. He put his head down. He no stop. He jomp over. He jomp clear in the air. Wah! when I see that, my legs are lak water! When I look over the bank there is nothing but water. Both are gone. We get canoe. Down river I see Blackburn’s leg stickin’ out. We pull him out. His neck is broke. . . .”
The crowd gathered outside the house, broke with a common impulse into a weird, wordless chant of death, the women’s voices rising piercing shrill. There was no sound of human grief in it; and the open-mouthed copper-colored faces expressed nothing either; the bright, flat, black eyes were as soulless as glass. They pointed their chins up like howling dogs.
Loseis clapped her hands to her head. “Stop that ungodly noise!” she cried.