The Eye of Dread

by Payne Erskine

She drew in her breath sharply and clasped her hands in supplication. Had those men seen them? Devoutly 257 she prayed that they might not look up toward the heights where she and her mother sat. As they continued to descend she lost sight of them among the pines and the undergrowth which was more vigorous near the fall, and then they appeared again and went into the cabin. She thought they must have been in the fodder shed when she lost sight of them, and now she waited breathlessly to see them emerge from the cabin. For an hour she sat thus, straining her eyes lest she miss seeing them when they came forth, and fearing lest her mother waken. Then she saw smoke issuing from the cabin chimney, and her heart stopped its beating. What! Were they preparing to stay there? How could her mother endure the cold of the mountain all night?

Then she began to consider how she might protect her mother after the sun had gone from the cold that would envelop them. Reasoning that as long as the Indians stayed in the cabin they could not be seen by them, she looked about for some projecting ledge under which they might creep for the night. Gently she lifted her mother’s head and placed it on her own folded shawl, and, with an eye ever on the cabin below, she crept further up the side of the mountain until she found a place where a huge rock, warmed by the sun, projected far out, and left a hollow beneath, into which they might creep. Frantically she tore off twigs of the scrubby pines around them, and made a fragrant bed of pine needles and moss on which to rest. Then she woke her mother.

Sane and practical on all subjects but the one, Madam Manovska roused herself to meet this new difficulty with the old courage, and climbed with Amalia’s help to their wild resting place without a word of complaint. There she 258 sat looking out over the magnificent scene before her with her great brooding eyes, and ate the coarse corn cake Amalia put in her hands.

She talked, always in Polish or in French, of the men “rouge,” and said she did not wonder they came to so good a place to rest, and that she would give thanks to the great God that she and her daughter were on the mountain when they arrived. She reminded Amalia that if she had consented to return when her daughter wished, they would now have been in the cabin with those terrible men, and said that she had been inspired of God to stay long on the mountain. Contentedly, then, she munched her cake, and remarked that water would give comfort in the eating of it, but she smiled and made the best of the dry food. Then she prayed that her husband might be detained until the men were gone.

Amalia gave her mother the water that was left in the bottle she had brought with her, and lamented that she had saved so little for her. “It was so bad, not to save more for my mamma,” she cried, giving the bottle with its lowered contents into her mother’s hand. “I go to watch, mamma mine. Soon will I return.”

Amalia went back to her point of vantage, where she could see all about the cabin and shed. Still the smoke poured from the chimney, and there was no sign of red men without. It was a mountain sheep they had carried, slung between them, and now they dressed and cooked a portion of it, and were gorging themselves comfortably before the fire, with many grunts of satisfaction at the finding of the formidable owner of the premises absent. They were on their way to Laramie to trade and sell game, and it was 259 their intention to leave a portion of their mutton with Larry Kildene; for never did they dare venture near him without bringing a propitiatory offering.

The sun had set and the cold mists were blowing across from the fall and closing around the cabin like a veil of amethystine dye, when Amalia saw them moving about the cabin door as if preparing to depart. Her heart rose, and she signaled her mother, but no. They went indoors again, and she saw them no more. In truth they had disputed long as to whether it was best to leave before the big man’s return, or to remain in their comfortable quarters and start early, before day. It was the conference that drew them out, and they had made ready to start at a moment’s notice if he should return in the night. But as the darkness crept on and Larry Kildene did not appear they stretched themselves before the fire and slept, and the two women on the mountain, hungry and cold, crept under the mother’s cloak and lay long into the night, shivering and listening, couched on the pine twigs Amalia had spread under the ledge of rock. At last, clasped in each other’s arms, they slept, in spite of fear and cold, for very weariness.

Amalia woke next morning to the low murmuring of a voice. It was her mother, kneeling in the pine needles, praying at her side. She waited until the prayer was ended, then she rose and went out from the sheltered hollow where they lay. “I will look a little, mamma. Wait for me.”

She gazed down on the cabin, but all was still. The amethystine veil had not lifted, and no smoke came from the chimney. She crept back to her mother’s side, and they sat close for warmth, and waited. When the sun rose and the clouds melted away, all the earth smiled up at them, 260 and their fears seemed to melt away with the clouds. Still they did not venture out where they thought they might be spied from below, and time passed while they watched earnestly for the sight of moving figures, and still no smoke appeared from the cabin.

Higher and higher the sun climbed in the sky, yet they could not bring themselves to return. Hunger pressed them, and Amalia begged her mother to let her go a little nearer to listen, but she would not. So they discussed together in their own tongue and neither would allow the other to venture below, and still no smoke issued from the chimney.