The Emigrant Trail Part 18

"I don't want to feel ashamed of you, Missy," he said quietly, and putting her aside went on to the wagon.

She turned away blinded with rage and tears. She had a dim vision of David and fled from it, then felt relief at the sight of Daddy John.

He saw her plight, and hooking his hand in her arm took her behind the tent, where she burst into furious words and a gush of stifled weeping.

"No good," was the old man's consolation. "Do you expect the doctor to lie comfortable in his blanket when there's some one around with a pain?"

"Why did she come? Why didn't she stay at home?"

"That ain't in the question," he said, patting her arm; "she's here, and she's got the pain, and you and I know the doctor."

The McMurdo's prairie schooner rolled off to a place where the lupines were high, and Glen pitched the tent. The men, not knowing what else to do to show their sympathy, laid the fires and cleaned the camp.

Then the two younger ones shouldered their rifles and wandered away to try and get some fresh buffalo meat, they said; but it was obvious that they felt out of place and alarmed in a situation where those of their s.e.x could only a.s.sume an apologetic att.i.tude and admit the blame.

The children were left to Susan's care. She drew them to the cleared s.p.a.ce about the fires, and as she began the preparations for supper asked them to help. They took the request very seriously, and she found a solace in watching them as they trotted up with useless pans, bending down to see the smile of thanks to which they were accustomed, and which made them feel proud and important. Once she heard Bob, in the masterful voice of the male, tell his sister the spoon she was so triumphantly bringing was not wanted. The baby's joy was stricken from her, she bowed to the higher intelligence, and the spoon slid from her limp hand to the ground, while she stood a figure of blank disappointment. Susan had to set down her pan and call her over, and kneeling with the soft body clasped close, and the little knees pressing against her breast, felt some of the anger there melting away.

After that they gathered broken twigs of lupine, and standing afar threw them at the flames. There was a moment of suspense when they watched hopefully, and then a sad awakening when the twigs fell about their feet. They shuffled back, staring down at the scattered leaves in a stupor of surprise.

Sunset came and supper was ready. Daddy John loomed up above the lip of Ash Hollow with a load of roots and branches for the night. Lucy emerged from the tent and sat down by her cup and plate, harra.s.sed and silent. Glen said he wanted no supper. He had been sitting for an hour on the pole of David's wagon, mute and round-shouldered in his dusty homespuns. No one had offered to speak to him. It was he who had induced the patient woman to follow him on the long journey. They all knew this was now the matter of his thoughts. His ragged figure and down-drooped, miserable face were dignified with the tragedy of a useless remorse. As Lucy pa.s.sed him he raised his eyes, but said nothing. Then, as the others drew together round the circle of tin cups and plates, a groan came suddenly from the tent. He leaped up, made a gesture of repelling something unendurable, and ran away, scudding across the plain not looking back. The group round the fire were silent. But the two children did not heed. With their blond heads touching, they held their cups close together and argued as to which one had the most coffee in it.

When the twilight came there was no one left by the fire but Susan and the children. She gathered them on a buffalo robe and tucked a blanket round them watching as sleep flowed over them, invaded and subdued them even while their lips moved with belated, broken murmurings. The little girl's hand, waving dreamily in the air, brushed her cheek with a velvet touch, and sank languidly, up-curled like a rose petal. With heads together and bodies nestled close they slept, exhaling the fragrance of healthy childhood, two sparks of matter incased in an envelope of exquisite flesh, pearly tissue upon which life would trace a pattern not yet selected.

Darkness closed down on the camp, pressing on the edges of the firelight like a curious intruder. There was no wind, and the mound of charring wood sent up a line of smoke straight as a thread, which somewhere aloft widened and dissolved. The stillness of the wilderness brooded close and deep, stifling the noises of the day. When the sounds of suffering from the tent tore the airy veil apart, it shuddered full of the pain, then the torn edges delicately adhered, and it was whole again. Once Lucy came, haggard and tight-lipped, and asked Susan to put on water to heat. Bella was terribly sick, the doctor wouldn't leave her. The other children were nothing to this.

But the Emigrant Trail was molding Lucy. She made no complaints, and her nerves were steady as a taut string. It was one of the hazards of the great adventure to be taken as it came.

After she had gone, and the iron kettle was balanced on a bed of heat, Susan lay down on her blanket. Fear and loathing were on her. For the first time a shrinking from life and its requirements came coldly over her, for the first time her glad expectancy knew a check, fell back before tremendous things blocking the path. Her dread for her father was submerged in a larger dread--of the future and what it might bring, of what might be expected of her, of pains and perils once so far away they seemed as if she would never reach them, now suddenly close to her, laying a gripping hand on her heart.

Her face was toward the camp, and she could not see on the plain behind her a moving shadow bearing down on the fire's glow, visible for miles in that level country. It advanced noiselessly through the swaying bushes, till, entering the limits of the light, it detached itself from the darkness, taking the form of a mounted man followed by a pack animal. The projected rays of red played along the barrel of a rifle held across the saddle, and struck answering gleams from touches of metal on the bridle. So soundless was the approach that Susan heard nothing till a lupine stalk snapped under the horse's hoof. She sat up and turned. Over the horse's ears she saw a long swarthy face framed in hanging hair, and the glint of narrowed eyes looking curiously at her. She leaped to her feet with a smothered cry, Indians in her mind.

The man raised a quick hand, and said:

"It's all right. It's a white man."

He slid off his horse and came toward her. He was so like an Indian, clad in a fringed hunting shirt and leggings, his movements lithe and light, his step noiseless, his skin copper dark, that she stood alert, ready to raise a warning cry. Then coming into the brighter light she saw he was white, with long red hair hanging from the edge of his cap, and light-colored eyes that searched her face with a hard look. He was as wild a figure as any the plains had yet given up, and she drew away looking fearfully at him.

"Don't be afraid," he said in a deep voice. "I'm the same kind as you."

"Who are you?" she faltered.

"A mountain man. I'll camp with you." Then glancing about, "Where are the rest of them?"

"They're round somewhere," she answered. "We have sickness here."

"Cholera?" quickly.

She shook her head.

Without more words he went back and picketed his horses, and took the pack and saddle off. She could see his long, pale-colored figure moving from darkness into light, and the animals drooping with stretched necks as their bonds were loosened. When he came back to the fire he dropped a blanket and laid his gun close to it, then threw himself down. The rattle of the powder horn and bullet mold he wore hanging from his shoulder came with the movement. He slipped the strap off and threw it beside the gun. Then drew one foot up and unfastened a large spur attached to his moccasined heel. He wore a ragged otter-skin cap, the animal's tail hanging down on one side. This he took off too, showing his thick red hair, damp and matted from the heat of the fur. With a knotted hand he pushed back the locks pressed down on his forehead. The skin there was untanned and lay like a white band above the darkness of his face, thin, edged with a fringe of red beard and with blue eyes set high above prominent cheek bones. He threw his spur on the other things, and looking up met Susan's eyes staring at him across the fire.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To California."

"So am I."

She made no answer.

"Were you asleep when I came?"

"No, I was thinking."

A sound of anguish came from the tent, and Susan set her teeth on her underlip stiffening. He looked in its direction, then back at her.

"What's the matter there?" he asked.

"A child is being born."

He made no comment, swept the background of tents and wagon roofs with an investigating eye that finally came to a stop on the sleeping children.

"Are these yours?"

"No, they belong to the woman who is sick."

His glance left them as if uninterested, and he leaned backward to pull his blanket out more fully. His body, in the sleekly pliant buckskins, was lean and supple. As he twisted, stretching an arm to draw out the crumpled folds, the lines of his long back and powerful shoulders showed the sinuous grace of a cat. He relaxed into easeful full length, propped on an elbow, his red hair coiling against his neck.

Susan stole a stealthy glance at him. As if she had spoken, he instantly raised his head and looked into her eyes.

His were clear and light with a singularly penetrating gaze, not bold but intent, eyes not used to the detailed observation of the peopled ways, but trained to unimpeded distances and to search the faces of primitive men. They held hers, seeming to pierce the acquired veneer of reserve to the guarded places beneath. She felt a slow stir of antagonism, a defensive gathering of her spirit as against an intruder.

Her pride and self-sufficiency responded, answering to a hurried summons. She was conscious of a withdrawal, a closing of doors, a shutting down of her defenses in face of aggression and menace. And while she rallied to this sudden call-to-arms the strange man held her glance across the fire. It was she who spoke slowly in a low voice:

"Where do you come from?"

"From Taos, and after that Bent's Fort."

"What is your name?"

"Low Courant."

Then with an effort she turned away and bent over the children. When she looked back at him he was rolled in his blanket, and with his face to the fire was asleep.

Lucy came presently for the hot water with a bulletin of progress growing each moment more direful. Her eyes fell on the sleeping man, and she said, peering through the steam of the bubbling water:

"Who's that?"

"A strange man."

"From where?"

"Taos, and after that Bent's Fort," Susan repeated, and Lucy forgot him and ran back to the tent.

There was a gray line in the east when she returned to say the child was born dying as it entered the world, and Bella was in desperate case. She fell beside her friend, quivering and sobbing, burying her face in Susan's bosom. Shaken and sickened by the dreadful night they clung together holding to each other, as if in a world where love claimed such a heavy due, where joy realized itself at such exceeding cost, nothing was left but the bond of a common martyrdom. Yet each of them, knowing the measure of her pain, would move to the head of her destiny and take up her heavy engagement without fear, obeying the universal law.

But now, caught in the terror of the moment, they bowed their heads and wept together while the strange man slept by the fire.