The Plow-Woman Part 3

Ceaselessly its eyes covered the stretch of road between ferry-landing and coulee--ceaselessly, though Dallas alone kept watch for wayfarers.

Not until night fell, and the cloud-masked moon disappeared behind the western bluffs, were small blankets pinned into place across the windows, and the peering shock head made sightless.

But even with the house darkened, the early supper eaten and Marylyn asleep in her bed before the hearth, the elder girl still kept on the alert. A nervousness born of loneliness had taken possession of her. If the doorlatch rattled, she raised herself, listening. If Simon rubbed himself against the warm outer stones of the fireplace, she sprang up, a startled sentinel, with wide eyes and clenched hands.

But an hour pa.s.sed. The wind lulled. Simon lay down. She fell to thinking of the storekeeper. She felt surer than ever, now, that he did not covet the bend. Setting aside the fact that he had brought them good news, she was glad he had come. It gave them a neighbour. And, yes, she forgave him the smile that had provoked her resentment. After all, the name Dallas did sound Texas.

With morning, and the rising of the sun, she was up and doing the few ch.o.r.es about lean-to and shack. But when the surveyors arrived, making short work of their last few miles, she and Marylyn shut themselves in and escaped being seen. The engineers gone toward Clark's, Dallas again took up her watch.

Twice before night she was rewarded. The mail-sergeant pa.s.sed, bringing a batch of letters to a grateful post; and, late in the afternoon, an Indian runner came into sight from up the Missouri. Scorning to use the ferry, he dropped into the river, where the coulee emptied, and swam across.

The arrival of the scout Dallas a.s.sociated instinctively with the expected return of the troopers, and felt a relief that she would not have cared to confess to her father. The unusual bustle that marked the next three days at Brannon seemed to justify her belief. Below the barracks, on the level bottom-land, men were busy erecting a strange structure. Tall cottonwoods were hauled from the river and set on end in the sandy ground. As time pa.s.sed, these came to form a tight, circular pen.

The night of the third day there was activity on the other bank of the Missouri. Unknown to shack and fort, the squalid line of shanty saloons that stretched itself like a waiting serpent along a high bench opposite the new stockade, sprang into sudden life. Two wagons filled with men and barrels crossed the bend and emptied themselves into the dilapidated buildings. And far into the early hours, loud laughter, the click of chips and the clink of gla.s.ses disturbed the quiet of the night. At dawn, an officer, standing, field-gla.s.s in hand, on the gallery at headquarters, saw two wagons drawn up in front of Shanty Town and called down a curse upon the heads of the sleeping revellers.

"Just see there!" he exclaimed. "Some vermin got wind of the paymaster's coming and are here to fleece the men."

A lieutenant sauntered up, putting out his hand for the gla.s.ses. "There wasn't a soul in those huts yesterday," he said.

"No, of course not," sputtered the other. "The devils stayed at Clark's till the punchers got back from Kansas City. Now, they're on hand to keep our guard-house and hospital full. By gad! if I commanded here, I'd have the whole street fired."

"Well," said the lieutenant, "the men have a way of disciplining that kind, themselves. Some day, when a favourite is cut in a brawl or cheated at cards, they'll shoot up the place. If there's anything left, it'll move on."

"It won't do any harm to keep an eye on Shanty Town, all the same,"

declared his companion, fiercely. "Remember the man that ran it last year? Slick, by gad! Why, the paymaster might just as well have stopped over there--he and his ilk got every cent! He wasn't a 'bad' man, mind you--not brave enough for that, but keen-nosed as a moose, conceited as an Indian----"

"What was his name?"

"Oh, d.i.c.k or Vic Something-or-other, I don't know what. He's a bragging renegade, anyway."

Unaware of a reconnoitre, the occupants of the line of shanties slumbered serenely on; and not until noon did high plumes of smoke, straight as the flag-pole on the parade-ground, announce, to the secretly delighted troopers at Brannon, their tardy rising.

Dallas, too, saw the busy chimneys. But while watching them intently from an open window, her attention was attracted, all at once, in the opposite direction. She heard, coming out of the coulee, a chorus of shrill talking, like the pow-wow of a flock of prairie-chickens. Then, a horse snorted, and there was a low rumble of wheels. Thinking that it was her father, she leaned into sight. As she did so a team came scrambling over the scarlet brink, dragging a wagon full of men and women.

As the horses gained the level prairie, their driver laid aside a huge black-snake whip with which he had been soundly whacking them, and looked about. The next moment, Dallas saw him rein in his team and spring to his feet. He was looking toward the shack, and he raised his whip-hand menacingly.

"Look at that! Look at that!" he cried wildly, his voice carrying through the clear air.

All looked where he pointed, and someone in the back of the wagon cursed.

"What d' you call _that_ for luck?" yelled the man, shaking his mittened fist. "If Nick knew that!"

Dallas could not hear the mingled answers of his companion.

"Well, I call it d.a.m.ned----"

A woman reached up and pulled him into his seat. There was another shrill chorus, the man whacked the horses till they reared, and the wagon went rumbling on.

Dallas watched it until it disappeared into the cut at the landing. Then she sank upon a bench. For a long time she sat, dumb and immovable, her eyes on the floor. When, finally, she got up, she felt about her, as if overcome by blindness.

Marylyn had not seen or heard the threatening wagon-driver. Seated comfortably on the robe by the fire, she strung beads and hummed contentedly.

Dallas started toward her--stopped--then moved slowly back to the window, where she took up her watch.

Late that night she sprang from fitful, troubled sleep to hear Simon lowing and moving about restlessly. A few moments afterward, there came a mule's long bray from below the shack, followed by the voice of the section-boss, urging on the team. She found her long cloak and hastened out.

She could not wait for the wagon to stop before calling anxiously to her father. "Did you file?" she asked, walking beside Betty.

Lancaster did not answer, but scolded feebly, as if worn with his long trip. "W'y d' y' fret a man 'fore he c'n git down an' into th' house?"

he demanded. "Ah'm plumb fruz t' death, an' hungry."

She helped him over the wheel and through the door. Then she went back and, in feverish haste, stabled the mules. On entering the shack, now dimly lighted by a fire, she did not need to repeat her question. She read the answer in her father's face.

"No use," Lancaster told her, raising wet, tired eyes to hers. "Th'

claim was gone 'fore ever we got here--filed on las' July." He lay down, muttering in a delirium of grief and physical weariness.

The fire, made only of dry gra.s.s, began to die, the room to darken.

Dallas' face shadowed with it. She was thinking of the level quarter that was to have blossomed under her eager hands; that was to have brought comfort to Marylyn and her crippled father. And now the land was gone from them, had never been theirs--they were only squatters.

Any hour, a nameless man--perhaps he who had gone by that day--might descend upon them and----

The bail of a bubbling pot slipped down the bar that held it, and the vessel clattered upon the hearth. She started as if a gun had exploded at her elbow.

CHAPTER III

DALLAS MAKES A FRIEND

"Y-a-a-as," drawled Lancaster, reflectively, gnawing the while at a fresh slab of tobacco, "we jes' nat'ally mavericked this claim."

A fortnight had pa.s.sed since his return from the land-office. In that time, his fear had slowly vanished, his confidence returned. And he had begun to show streaks of the bravado that, in his stronger days, made him an efficient section-boss. Rosy dreams, even, beset his brain--dreams upon which Marylyn, despising her father's meaner structures (and kept in ignorance of what might, at any moment, raze them), piled many a rainbow palace. For, to the younger girl, certain calico-covered books on the mantel had invested the events of the fortnight just gone with a delightful tinge of romance.

Dallas, however, took a sensible view of their situation. She pointed out that the man who had made an entry for the land would, in all probability, return; and that if he did not, five years, at least, would pa.s.s before the railroad reached them. Meanwhile, the quarter-section should be properly filed upon for possession and farmed for a living.

Now, as she brushed the hearth clean with the wing of a duck, she listened quietly to her father's confident boasting.

"It's this way, m' gal:" he said--he compa.s.sed a goodly quid and shifted it dexterously into the sagging pocket of a cheek--"Inside o' six months after a man files, he's got t' dig a dugout er put up a shanty.

He's got t' do a leetle farm-work, an' sleep on his claim. When thet six months is up, ef he ain't done no buildin' er farmin', th' claim's abandoned, an' th' first man comin' along c'n hev it.

"In _this_ case, th' gent in question ain't built, dug er farmed. Ef he was t' show up an' want this quarter, he could git it by payin' fer our improvements. Ah reckon we'd hev t' sell an' pull our freight. But ef he was t' show up an' _not_ pay like a' honest man, they'd--they'd--wal, they'd likely be a _leetle_ disagreement."

Dallas shook her head. "If he comes before his six months is up and improves, we got to go. That would be the only square thing. Ain't it so?"

"Wal--wal----" began Lancaster, lamely.

"It is," she said. "He filed on the quarter, and we had no right to settle----"

"We _hev_ settled, an' th' lan' 's goin' t' be worth money," broke in her father.