“Who is she?” he asked, fixing his cold blue eyes eagerly on the face of the man he was addressing.
“Don’t know,” said Seth shortly. Then as an afterthought, “Clothes marked M. R.” 50
The blue eyes lowered before the other’s steady gaze.
“Ah,” murmured Nevil. Then he, too, paused. “Is she alive?” he asked at last. And there was something in his tone which suggested a dry throat.
“Yes, she is,” replied Seth. “And,” he said, with unusual expansiveness, “I guess she’ll keep right on doing that same.”
Seth had again betrayed himself.
Nevil seemed half inclined to say more. But Seth gave him no chance. He had no love for this man. He turned on his heel without excuse and left the hotel to attend to the preparation of the buckboard himself.
On his way home that afternoon, and all the next day, the Indians were in his thoughts only so far as this waif he had picked up was concerned. For the most part he was thinking of the child herself, and those to whom he was taking her. He pictured the delight with which his childless foster-parents would receive her. The bright-faced little woman whom he affectionately called “Ma”; the massive old plainsman, Rube, with his gurgling chuckle, gruff voice and kindly heart. And his thoughts stirred in him an emotion he never would have admitted. He thought of the terrible lot he had saved this child from, for he knew only too well why she had been spared by the ruthless Big Wolf.
All through that long journey his watchfulness never relaxed. He looked to the comfort of his patient 51 although she was still unconscious. He protected her face from the sun, and kept cool cloths upon her forehead, and drove only at a pace which spared the inanimate body unnecessary jolting. And it was all done with an eye upon the Reservations and horizon; with a hearing always acute on the prairie, rendered doubly so now, and with a loaded rifle across his knees.
It was dusk when he drove up to the farm. A certain relief came over him as he observed the peaceful cattle grazing adjacent to the corrals, the smoke rising from the kitchen chimney, and the great figure of Rube smoking reflectively in the kitchen doorway.
He did not stop to unhitch the horses, just hooking them to the corral fence. Then he lifted the child from the buckboard and bore her to the house.
Rube watched him curiously as he came with his burden. There was no greeting between these two. Both were usually silent men, but for different reasons. Conversation was a labor to Rube; a twinkling look of his deep-set eyes, and an expressive grunt generally contented him. Now he removed his pipe from his lips and stared in open-mouthed astonishment at the queer-looking bundle Seth was carrying.
“Gee!” he muttered. And made way for his foster son. Any questions that might have occurred to him were banished from his slow-moving thoughts.
Seth laid his charge upon the kitchen table, and 52 Rube looked at the deathlike face, so icy, yet so beautiful. A great broad smile, not untouched with awe, spread over his bucolic features.
“Where’s Ma?” asked Seth.
Rube indicated the ceiling with the stem of his pipe.
“Ma,” cried Seth, through the doorway, up the narrow stairs which led to the rooms above. “Come right down. Guess I’ve kind o’ got a present for you.”
“That you, Seth?” called out a cheery voice from above.
“Guess so.”
A moment later a little woman, with gray hair and a face that might have belonged to a woman of thirty, bustled into the room.
“Ah, Seth,” she cried affectionately, “you jest set to it to spoil your old mother.” Then her eyes fell on the figure on the kitchen table. “La sakes, boy, what’s—what’s this?” Then as she bent over the unconscious child. “Oh, the pore—pore little beauty!”
Rube turned away with a chuckle. His practical little wife had been astonished out of her wits. And the fact amused him immensely.
“It’s a gal, Ma,” said Seth. He too was smiling.
“Gracious, boy, guess I’ve got two eyes in my head!”
There was a long pause. Ma fingered the silken curls. Then she took one of the cold hands in hers and stroked it softly. 53
“Where—where did you git her?” she asked at last.
“The Injuns. I shot Big Wolf yesterday. They’re on the war-path.”
“Ah.” The bright-eyed woman looked up at this tall foster son of hers.
“War-path—you shot Big Wolf?” cried Rube, now roused to unwonted speech. “Then we’d best git busy.”
“It’s all right, father,” Seth reassured him. “The troops are on the trail.”
There was another considerable pause while all eyes were turned on the child. At last Mrs. Sampson looked up.
“Who is she?” she asked.
Seth shook his head.
“Don’t know. Maybe she’s yours—an’ mine.”
“Don’t you know wher’ she come from?”
Again Seth shook his head.
“An’—an’ what’s her name?”
“Can’t say—leastways her initials are M. R. You see I got her from—there that’s it. I got her from the Rosebuds. That’s her name. Rosebud!”
54
CHAPTER V
A BIRTHDAY GIFT
Rosebud struggled through five long months of illness after her arrival at White River Farm. It was only the untiring care of Rube and his wife, and Seth, that pulled her through. The wound at the base of the skull had affected her brain as well as body, and, until the last moment when she finally awoke to consciousness, her case seemed utterly without hope.
But when at last her convalescence came it was marvelously rapid. It was not until the good old housewife began to question her patient that the full result of the cruel blow on her head was realized. Then it was found that she had no recollection of any past. She knew not who she was, her name, her age, even her nationality. She had a hazy idea of Indians, which, as she grew stronger, became more pronounced, until she declared that she must have lived among Indians all her life.
It was this last that roused Seth to a sense of what he conceived to be his duty. And with that deliberateness which always characterized him, he set about it at once. From the beginning, after his first great burst of pitying sorrow for the little waif, when he 55 had clasped her in his arms and almost fiercely claimed her for his own, his treasure trove, he had realized that she belonged to some other world than his own. This thought stayed with him. It slumbered during the child’s long illness, but roused to active life when he discovered that she had no knowledge of herself. Therefore he set about inquiries. He must find out to whom she belonged and restore her to her people.
There was no one missing for two hundred miles round Beacon Crossing except the Jasons. It was impossible that the Indians could have gone farther afield, for they had not been out twenty-four hours when Rosebud was rescued. So his search for the child’s friends proved unavailing.
Still, from that day on he remained loyal to her. Any clue, however frail, was never too slight