He made such rapid headway that, before Dallas realised it, the food was gone, the plate scraped clean and the suet direly threatened. He gave her a puzzled look as she put forth a hand objectingly.
"No, no," she said. And while she tore the soft cloth into strips, she put the fat out of reach by slipping it into a skirt pocket.
The bandages ready, she knelt before him and tenderly swathed his wounds.
"There!" she said, as she finished. "Now, you'd better hurry. The soldiers are almost over, and you'll be too late to get across dry."
He scrambled up, but, ignoring her advice, put one hand through a rent in his squaw's waist and began to search for something. Presently, he brought forth a package done up in dirty muslin, and slowly unfastened it. A folded paper as soiled as its wrapper fell out. It was worn through much handling and covered with pencilled words. He handed it to Dallas.
At first, she could not decipher it. But after studying it carefully and placing together several detached bits she was able to make it out. It was written scrawlingly and in a trembling hand.
"The bearer of this [it read] the good chief, Red Moon, I commend to the gentleness and mercy of every God-fearing man and woman. Once, out of the weakness of the flesh, he wept under the tortures of a sun-dance. Since then he has been abused, starved, and spat upon. Yet, hearing from me of Christ, His suffering, and His command to forgive, he has put down his desire to revenge his wrongs in blood, and goes on his way, labouring and enduring in silence. May God be gracious to whomsoever aids this least one among us."
Here the letter ended, but underneath was the signature—so fingered, however, that Dallas could spell out only the word "David"—and a blurred postscript which said:
"I have christened him Charles, and taught him English, but since his punishment he has never——"
The remainder of the paper was illegible.
When Dallas gave it back to the Indian, he wrapped it up carefully and returned it to his bosom. Then he gathered up the scattered chips, lifted his double load to his shoulders, drew his sombre blanket close about him, and shambled slowly away.
"Poor thing!" said Dallas, in compassion.
He stopped to look back.
"Good-by," she said as he went on; "good-by."
When he reached the river-bank, he turned again. The frost-blighted cottonwoods that bordered the Missouri were behind him, gleaming as yellowly as if, during the short, hot summer, their leafy branches had caught and imprisoned all the sunshine. Against that belt of brilliant colour stood out his spare, burdened frame.
Watching, she saw his gaunt face slowly relax in a friendly grin.
CHAPTER IV
MISUNDERSTANDINGS
Snow fell on the very heels of the cavalry. Scarcely were the Indians safe in the stockade and the troopers once more in barracks, when some first flakes, like down plucked by the wind from the breasts of the southward-hastening wild-fowl, came floating out of the sky. Soon the long sumach leaves on the coulée edge were drooping under a crystalline weight, the black plowed strip was blending with the unplowed prairie, and the shock head of the cottonwood shack was donning a spotless night-cap. And so heavy and ceaseless was the downfall that, at supper-time, the sweet trumpet notes of "retreat" were wafted out from Brannon across a covered plain.
When morning dawned, the heavens were cloudless, and the laggard sun, as it rose, shone with blinding glory upon peaceful miles. Nowhere was a sign of wallow, path or road, and the coulée yawned, white-lipped. Even the Missouri was not unchanged. For, away to the northwest, there had been a mighty rainstorm, and the murky river tumbled by in waves that were angry and swollen.
Since his early boyhood, the section-boss had not known snow. Before the previous day, Dallas and Marylyn had never seen it. It was with exclamations of delight, therefore, that, crowding together in the doorway, the three first caught sight of the glistening drifts.
"Pa, it's like a Christmas card," cried the younger girl. And, bareheaded, she ran out to frolic before the shack.
To Dallas, the scene had a deeper meaning. Here was what would discourage and block anyone who had put off necessary improvements! And this would last long after the expiration of that six months! "I guess there'll be no building or plowing now," she said to her father, happily.
He, fully as relieved, returned a confident assent.
A little later, Old Michael, the ferryman, drove by, breaking a track along the blotted road. His ancient corduroys, known to every river-man from Bismarck to Baton Rouge, were hidden beneath layers of overcoats. Through the wool cap pulled down to his collar, two wide holes gave him outlook; a third, and smaller aperture, was filled by the stem of a corn-cob pipe. He was headed for the cattle-camp, the lines over a four-in-hand hitched to three empty wagons, a third team tied to the tailboard of the hindmost box.
On the arrival of the saloon gang, the pilot had left his steamboat in the hands of his two helpers and made his way to Shanty Town. There, in a shingle hut, perched atop a whisky cask, and kicking its rotund belly complacently with his heels, he had wet a throat, long dry, from the amber depths beneath him.
With each succeeding glass, his obligations had grown apace. Nevertheless, for a lifetime of rough service had brought about an immunity that belied his Celtic blood, his brain remained clear, his step steady and his eye unbleared. Thus it happened that when, cut off from grazing, it was necessary for the Shanty Town teams to be returned at once to Clark's, Old Michael was on hand and in condition to take them, and, by so doing, wipe out his drinking-account.
As he came opposite the shack, Marylyn was still running about in the snow, while Dallas was sweeping out some long, narrow drifts that had sifted in through window-and door-cracks. Squinting across at them, he recalled, all at once, a heated conversation that had taken place at Shanty Town the afternoon of the southward departure of a Dodge City courier. And he shook his head sorrowfully.
"Ye'll have yer han's fule before long," he advised aloud, "or it's me that's not good at guessin'." And, lifting the front of his cap, he sympathetically blew the purple bump that served him for a nose till it rang through the crisp air like a throaty bugle.
Farther on, as he sat pondering deeply and letting the leaders choose their course, a horseman came cantering toward him, and drew rein beside his wheel. It was Lounsbury, buried to the ears in a buffalo coat.
"Sure, it's somethin' important, John, that's a-bringin' ye out t'-day," cried Old Michael, roguishly, his brogue disclosing his identity. "It's ayther tillegrams or l-a-a-ydies."
The storekeeper coloured under his visor. "It's nay-ther," he mocked laughingly.
"None o' yer shillyshallin'," warned the ferryman, giving the other a playful whack with his gad. "Oi kin rade ye loike a buke."
"You can't read a book," declared Lounsbury. "But I'll tell you: I'm going to the Lancasters'."
Old Michael nodded, with a sly wink through the portholes of his mask. "Oi knowed it!" he said. Then, after fishing out a tobacco-bag from under his many coats and lighting the corn-cob in the protecting bowl of his palms, "In that case, man, Oi got somethin' t' say t' ye."
He leaned over the wheel confidentially, and Lounsbury bent toward him, so that the smoke of the pipe fed the storekeeper's nostrils. They talked