The Emigrant Trail Part 8

"There, that's to cool your anger. For I see you're angry though I haven't got the least idea what it's about."

He made no answer, wounded by her lack of understanding. She moved the rose spray against her face, inhaling its fragrance, and watching him through the leaves. After a moment she said with a questioning inflection:

"You were angry?"

He gave her a quick glance, met her eyes, s.h.i.+ning between the duller l.u.s.ter of the leaves, and suddenly dumb before their innocent provocation, turned his head away. The sense of his disturbance trembled on the air and Susan's smile died. She dropped the branch, trailing it lightly across the water, and wondering at the confusion that had so abruptly upset her self-confident gayety. Held in inexplicable embarra.s.sment she could think of nothing to say. It was he who broke the silence with a change of subject:

"In a few days more we'll be at the Platte. When we started that seemed as if it was half the journey, didn't it?"

"We'll get there just about a month from the time we left Independence.

Before we started I thought a month out of doors this way would be like a year. But it really hasn't seemed long at all. I suppose it's because I've enjoyed it so."

This again stirred him. Was there any hope that his presence might have been the cause of some small fraction of that enjoyment? He put out a timid feeler:

"I wonder why you enjoyed it. Perhaps Leff and I amused you a little."

It was certainly a humble enough remark, but it caused a slight stiffening and withdrawal in the young girl. She instinctively felt the pleading for commendation and resented it. It was as if a slave, upon whose neck her foot rested, were to squirm round and recommend himself to her tolerance. David, trying to extort from her flattering admissions, roused a determination to keep the slave with his face in the dust.

"I just like being out of doors," she said carelessly. "And it's all the more odd as I was always wanting to hurry on and catch up the large train."

This was a grinding in of the heel. The large train into which the Gillespies were to be absorbed and an end brought to their independent journeying, had at first loomed gloomily before David's vision. But of late it had faded from the conversation and his mind. The present was so good it must continue, and he had come to accept that first bright dream of his in which he and Susan were to go riding side by side across the continent as a permanent reality. His timidity was swept away in a rush of stronger feeling and he sat erect, looking sharply at her:

"I thought you'd given up the idea of joining with that train?"

Susan raised the eyebrows of mild surprise:

"Why did you think that?"

"You've not spoken of it for days."

"That doesn't prove anything. There are lots of important things I don't speak of."

"You ought to have spoken of that."

The virile note of authority was faint in his words, the first time Susan had ever heard it. Her foot was in a fair way to be withdrawn from the slave's neck. The color in her cheeks deepened and it was she who now dropped her eyes.

"We had arranged to join the train long before we left Rochester," she answered. "Everybody said it was dangerous to travel in a small party.

Dr. Whitman told my father that."

"There's been nothing dangerous so far."

"No, it's later when we get into the country of the Sioux and the Black-feet. They often attack small parties. It's a great risk that people oughtn't to run. They told us that in Independence, too."

He made no answer and she eyed him with stealthy curiosity. He was looking on the ground, his depression apparent. At this evidence of her ability to bring joy or sorrow to her slave she relented.

"You'll join it, too, won't you?" she said gently.

"I don't know. The big trains move so slowly."

"Oh, you must. It would be dreadfully dreary to separate our parties after we'd traveled so long together."

"Maybe I will. I haven't thought about it."

"But you _must_ think about it. There's no knowing now when we may come upon them--almost any day. You don't want to go on and leave us behind, do you?"

He again made no answer and she stole another quick look at him. This mastery of a fellow creature was by far the most engrossing pastime life had offered her. There was something about him, a suggestion of depths hidden and shut away from her that filled her with the venturesome curiosity of Fatima opening the cupboards in Bluebeard's castle.

"We'd feel so lonely if you went on and left us behind with a lot of strange people," she said, with increasing softness. "We'd miss you so."

The young man turned quickly on her, leaned nearer, and said huskily:

"Would you?"

The movement brought his face close to hers, and she shrank back sharply, her hand ready to hold him at a distance. Her laughing expression changed into one of offended dignity, almost aversion. At the same time his agitation, which had paled his cheeks and burst through his shy reserve, filled her with repulsion. For the moment she disliked him. If he had tried to put his hand upon her she would have struck him in quick rage at his presumption. He had not the slightest intention of doing so, but the sudden rush of feeling that her words had evoked, made him oblivious to the startled withdrawal of her manner.

"Answer me," he said. "Would you miss me? Am I anything to you?"

She leaped to her feet, laughing not quite naturally, for her heart was beating hard and she had suddenly shrunk within herself, her spirit alert and angrily defensive in its maiden stronghold.

"Miss you," she said in a matter-of-fact tone that laid sentiment dead at a blow, "of course I'd miss you," then backed away from him, brus.h.i.+ng off her skirt.

He rose and stood watching her with a lover's hang-dog look. She glanced at him, read his face and once more felt secure in her ascendency. Her debonair self-a.s.surance came back with a lowering of her pulse and a remounting to her old position of condescending command. But a parting lesson would not be amiss and she turned from him, saying with a carefully tempered indifference:

"And Leff, too. I'd miss Leff dreadfully. Come, it's time to go."

Before he could answer she was climbing the bank, not looking back, moving confidently as one who had no need of his aid. He followed her slowly, sore and angry, his eyes on her figure which flitted in advance clean-cut against the pale, enormous sky.

He had just caught up with her when from a hollow near the roadside Leff came into view. He had been after antelope and carried his rifle and a hunting knife in his belt. During the chase he had come upon a deserted p.a.w.nee settlement in a depression of the prairie. Susan was instantly interested and wanted to see it and David stood by, listening in sulky silence while Leff pointed out the way. The sun was sinking and they faced it, the young man's indicating finger moving back and forth across the vagaries of the route. The prairie was cut by long undulations, naked of verdure, save a spot in the foreground where, beside a round greenish pool, a single tree lifted thinly clad boughs.

Something of bleakness had crept into the prospect, its gay greenness was giving place to an austere pallor of tint, a dry economy of vegetation. The summits of the swells were bare, the streams shrunk in sandy channels. It was like a face from which youth is withdrawing.

The Indian encampment lay in a hollow, the small wattled huts gathered on both sides of a runlet that oozed from the slope and slipped between a line of stepping stones. The hollow was deep for the level country, the gra.s.sed sides sweeping abruptly to the higher reaches above. They walked through it, examining the neatly made huts and speculating on the length of time the Indians had left. David remembered that the day before, the trail had been crossed by the tracks of a village in transit, long lines graven in the dust by the dragging poles of the _travaux_. He felt uneasy. The Indians might not be far and they themselves were at least a mile from the camp, and but one of them armed. The others laughed and Susan brought the blood into his face by asking him if he was afraid.

He turned from her, frankly angry and then stood rigid with fixed glance. On the summit of the opposite slope, black against the yellow west, were a group of mounted figures. They were ma.s.sed together in a solid darkness, but the outlines of the heads were clear, heads across which bristled an upright crest of hair like the comb of a rooster.

For a long, silent moment the two parties remained immovable, eying each other across the hollow. Then David edged closer to the girl. He felt his heart thumping, but his first throttling grip of fear loosened as his mind realized their helplessness. Leff was the only one with arms. They must get in front of Susan and tell her to run and the camp was a mile off! He felt for her hand and heard her whisper:

"Indians--there are six of them."

As she spoke the opposite group broke and figures detached themselves.

Three, hunched in shapeless sack-forms, were squaws. They made no movement, resting immobile as statues, the sunset s.h.i.+ning between the legs of their ponies. The men spoke together, their heads turning from the trio below to one another. David gripped the hand he held and leaned forward to ask Leff for his knife.

"Don't be frightened," he said to Susan. "It's all right."

"I'm not frightened," she answered quietly.

"Your knife," he said to Leff and then stopped, staring. Leff very slowly, step pressing stealthily behind step, was creeping backward up the slope. His face was chalk white, his eyes fixed on the Indians.

In his hand he held his rifle ready, and the long knife gleamed in his belt. For a moment David had no voice wherewith to arrest him, but Susan had.

"Where are you going?" she said loudly.