“Yes,” she said, wearily, as one in whom no hope was left, “I will go. I will mind—the Boss.”
As he laid her gently on the bed, while Mrs. White, aroused from sleep, fluttered aimlessly and drowsily about, he whispered, his breath caressing her cheek:
“You will go to sleep right away, won’t you?”
“I will try. You are the Boss.”
[CHAPTER XII—WAITING]
The man found dead the night the Lazy S was burned out was not easily identified. He was a half-breed, but half-breeds were many west of the river, and the places where they laid their heads at night were as shifting as the sands of that rapid, ominous, changing stream of theirs, which ever cut them off from the world of their fathers and kept them bound, but restless, chafing, in that same land where their mothers had stared stolidly at a strange little boat-load tugging up the river that was the forerunner of the ultimate destiny of this broad northwest country, but which brought incidentally—as do all big destinies in the great scheme bring sorrow to some one—wrong, misunderstanding, forgetfulness, to a once proud, free people now in subjection.
At last the authorities found trace of him far away at Standing Rock, through the agent there, who knew him as of an ugly reputation,—a dissipated, roving profligate, who had long since squandered his government patrimony. He had been mixed up in sundry bad affairs in the past, and had been an inveterate gambler. So much only were the Kemah County authorities able to uncover of the wayward earthly career of the dead man. Of his haunts and cronies of the period immediately preceding his death, the agent could tell nothing. He had not been seen at the agency for nearly a year. The reprobate band had covered its tracks well. There was nothing to do but lay the dead body away and shovel oblivion over its secret.
In the early morning after the return of the men from their unsuccessful man hunt, Gordon, gray and haggard from loss of sleep and from hard thought, stepped out into the kitchen to stretch his cramped limbs. He stumbled over the figure of Langford prone upon the floor, dead asleep in utter exhaustion. He smiled understandingly and opened the outer door quietly, hoping he had not aroused the worn-out Boss. The air was fresh and cool, with a hint of Autumn sharpness, and a premature Indian Summer haze, that softened the gauntness of the landscape, and made the distances blue and rest-giving. He felt the need of invigoration after his night’s vigil, and struck off down the road with long strides, in pleasant anticipation of a coming appetite for breakfast.
Thus it was that Langford, struggling to a sitting posture, rubbing his heavy eyes with a dim consciousness that he had been disturbed, and wondering drowsily why he was so stupid, felt something seeping through his senses that told him he did not do well to sleep. So he decided he would take a plunge into the cold artesian pond, and with such drastic measures banish once and for all the elusive yet all-pervading cobwebs which clung to him. Rising to his feet with unusual awkwardness, he looked with scorn upon the bare floor and accused it blindly and bitterly as the direct cause of the strange soreness that beset his whole anatomy. The lay of the floor had changed in a night. Where was he? He glanced helplessly about. Then he knew.