Where the Trail Divides

by Will Lillibridge

"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.

Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable. Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;

but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes to observe, to pity perchance, then—But let it pass what he did then. It is another tale and extraneous.

Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further than that—they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on—whither no one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again, they were white and he was red—and between them the chasm yawned.

Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished, migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days at a time did not glance without.

Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and en masse, wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day, as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they, and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles. After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks; flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders, appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and gr ew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last, the climax, the finale of the play, came life, animal and vegetable, with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and, following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive, alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."

CHAPTER XV

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable, did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway, he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.