Where the Trail Divides | Page 4

Will Lillibridge

"Going!" In his unbelief the German's protruding eyes seemed almost
to roll from his face. "To the settlement, of course."
"There is no settlement."
"What?"
Rowland repeated his statement impassively.
"They've--gone?" The tongue had grown suddenly thick again.
"I said so." The look of pity had altered, become almost of scorn.
For a half minute there was silence, inactivity, while despite tan and
dirt and perspiration the cheeks of Hans Mueller whitened. The same
expression of terror, hopeless, dominant, all but insane, that had been
with him alone out on the prairie returned, augmented. Heedless of
appearances, all but unconscious of the presence of spectators, he
glanced about the single room like a beaten rabbit with the hounds
close on its trail. No avenue of hiding suggested itself, no possible hope
of protection. The cold perspiration broke out afresh on his forehead, at
the roots of his hair, and in absent impotency he mopped it away with
the back of a fat, grimy hand.

In pity motherly Mrs. Rowland returned to her seat, indicated another
vacant beside the board.
"You'd best sit down and eat a bit," she invited. "You must be hungry
as a coyote."
"Eat, now?" Swiftly, almost fiercely, the old terror-restless mood
returned. "God Almighty couldn't keep me here longer." He started
shuffling for the door. "Stay here and be scalped, if you think I lie.
We're corpses, all of us, but I'll not be caught like a beaver in a trap."
Again he halted jerkily. "Which way did they go!"
Lower and lower sank Rowland's great chin onto his breast.
"They separated," impassively. "Part went south to Sioux City; part
west toward Yankton." Involuntarily his lips pursed in the inevitable
contempt of a strong man for one hopelessly weak. "You'd better take a
lunch along. It's something of a journey to either place."
Swift as the suggestion, Mrs. Rowland, with the spontaneous
hospitality of the frontier, was upon her feet. Into a quaint Indian basket
of coloured rushes went a roast grouse, barely touched, from the table.
A loaf of bread followed: a bottle of water from the wooden pail in the
corner. "You're welcome, friend," she proffered.
Hans Mueller hesitated, accepted. A swift moisture dimmed his eyes.
"Thanks, lady," he halted. "You're good people, anyway. I'm sorry--"
He lifted his battered hat, shuffled anew toward the doorway.
"Good-bye."
Impassive as before, Rowland returned to his neglected dinner.
"No wonder the Sioux play us whites for cowards, and think we'll run
at sight of them," he commented.
Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through which
Mueller had gone, did not answer.

"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.
Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few mouthfuls,
pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak, and, rising, the man
made his way across the room to put an arm with rough affection
around his wife's waist.
"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.
The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable after her
former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his shoulder.
"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd gone too; but
now,"--her arms crept around his neck, closed,--"but now--now it's too
late!"
For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but involuntarily
his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the woman could not have
turned. He had been looking absently out the door, south over the
rolling country leading to the deserted settlement.
In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was
still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the trembling
heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a spider
on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank and
heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland
watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the
movement of a coyote or a prairie owl, for the simple reason that it was
the only visible object endowed with life, and instinctively life
responds to life. The words of his wife just spoken, "It is too late," with
the revelation they bore, were echoing in his brain. For the first time, to
his mind came a vague unformed suggestion, not of fear, but near akin,
as to this lonely prairie wilderness, and the red man its child. In a hazy
way came the question whether after all it were not foolhardy to remain
here now, to dare that invisible, intangible something before which,
almost in panic, the others had fled. To be sure, precedent was with him,
logic; but--of a sudden--but a minute had passed--his arms tightened;
involuntarily he held his breath.
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