"Sirs, you must aid me. Some say the Cheyennes killed my husband, and others there be who think Abe there did it. More shame to me who has to tell it, but the two had a fight about a woman, some months gone. It was just after pay-day, and husband was drunk; otherwise he'd never have bothered his head about any girl but the one he married.
"There were blows and black eyes, and being a rough man's quarrel, it ended with hand-shaking. My man came home, and we sat by the fire that night, and I took no notice that he'd been wrong, but spoke of our old home in Ohio, and asked him wouldn't he go back there when the contract was finished. And he put his hand on mine, and says: 'Sis, if the cuts and fills on the next mile work to profit, we'll go home.' Just then there came a hiss from the door at our backs, and husband turned sharp and quick. There was a knot-hole in the planks, and its round black mouth, gaping from out in the night at us, had spit the sound into our ears. Husband he rose and went to the door, and fell back dying, with an arrow in his breast. Some said it was a Cheyenne, and others said Abe did it. There were lots of Indian bows in camp, and Cheyennes don't kill for the love of it, but only to steal. I'm going to ask them, if I can catch them, did they do it, and if not, I know who did. I've a bow, Abe, and an arrow too, and I hope his blood isn't on your hands."
"I didn't do it, Ann. I don't shoot no man in the dark," replied our hostler guide, with a sullen defiance, which among that class stands equally well for innocence or guilt. We looked at the two, as they sat for an instant facing each other. The picture was a weird one—a wildcat, fronting the object of its chase, but undecided whether to spring or not. We felt that the dark maniac had been hovering around us, and that this meeting was not altogether accidental. Her disordered brain was yet undecided in which direction vengeance lay, and, like a tigress, she was watching and waiting.
Our policy developed, on the instant, into a non-committal and a safe one. As she wheeled her horse, and left us without a word, we remarked to our guide that crazy folks were often suspicious of their best friends.
"That's so," he replied, and rode off to urge on the wagons. We shrank from the idea of living with a murderer, and acquitted him of the crime on the spot.
We are moving out over the grand, illimitable plain again. Reader, ride with us awhile by the side of that big bison bull, which we have just stirred up from his noonday dream. You see his broad nostrils, reddish just under the dark skin at the end, and sensitive as the nose of a pointer. They have caught the air which we tainted, while passing for a moment across the breeze.
He has seen nothing, and we are still invisible, but he does not stop to look behind. "Escape for your life!" has been as plainly telegraphed from nose to brain, as it could be by eyes or mouth. We were so far off and well hidden then, that those active tell-tales, sound and sight, could play no part in this alarm. But the sentinel nerves of smell fled back from their post on the frontier, with the cry of "Man!" and the beast of the wilderness thinks only of flight. Powerful for defense against the rest of the animal creation, he is coward on the instant before its king.