Tales of Trail and Town - Bret Harte (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

in it. But he was not prepared for the effect produced upon THEM at her first appearance. A few of the braves gathered eagerly around her, and one even addressed her in his own guttural tongue, at which she betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and Peter saw with satisfaction that she drew close to him. Knowing that his old interpreter and Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a hundred miles away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply introduced her as his sister. But he presently found that the braves had added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen demeanor, and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of the agent’s wife, while he prosecuted his business of examination and inspection. Later, on his return to the cabin, he was met by the agent, who seemed to be with difficulty suppressing a laugh.

“Your sister is exciting quite a sensation here,” he said. “Do you know that some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist upon it that she’s A SQUAW, and that you’re keeping her in captivity against your plighted faith to them! You’ll excuse me,” he went on with an attempt to recover his gravity, “troubling you with their d—d fool talk, and you won’t say anything to HER about it, but I thought you ought to know it on account of your position among ‘em. You don’t want to lose their confidence, and you know how easily their skeery faculties are stampeded with an idea!”

“Where is she now?” demanded Peter, with a darkening face.

“Somewhere with the squaws, I reckon. I thought she might be a little skeered of the braves, and I’ve kept them away. SHE’S all right, you know; only if you intend to stay here long I’d”—

But Peter was already striding away in the direction of a thicket of cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women’s and children’s voices. When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on a stump, surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young girls and old women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap. Some of them had already half mischievously, half curiously possessed themselves of her dust cloak, hat, parasol, and gloves, and were parading before her in their grotesque finery, apparently as much to her childish excited amusement as their own. She was even answering their gesticulations with equivalent gestures in her attempt to understand them, and trying amidst shouts of laughter to respond to the monotonous chant of the old women who were zigzagging a dance before her. With the gayly striped blankets lying on the ground, the strings of beads, wampum, and highly colored feathers hanging from the trees, and the flickering lights and shadows, it was an innocent and even idyllic picture, but the more experienced Peter saw in the performances only the uncertain temper and want of consecutive idea of playing animals, and the stolid unwinking papoose in his sister’s lap gave his sentiment a momentary shock.

Seeing him approach she ran to meet him, the squaws and children slinking away from his grave face. “I have had such a funny time, Peter! Only to think of it, I believe they’ve never seen men or women with decent clothes before,—of course the settlers’ wives don’t dress much,—and I believe they’d have had everything I possess if you hadn’t come. But they’re TOO funny for anything. It was killing to see them put on my hat wrong side before, and try to make one out of my parasol. But I like them a great deal better than those gloomy chiefs, and I think I understand them almost. And do you know, Peter, somehow I seem to have known them all before. And those dear little papooses, aren’t they ridiculously lovely. I only wish”—she stopped, for Peter had somewhat hurriedly taken the Indian boy from her arms and restored it to the frightened mother. A singular change came over her face, and she glanced at him quickly. But she resumed, with a heightened color, “I like it ever so much better here than down at the fort. And ever so much better than New York. I don’t wonder that you like them so much, Peter, and are so devoted to them. Don’t be angry, dear, because I let them have my things; I’m sure I never cared particularly for them, and I think it would be such fun to dress as they do.” Peter remembered keenly his sudden shock at her precipitate change to bright colors after leaving her novitiate at the Sacred Heart. “I do hope,” she went on eagerly, “that we are going to stay a long time here.”

“We are leaving tomorrow,” he said curtly. “I find I have urgent business at the fort.”

And they did leave. None too soon, thought Peter and the Indian agent, as they glanced at the faces of the dusky chiefs who had gathered around the cabin. Luckily the presence of their cavalry escort rendered any outbreak impossible, and the stoical taciturnity of the race kept Peter from any verbal insult. But Mrs. Lascelles noticed their lowering dissatisfaction, and her eyes flashed. “I wonder you don’t punish them,” she said simply.

For a few days after their return she did not allude to her visit, and Peter was beginning to think that her late impressions were as volatile as they were childlike. He devoted himself to his government report, and while he kept up his communications with the reservation and the agent, for the present domiciled himself at the fort.

Colonel Bryce, the commandant though doubtful of civilians, was not slow to appreciate the difference of playing host to a man of Atherly’s wealth and position and even found in Peter’s reserve and melancholy an agreeable relief to the somewhat boisterous and material recreations of garrison life, and a gentle check upon the younger officers. For, while Peter did not gamble or drink, there was yet an unobtrusive and gentle dignity in his abstention that relieved him from the attitude of a prig or an “example.” Mrs. Lascelles was popular with the officers, and accepted more tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her harmlessness. Once or twice she was found apparently interested in the gesticulations of a few “friendlies” who had penetrated the parade ground of the fort to barter beads and wampum. The colonel was obliged at last to caution her against this, as it was found that in her inexperience she had given them certain articles that were contraband of the rules, and finally to stop them from an intrusion which was becoming more frequent and annoying. Left thus to herself, she relieved her isolation by walks beyond the precincts of the garrison, where she frequently met those “friendly” wanderers, chiefly squaws and children. Here she was again cautioned by the commander,—

“Don’t put too much faith in those creatures, Mrs. Lascelles.”

Jenny elevated her black brows and threw up her arched nose like a charger. “I’m not afraid of old women and children,” she said loftily.

“But I am,” said the colonel gravely. “It’s a horrible thing to think of, but these feeble old women and innocent children are always selected to torture the prisoners taken by the braves, and, by Jove, they seem to like it.”

Thus restricted, Mrs. Lascelles fell back upon the attentions of Lieutenant Forsyth, whose gallantry was always as fresh as his smart cadet-like tunics, and they took some rides together. Whether it was military caution or the feminine discretion of the colonel’s wife,—to the quiet amusement of the other officers,—a trooper was added to the riding party by the order of the colonel, and thereafter it consisted of three. One night, however, the riders did not appear at dinner, and there was considerable uneasiness mingled with some gossip throughout the garrison. It was already midnight before they arrived, and then with horses blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing every sign of fatigue and disturbance. The colonel said a few sharp, decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent, plucked at his little moustache, but took the whole blame upon himself. HE and Mrs. Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper and got lost; it was late when Cassidy (the trooper) found them, but it was no fault of HIS, and they had to ride at the top of their speed to cover the ground between them and the fort. It was noticed that Mrs. Lascelles scarcely spoke to Forsyth, and turned abruptly away from the colonel’s interrogations and went to her room.

Peter, absorbed in his report, scarcely noticed the incident, nor the singular restraint that seemed to fall upon the little military household for a day or two afterwards. He had accepted the lieutenant’s story without comment or question; he knew his own sister too well to believe that she had lent herself to a flirtation with Forsyth; indeed, he had rather pitied the young officer when he remembered Lascelles’ experience in his early courtship. But he was somewhat astonished one afternoon to find the trooper Cassidy alone in his office.

“Oi thought Oi’d make bould to have a word wid ye, sorr,” he said, recovering from a stiff salute with his fingers nipping the cord of his trousers. “It’s not for meeself, sorr, although the ould man was harrd on me, nor for the leddy, your sister, but for the sake of the leftenant, sorr, who the ould man was harrdest on of all. Oi was of the parrty that rode with your sister.”

“Yes, yes, I remember, I heard the story,” said Peter. “She and Mr. Forsyth got lost.”

“Axin’ your pardin, sorr, she didn’t. Mr. Forsyth loid. Loid like an officer and a jintleman—as he is, God bless him—to save a leddy, more betoken your sister, sorr. They never got lost, sorr. We was all three together from the toime we shtarted till we got back, and it’s the love av God that we ever got back at all. And it’s breaking me hearrt, sorr, to see HIM goin’ round with the black looks of everybody upon him, and he a-twirlin’ his moustache and purtending not to mind.”

“What do you mean?” said Peter, uneasily.

“Oi mane to be tellin’ you what happened, sorr,” said Cassidy stoutly. “When we shtarted out Oi fell three files to the rear, as became me, so as not to be in the way o’ their colloguing, but sorra a bit o’ stragglin’ was there, and Oi kept them afore me all the toime. When we got to Post Oak Bottom the leddy p’ints her whip off to the roight, and sez she: ‘It’s a fine bit of turf there, Misther Forsyth,’ invitin’ like, and with that she gallops away to the right. The leftenant follys her, and Oi closed up the rear. So we rides away innoshent like amongst the trees, me thinkin’ only it wor a mighty queer place for manoovrin’, until we seed, just beyond us in the hollow, the smoke of an Injin camp and a lot of women and childer. And Mrs. Lascelles gets off and goes to discoursin’ and blarneying wid ‘em: and Oi sees Mr. Forsyth glancin’ round and lookin’ oneasy. Then he goes up and sez something to your sister, and she won’t give him a hearin’. And then he tells her she must mount and be off. And she turns upon him, bedad, like a tayger, and bids him be off himself. Then he comes to me and sez he, ‘Oi don’t like the look o’ this, Cassidy,’ sez he; ‘the woods behind is full of braves,’ sez he. ‘Thrue for you, leftenant,’ sez Oi, ‘it’s into a trap that the leddy hez led us, God save her!’ ‘Whisht,’ he sez, ‘take my horse, it’s the strongest. Go beside her, and when Oi say