Langford of the Three Bars Part 2

She had heard all the arguments before. They had little or no terrors for her now. They were the arguments used by the people back in her eastern home, those dear, dear people, her people-how far away she was!-when they had schemed and plotted so pathetically to keep her with them, the second one to break away from the slow, safe, and calm traditions of her kin in the place where generation after generation of her people had lived and died, and now lay waiting the Great Judgment in the peaceful country burying-ground.

She had listened to them dutifully, half-believingly, swallowed hard and followed her uncle, her father's youngest brother, to the "Land of the Dakotahs," the fair land of promise, right in the face of her fears and the loneliness that loomed before her-a thing with smirks and horns and devil's eyes that would not be suppressed, but perched itself insolently before her, a heart-choking presence, magnified by the mist in her eyes, through all the long, long journey to the west country. It had left her for a while when she had crossed the Sioux and was on Dakota soil at last. It was such a glorious land through which she was pa.s.sing, the fair region of the corn-belt, and such a prosperous land, and the fields spread so broadly. It had been a sunny day with clear skies, one of those days when distances are so infinite in South Dakota, the land of widespread s.p.a.ces. It was indeed a fertile valley through which she was pa.s.sing. There is none better on earth.

When her train had pulled out of Yankton, she reflected with a whimsical smile that she had not yet seen an Indian. To be sure, she had not really expected to see one in feathers and war-paint, but surely an Indian of some description-did not the traditions of her youth run that Dakota was the land of Indians and blizzards? She well remembered-indeed, could she ever forget?-when, a tot of seven or eight, she had run out into the road to gaze after the carry-all that was taking her well-beloved young uncle away, away, into that dreadful land where blood ran like rivers and where people trimmed their clothes with scalps. She even remembered the feel of the warm, yellow dust up to her bare ankles and the dreadful lump that she couldn't swallow when her uncle leaned out and waved his hat vigorously, crying out gayly:-

"Good-bye, little girl, good-bye. If they take my scalp, I'll beg them as a special favor to send it back to you as a keepsake. Don't forget to take good care of it. I was always rather proud of my yaller mop."

He had said more; he had kept on calling to her till the big woods swallowed him. But she had understood nothing after that last awful charge. It had happened more than fifteen years before, but for many and many a day thereafter, sensitive mite that she had been, she would run and hide in the hay-mow whenever she saw her father or the boys coming from town with the mail. It was years before the horror of the expected packet containing the fair hair of her young uncle, dabbled with blood, fell away from her.

Gradually the awfulness of that dread expectation pa.s.sed away. Now, that same dear uncle was a man of power and position in the new land that had graciously permitted him his scalp. Only last November he had been reelected to his third term on the bench of his circuit with a big, heart-stirring majority. In the day of his prosperity he had not forgotten the little, tangle-haired girl who had cried so inconsolably when he went away, and the unaccountable horror in whose eyes he had tried to laugh away on that never-to-be-forgotten day when he had wrenched his heartstrings from their safe abiding-place and gone forth in quest of the pot of gold at the rainbow's end-the first of many generations. Tradition knew no other since his ancestors had felled forests and built homes of hewn logs. Now he had sent for Louise. His court reporter had recently left him for other fields of labor.

There was commotion among her people on receipt of the astounding proposition. She lived over again the dark days of the first flitting.

It might well be her uncle had exaggerated the dangers of life in the new land. It was great fun to shock his credulous relatives. He had surely written them some enormous tales during those fifteen years and more. He used to chuckle heartily to himself at reading some of the sympathizing replies. But these tales were held in evidence against him now that he dared to want Louise. Every letter was brought out by Louise's dear old grandmother and read to her over again. Louise did not half believe them, but they were gospel truth to her grandmother and almost so to her father and mother as well. She remembered the old spirit of fun rampant in her favorite uncle, and while his vivid pictures took all the color from her sensitive face, deep down in her heart she recognized them for what they were worth. The letters were a strange medley of gra.s.shoppers, blizzards, and Indians. But a ten-dollar per diem was a great temptation over a five-dollar per diem, and times were pretty hard on the old farm. More than all, the inexplicable something that had led her uncle to throw tradition to the four winds of heaven was calling her persistently and would not be denied. So she had written to him for the truth.

"My dear child," he had answered, "I live in a little city whose civilization would make some of our good friends in the old home stare.

As for gra.s.shoppers, I believe there was some crazy talk ages ago, but in my day I do well to corner enough scrawny, scared specimens to land a fish in midsummer. Their appalling scarcity is a constant sorrow to me.

Makes me plumb mad even yet to think of the hopeless hours I used to spend blistering my nose on White River, dangling for my finny favorite with dough-b.a.l.l.s. Dough-b.a.l.l.s-ugh! 'Send us more gra.s.shoppers, oh, Lord,' is my daily prayer. As for your last question, I cannot answer it so well. Not enjoying the personal acquaintance of many Indians I cannot tell you much about them. I believe there are a few over on the Crow Creek Reservation and perhaps as many on Lower Brule. I wouldn't be positive, but I think so. Occasionally I meet one coming from that direction. I have heard-mind, this is only hearsay-that there are a handful or so down on the Rosebud Reservation. I wouldn't vouch for it.

You can hear most anything in this day and generation. The few I have met seem mild enough. They appear to be rather afraid of me. Their chief occupations seem to be dog-eating and divorce-getting, so you can see for yourself how highly modern and civilized they are becoming. I am sure you will have no trouble."

Louise had not altogether believed this rollicking letter, but it had helped her to her decision.

Wind City and still no Indians; but there was the dear hero of her childhood. He was much changed to be sure; his big joints had taken on more flesh and he had gained in dignity of deportment what he had lost in ease of movement. His once merry eyes had grown keen with the years of just judging. The lips that had laughed so much in the old days were set in lines of sternness. Judge Hammond Dale was a man who would live up to the tenets of his high calling without fear or favor, through good and evil report. Yet through all his gravity of demeanor and the pride of his integrity, Louise instinctively felt his kindliness and loved him for it. The loneliness fell away from her and a measure of content had come in its place, until the letter had come from the State's attorney up in the Kemah County:-

My dear Miss Dale:-The eighteenth of August is the date set for the preliminary hearing of Jesse Black. Will you come and take the testimony? I am very anxious that the testimony be taken by a competent reporter and shall be grateful to you if you decide to come.

The Judge will tell you about our poor accommodations. Let me recommend to your consideration some good friends of mine, the Willistons, father and daughter. They live three miles northwest of Kemah. The Judge will remember Williston, George Williston of the Lazy S. They are cultured people, though their way of living is necessarily primitive. I am sure you will like it better there than at our shabby little hotel, which is a rendezvous for a pretty rough cla.s.s of men, especially at court time.

If you decide to come, Mary Williston will meet you at Velpen. Please let me know your decision.

Very sincerely, Richard Gordon.

So here she was, going into the Indian country at last. A big State, South Dakota, and the phases of its civilization manifold. Having come so far, to refuse to go on seemed like turning back with her hand already on the plough, so with a stout heart she had wired Richard Gordon that she would go. But it was pretty hard now, to be sure, and pretty dreary, coming into Velpen knowing that she would see no one she knew in all the wide, wide world. The thought choked her and the impish demon, Loneliness, he of the smirk and horns and devil's eyes, loomed leeringly before her again. Blindly, she picked up her umbrella, suit-case, and rain-coat.

"Homesick?" asked the kindly brakeman, with a consolatory grin as he came to a.s.sist her with her baggage.

She bit her lip in mortification to think she had carried her feelings so palpably on her sleeve. But she nodded honestly.

"Maybe it won't be so bad," sympathized the brakeman. His rough heart had gone out to the slim, fair-haired young creature with the vague trouble in her eyes.

"Thank you," said Louise, gratefully.

There was a moment's bewilderment on the station platform. There was no one anywhere who seemed to be Mary-no one who might be looking for her.

It was evening, too, the lonesome evening to those away from home, when thoughts stab and memories sap the courage. Some one pushed her rudely aside. She was in the way of the trucks.

"Chuck it! None o' your sa.s.s, my lad! There's my fist. Heft it if you don't put no stock in its looks. Git out o' this, I say!"

The voice was big and convincing. The man wasn't so big, but some way he looked convincing, too. The truckman stepped aside, but with plucky temerity answered back.

"Get out yourself! Think you own the whole cattle country jest 'cause you herd a few ornery, pink-eyed, slab-sided critters for your salt?

Well, the railroad ain't the range, le' me tell you that. Jest you run your own affairs, will you?"

"Thanky. Glad to. And as my affairs is at present a lady, I'll thank you to jest trundle this here railroad offspring to the back o' this here lady-the back, I say-back ain't front, is it? Wasn't where I was eddicated. That's better. And ef you ain't satisfied, why, I belong to the Three Bars. Ever hear o' the Three Bars? Ef I'm out, jest leave word with the Boss, will you? He'll see I git the word. Yes, sir, you ol' hoss thief, I belong to the Three Bars."

The encounter was not without interested spectators. Louise's brakeman was grinning broadly at the discomfiture of his fellow-employee. Louise herself had forgotten her predicament in the sudden whirlwind of which she was the innocent storm-centre.

The cowboy with the temper, having completely routed the enemy to the immense satisfaction of the onlookers, though why, no one knew exactly, nor what the merits of the case, turned abruptly to Louise.

"Are you her?" he asked, with a perceptible cooling of his a.s.sertive bravado.

"I don't know," said Louise, smiling fearlessly at her champion, though inwardly quaking at the intuition that had flashed upon her that this strange, uncouth man had come to take the place of Mary. "The boldness and license of the cowboys," her aunt had argued. There could be no doubt of the boldness. Would the rest of the statement hold good?

"I think maybe I am, though I am Louise Dale, the new court reporter. I expected Miss Mary Williston to meet me."

"Then you are her," said the man, with renewed cheerfulness, seizing her suit-case and striding off. "Come along. We'll git some supper afore we start. You're dead tired, more'n likely. It'll be moonlight so't won't matter ef we are late a gittin' home."

"Court reporter! I'll be doggoned!" muttered the brakeman. "The new girl from down East. A pore little white lamb among a pack o' wolves and coyotes, and homesick a'ready. No wonder! I'll be takin' you back to-morrow, I'm thinkin', young lady."

He didn't know the "little white lamb" who had come to help Paul Langford and d.i.c.k Gordon in their big fight.

CHAPTER IV

"MAGGOT"

An hour prior to this little episode, Jim Munson had sauntered up to the ticket window only to find that the train from the East was forty minutes late. He turned away with a little shrug of relief. It was a foreign role he was playing,-this a.s.sumption of the duties of a knight in dancing attendance on strange ladies. Secretly, he chafed under it; outwardly, he was magnificently indifferent. He had a reputation to sustain, a reputation of having yet to meet that which would lower his proud boast that he was afraid of nothing under the sun, neither man nor devil. But he doubted his ability so to direct the point of view of the Boss or the Scribe or the rest of the boys of the Three Bars ranch, who were on a still hunt for his spot of vulnerability.

The waiting-room was hot,-unbearably so to a man who practically lived in the open. He strolled outside and down the tracks. He found himself wishing the train had been on time. Had it been so, it-the impending meeting-would now have been a thing of the forgotten past. He must needs fortify himself all over again. But sauntering down the track toward the stockyards, he filled his cob pipe, lighted it, and was comforted. He had a forty-minute reprieve.

The boys had tried most valiantly to persuade him to "fix up" for this event. He had scorned them indignantly. If he was good enough as he was-black woollen shirt, red neckerchief and all-for men, just so was he good enough for any female that ever lived. So he a.s.sumed a little swagger as he stepped over the ties, and tried to make himself believe that he was glad he had not allowed himself to be corrupted by proffers of blue shirts and white neckerchiefs.

He was approaching the stockyards. There was movement there. Sounds of commands, blows, profane epithets, and worried bawlings changed the placid evening calm into noisy strife. It is always a place interesting to cowmen. Jim relegated thoughts of the coming meeting to the background while he leaned on the fence, and, with idle absorption, watched the loading of cattle into a stock car. A switch engine, steaming and spluttering, stood ready to make way for another car so soon as the present one should be laden. He was not the only spectator.

Others were before him. Two men strolled up to the side opposite as he settled down to musing interest.

"Gee!" he swore gently under his breath, "ef that ain't Bill Brown! Yep.

It is, for a fac'. Wonder what he's a shippin' now for!" He scrambled lightly over the high fence of the pen.

"Hullo, there, Bill Brown!" he yelled, genially, making his way as one accustomed through the bunch of reluctant, excited cattle.

"Hullo yourself, Jim! What you doin' in town?" responded the man addressed, pausing in his labor to wipe the streaming moisture from his face. He fanned himself vigorously with his drooping hat while he talked.

"Gal huntin'," answered Jim, soberly and despondently.

"h.e.l.l!" Brown surveyed him with astonished but sympathetic approbation.

"h.e.l.l!" he repeated. "You don't mean it, do you, Jim, honest? Come, now, honest? So you've come to it, at last, have you? Well, well! What's comin' over the Three Bars? What'll the boys say?"