Where the Trail Divides | Page 8

passion lurking in the recesses of the human mind stalked brazenly into the open, stood forth defiant, sinister, unashamed. But let it pass. It was but a repetition 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 impassive 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 passed 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 passing 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, muffled 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 massacre 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 dogging 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 massacre now a day old.
"And the rest of your settlement--where are they?"
McPherson told him.
"They all went, you say?"
For the first