CHAPTER IX
BUFFALO COULEE STARTS TO GUESS
THE “coming-to” of Buffalo Coulee on a winter’s morning was a matter of heavy labor. It was a prolonged, piecemeal process, like the first bubbles rising to the surface of water approaching boiling point.
There was no particular incentive to early rising in Buffalo Coulee at any time, and, human nature being itself, the citizens of the prairie township displayed little enough enthusiasm for undue activity. It was usually well after sunrise that the first pair of eyes looked out on the day, and the first odor of cooking robbed the air of something of its purity.
The morning following Sergeant Fyles’ arrival in Buffalo Coulee it was a woman who first looked out of her doorway upon the cold white world to discover his presence. It would be. For in Buffalo Coulee woman’s emancipation from the drudgery of life was still a fantastic dream without any hope of realization.
Her door opened to permit the passage of a shower of homemade mats, and a few oddments of well-worn rugs. At the same instant a currish dog escaped into the snow as though it were glad. Then the door tried to close. It had already begun to move in that direction. But its movement was checked, and it flung back wide again. A figure swathed in a bulking fur coat filled the opening.
The woman was peering curiously. She was startled. Automatically she propped herself against the door-casing, and, folding her arms, slid her work-worn hands up the sleeves of her coat for warmth.
Her gaze was on the police quarters where smoke was rising from one of its two chimneys. She saw that its single door was standing wide open, and a uniformed man, with a yellow badge to his fur cap, and yellow stripes to his black riding breeches, was leaning over the gateway in the lateral fence surrounding it.
She stood there for a while, hardly believing the thing she beheld, and offering herself a varied assortment of explanations of the phenomenon. She was chaotically startled. She was infinitely more startled than she would have been had she awakened to find half the township shooting up the other half. The police quarters had been as dead as a mortuary for over two weeks.
The chaos of her mental processes was matched by the vocal tangle into which she presently flung herself. And her efforts continued as she darted back into the house, closing the door as she went, as though fearful that the vision she had discovered would pursue her. Her harsh tones startled the remainder of her household into angry wakefulness.
“The Howly Saints defind us!” she cried, in an unmusical Irish brogue that was more than half American. “But he’s rose out o’ the grave like a shadder o’ the shades. He’s along ther’, I tell you, an’ all. He’s standin’ around like the crack o’ Doom, an avengin’ figger o’ scarlit flame lanin’ foreninst his fence, waitin’ around fer his hafbreed wench to come along an’ shtroke him, an’ set him purrin’ loike a thame wolf.”