The Westerners Part 11

"Know Billy Knapp?" ruminated an old plainsman once. "Billy Knapp?

Seems to me I do; he's the feller that would buy the co't house yonder if he could get trusted for it, ain't he?"

It described him. And as in the old days his prestige had depended on individual prowess of a rather spectacular order, it came about that Billy was just a little fond of strutting. He liked to play the patron, he liked to distribute favors, to treat to drinks, to stand as the representative of great unseen forces, whether of military power in the old days, or of extensive capital in these latter.

For a great many years this vanity had remained ungratified. Billy had not the virtues to succeed in the rising commercialism of the new West.

After the last great campaign against the Sioux, he found his usual occupations almost wiped from the slate. The plains were as safe as Illinois. He picked up a livelihood still, mainly by reason of his wonderful gift of persuasion, for Billy could talk black white, if only the particular shade and the discussion were situated in the West. He drove stage, broke horses, bossed cattle outfits, and finally drifted into prospecting.

There his chance came. By a lucky stroke of trading he became possessed of some really good quartz claims and a small sum of ready cash. Two weeks later he was in Chicago. It was his first trip east of the Mississippi, but he knew just what he wanted, and he got it.

Three days of Billy's golden oratory led to the purchase by an Eastern syndicate of an option on his group of claims, and the understanding that toward the middle of the following summer a committee of owners should visit the property in order to discuss ways and means of developing the various quartz leads.

The delighted Billy returned to Copper Creek. There at last he found himself the important figure he had always dreamed of being. He posed to himself and to everybody else. The camp gradually filled, and the claims round about were snapped up greedily.

Lafond had easily kept himself informed of all this. It was sufficiently notorious. Now when he came to a realization that the next move in his game of life was due and that he should put to its appointed use the power he had so long ama.s.sed, he decided to study Billy Knapp in order to see which of the four--property, reputation, honor or love--that volatile individual held most dear. He could make a shrewd guess, but he wanted to be on the ground. And as he thought about it, there came to him a great wave of enthusiasm and eagerness over this game he was about to play; a delight in the magnitude of the stakes and the power of the instruments employed, an intellectual glorying quite different and separated from his personal feelings in the matter, or that religious obligation of it which lay at the back of his soul.

XIV

INTO THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS

The first thing Michal Lafond did in pursuance of his new determination was to visit the Spotted Tail reservation in order to reclaim the girl henceforth to be known as Molly Lafond.

No one knows why he had followed out his first impulse to preserve her life and bring her up. After a time, however, she came to symbolize, in his half-mystical perception of such things, the first cause of all that had happened. Personally he liked her because she was such a free, independent, fiery little creature. He liked to talk to her and be ordered about by her. He liked also to watch the graceful, decisive movements of her lithe young body and the sparkle of her hair. She looked a good deal like her mother.

He even listened with what would appear to be close sympathy to her complaints of the agent's wife and the life to be led at a reservation.

She and the agent's wife never did get on well. The latter was a stern, commonplace, fat woman without sympathy. And the life! There were no men, nothing but Indians. All you could do was to read all day and all the evening, or ride straight out in any given direction that led nowhere. Michal Lafond, in his semi-annual visits, was inclined to agree with her and even to pity her a little. His personal likings were on the surface, and had nothing whatever to do with the deeps of his nature.

Just as the surest way of satisfying his thirst for revenge upon Billy Knapp was to deprive the man of his reputation and his property, so he had determined to make of Molly a dance-hall girl, like Colorado Jenny.

It would deprive her of virtue and good name, the things a woman holds most dear. He also felt keenly, in his instinctive dramatic sense, the fitness of throwing this fine-fibred daughter of a n.o.bler race to the hungry pa.s.sions, of watching her reversion little by little to the brute type; but a formulation of it never came to the surface of his mind. And yet, I must repeat, there was in one sense nothing personal in this. Lafond felt no aversion to the girl herself. He took no pleasure in the thought of cursing her or beating her, as might a man seeking a hotter revenge. It was just cold, malignant, calculating hate of something in opposition to him, which she symbolized.

This intellectual form of hatred is a peculiar characteristic of half-breeds.

When Lafond suggested to Molly that she should leave the agency and take up her residence with him in Copper Creek, she a.s.sented very gladly, for she felt her present life insupportable. The day before, she and Mrs. Sweeney, the agent's wife, had come into violent collision.

"Where was you yesterday afternoon?" Mrs. Sweeney had asked, as Molly came into the kitchen.

It was before breakfast, so Molly shrugged an impatient shoulder.

"Riding," she replied briefly.

"Riding where?" insisted Mrs. Sweeney with heavy persistency.

"Over west."

"See anybody?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

The old lady wound her hands in her ap.r.o.n and fixed her charge severely with her eye.

"Strange how blind some folks is," she went on after a moment. "Now, I was indoors washing an' I see that young sergeant over there scoutin'

'round."

The words were simple; the tone was not.

"What do you mean?" cried Molly sharply. "Do you mean to say I was riding with him?"

Mrs. Sweeney wagged her head with aggravating sagacity.

"n.o.body needn't put on no shoe that don't fit 'em," she said, and sighed with the air of a martyr who has discovered all and is disappointed.

Molly knew that her question had been justified by the woman's insinuation, that she had put on no shoe, and that if there were a martyr in the room it was not the agent's wife. Thereupon she said things excitedly. The agent's wife a.s.sumed an injured placidity, than which there is nothing more aggravating. Finally Molly flounced out of the room.

The agent's wife, being utterly in the wrong, sulked after the manner of women for the rest of the day, and had to be sued for forgiveness.

And yet next day, when Molly and the half-breed drove away, Mrs.

Sweeney remembered that the girl had been with them nearly fifteen years, and wept; and the agent booted a trespa.s.sing Indian from his office with unwonted energy.

Molly, on the other hand, was as happy as a lark. Every man knows the thrill of antic.i.p.ation when he stows the gun case under the seat and induces the pointer to curl up in the straw, just as every woman knows the delight of an entrance to a room which her presence brightens more than any other's. Molly experienced the same thrill, the same delight.

She had the instincts of the coquette; the confidence of inexperience; the false ideals of a knowledge drawn from books and speculation; and her heart had not yet awakened her conscience. She looked forward to her own power over men, for she was intelligent, and realized the extent both of her charms and of her knowledge. The latter was not inextensive, for in her reading she had enjoyed the overwhelming advantage of heredity. Heredity is a little scheme by which, to a great extent, one recognizes knowledge, instead of acquiring it.

They drove along for some distance without speaking. The girl was too happy and the half-breed too preoccupied to talk.

"Mike," she commanded suddenly after a time, "quit that smoking. I don't like it."

The half-breed hesitated, narrowing his brow, and looking straight ahead. Then he silently knocked the ashes from his pipe and slipped it into his pocket. Molly's eyes flashed with triumphant amus.e.m.e.nt. The game had begun. After a time the sun sank into the dark hills, and the great shadow of Harney crept out of them.

The wagon rattled down a short incline to the broad, shallow bed of the Cheyenne. Molly turned it aside into a little gra.s.s plat.

"We'll camp here to-night," she announced.

"There is better water two mile further, on the trail, on Fall River,"

said Lafond, without moving.

"I said we'd camp here!" repeated the girl sharply.

The half-breed descended and began to unharness the horses.

XV