Where the Trail Divides Part 3

"I must, I say!"

"You must not. They'll never find her there. She's safe unless we show the way. Think--as you love her."

"But if anything should happen to us--She'll starve!"

"No. There are soldiers at Yankton, and they'll come--now; and Landor knows."

"Oh, Sam, Sam!"

There was silence. No human being could give answer to that mother wail.

Again time pa.s.sed; seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that were a h.e.l.l of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun sank from sight. In the hot air a bank of c.u.mulus clouds glowed red as from a distant conflagration. For and eternity previous it seemed to the silent watchers there had been no move; now again at last the gra.s.s stirred; a corn plant rustled where there was no breeze; out into the small open plat surrounding the house sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried across the clearing, headed for the protecting gra.s.s, halted at the edge irresolute--scurried back again at something it saw.

"You had best go in, Margaret." The man's voice was strained, unnatural.

"They'll come very soon now. It's almost dark."

"And you?" Wonder of wonders, it was the woman's natural tone!

"I'll stay here. I can at least show them how a white man dies."

"Sam Rowland--my husband!"

"Margaret--my wife!" Regardless of watchful savage eyes, regardless of everything, the man sprang to his feet. "Oh, how can you forgive me, can G.o.d forgive me!" Tight in his arms he kissed her again and again; pa.s.sionately, in abandon. "I've always loved you, Margaret; always, always!"

"And I you, man; and I you!"

It came. As from the darkness above drops the horned owl on the field mouse, as meet the tiger and the deer at the water hole, so it came.

Upon the silence of night sounded the hoa.r.s.e call of a catbird where no bird was, and again, and again. In front of the maize patch, always in front, a dark form, a mere shadow in the dusk of evening, stood out clear against the light of sky. To right and left appeared others, as motionless as boulders, or as giant cacti on the desert. Had Settler Rowland been other than the exotic he was, he would have understood. No Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand.

Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited pa.s.sive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight before him, G.o.d alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch of the cabin roof, appeared two other figures identical with those in front. Foot by foot, silent as death, they climbed up, reached the ridge pole, crossed to the other side. On, on advanced the figures in front.

Down the easy incline of the roof came the two in the rear, reached the edge, paused waiting. Of a sudden, out of the maize patch, out of the gra.s.s, seemingly out of s.p.a.ce itself, came a new cry--the trilling call of the prairie owl. It was the signal. Like twin drops of rain from a cloudless sky fell the two figures on Rowland's head; ere he could utter a sound, could offer resistance, bore him to earth. From somewhere, everywhere, swarmed others. The very earth seemed to open and give them forth in legion. In the mult.i.tude of hands he was as a child. Within the s.p.a.ce of seconds, ere waiting Margaret realised that anything had happened, he had disappeared, all had disappeared. In the clearing before the door not a human being was visible, not a live thing; only on the thatched roof, silent as before, patient as fate, awaited two other shadows, darker but by contrast with the weather-coloured gra.s.s.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Not even the call of the catbird, broke the silence.

Within the darkness of the cabin the suspense was a thing of which insanity is made.

"Sam!" called a voice softly.

No answer.

"Sam!" repeated more loudly.

Again no answer of voice or of action.

In the doorway appeared a woman's figure; breathless, blindly fearful.

"Sam!" for the third time, tremulous, wailing; and she stepped outside.

A second, and it was over. A second, and the revel was on. The earth was not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie owl. As dropped the figures from above there broke forth the Sioux war-cry: long drawn out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth.

Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in their midst. Pa.s.sively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage abandon, of drunken exhilaration in the cunning that had won the game without a shot from the white man's gun, without the injury of a single warrior. They were in haste, and yet they were not in haste. They looted the cabin like fire and then fought among themselves for the plunder. They applied the torch to the shanty's roof as though pressed by the Great Spirit; then capered fiendishly in its illumination, oblivious of time until, tinder dry, it had burned level with the earth. Last of all, purposely reserved as a climax, they gave their attention to the pair of half-naked, bound and gagged figures in their midst. Then it was the scene became an orgy indeed. The havoc preceding had but whetted their appet.i.te for the finale. Savagery personified, cruelty unqualified, deadly hate, primitive l.u.s.t--every black pa.s.sion lurking in the recesses of the human mind stalked brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister, unashamed. But let it pa.s.s. It was but a repet.i.tion of a thousand similar scenes enacted on the swiftly narrowing frontier, a fraction of the price civilisation ever pays to savagery, inevitable as a nation's expansion, as its progression.

It was eight of the clock when came that final warning whistle of prairie owl. It was not yet ten when, silent as they had come, unbelievably impa.s.sive when but an hour before they had been irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows, forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth, they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement, the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man who they knew would return. As pa.s.sed the slow hours toward morning they moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot, almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer rain, the rustle of their pa.s.sing bodies against the dense vegetation a soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.

Night and distance swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined grainfield, the smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the glaring white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the background of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for this, and one other thing--a single sound, repeated again and again, dulled, m.u.f.fled as though coming from the earth itself.

"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its depths that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm afraid!"

CHAPTER III

DISCOVERY

More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close together and pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by numerous portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated, mingled and intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as diverse a gathering of humans as ever graced a single structure even in this land of myriad types. Virtually the entire population of frontier Yankton was there.

Likewise the settlers from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer from the far-away country of the Wahpetons and a trapper from the hunting ground of the Sissetons drifted in together, together awaited the signal of the peace pipe ere returning to their own. Likewise from the wild west of the great river, from the domain of the Uncpapas, the Blackfeet, the Minneconjous, the Ogallalas, came others; for the alarm of rapine and of ma.s.sacre had spread afar. Very late to arrive, doggedly holding their own until rumour became reality unmistakable, was the colony from the Jim River valley to the east; but even they had finally surrendered, the d.o.g.g.i.ng grip of fear, that makes high and low brothers, at their throats, had fled precipitately before the conquering onslaught of the Santees. Last of all, boldest of all, most foolhardy of all, as you please, came the tiny delegation from the settlement of Sioux Falls.

Hungry, thirsty, footsore, all but panic-stricken, for with the actual retreat apprehension had augmented with each slow mile, thanking the Providence which had permitted them to arrive unmolested, a sorry-looking band of refugees, they faced the old smoothbore cannon before the big south gate and craved admittance. Out to them went Colonel William Landor, colonel by courtesy, scion of many generations of Landors, rancher at present, cattle king of the future. The conversation that followed there with the east reddening in the morning sun was very brief, very swift to the point.

"Who are you, friends?" The shrewd grey eyes were observing them collectively, compellingly.

"My name is McPherson."

"Mine is Horton."

"Never mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."

"We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered McPherson who took the lead.

"From where?"

"Sioux Falls."

"Any news?"

Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of ma.s.sacre now a day old.

"And the rest of your settlement--where are they?"

McPherson told him.

"They all went, you say?"

For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he qualified.

"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"

"Yes."

"That you--men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously.