Five Books

 X  MOTHER LOVE AND SAVAGE PASSION CONFLICT

 It was Sunday, a day later, when Susie came into the living-room and noticed her mother sewing muskrat around the top of a moccasin. It was a man's moccasin. The woman had made no men's moccasins since her husband's death. The sight chilled the girl.

"Mother," she asked abruptly, "what do you let that hold-up hang around here for?"

"Who you mean?" the woman asked quickly.

"That Smith!" Susie spat out the word like something offensive.

The Indian woman avoided the girl's eyes.

"I like him," she answered.

"Mother!"

"Maybe he stay all time." Her tone was stubborn, as though she expected and was prepared to resist an attack.

"You don't--you can't--mean it!". Susie's thin face flushed scarlet with shame.

"Sa-ah," the woman nodded, "I mean it;" and Susie, staring at her in a kind of terror, saw that she did.

"Oh, Mother! Mother!" she cried passionately, dropping on the floor at the woman's feet and clasping her arms convulsively about the Indian woman's knees. "Don't--don't say that! We've always been a little different from the rest. We've always held our heads up. People like us and respect us--both Injuns and white. We've never been talked about--you and me--and now you are going to spoil it all!"

"I get tied up to him right," defended the woman sullenly.

"Oh, Mother!" wailed the child.

"We need good white man to run de ranch."

"But Smith--do you think he's good? Good! Is a rattlesnake good? Can't you see what he is, Mother?--you who are smarter than me in seeing through people? He's mean--onery to the marrow--and some day sure--sure--he'll turn, and strike his fangs into you."

"He no onery," the woman replied, in something like anger.

"It's his nature," Susie went on, without heeding her. "He can't help it. All his thoughts and talk and schemes are about something crooked. Can't you tell by the things he lets drop that he ought to be in the 'pen'? He's treacherous, ungrateful, a born thief. I saw him take Tubbs's halter, and there was the regular thief look in his eyes when he cut his own name on it. I saw him kick a dog, and he kicked it like a brute. He kicked it in the ribs with his toe. Men--decent men--kick a dog with the side of their foot. I saw his horse fall with him, and he held it down and beat it on the neck with a chain, where it wouldn't show. He'd hold up a bank or rob a woman; he'd kill a man or a prairie-dog, and think no more of the one than the other.

"I tell you, Mother, as sure as I sit here on the floor at your feet, begging you, he's going to bring us trouble; he's going to deal us misery! I feel it! I know it!"

"You no like de white man."

"That's right; I don't like the white man. He wants a good place to stay; he wants your horses and cattle and hay; and--he wants the Schoolmarm. He's making a fool of you, Mother."

"He no make fool of me," she answered complacently. "He make fool of de white woman, maybe."

"Look out of the window and see for yourself."

They arose together, and the girl pointed to Smith and Dora, seated side by side on the cottonwood log.

"Did he ever look at you like that, Mother?"

"He make fool of de white woman," she reiterated stubbornly, but her face clouded.

"He makes a fool of himself, but not of her," declared Susie. "He's crazy about her--locoed. Everybody sees it except her. Believe me, Mother, listen to Susie just this once."

"He like me. I stick to him;" but she went back to her bench. The unfamiliar softness of Smith's face hurt her.

The tears filled Susie's eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her mother's passion for this hateful stranger was stronger than her mother-love, that silent, undemonstrative love in which Susie had believed as she believed that the sun would rise each morning over there in the Bad Lands, to warm her when she was cold. She buried her face in her mother's lap and sobbed aloud.

The woman had not seen Susie cry since she was a tiny child, save when her father and White Antelope died, and the numbed maternal instinct stirred in her breast. She laid her dark, ringed fingers upon Susie's hair and stroked it gently.

"Don't cry," she said slowly. "If he make fool of me, if he lie when he say he tie up to me right, if he like de white woman better den me, I kill him. I kill him, Susie." She pointed to a bunch of roots and short dried stalks which hung from the rafters in one corner of the room. "See--that is the love-charm of the Sioux. It was gifted to me by Little Coyote's woman--a Mandan. It bring de love, and too much--it kill. If he make fool of me, if he not like me better den de white woman, I give him de love-charm of de Sioux. I fix him! I fix him right!"

Out on the cottonwood log Smith and the Schoolmarm had been speaking of many things; for the man could talk fluently in his peculiar vernacular, upon any subject which interested him or with which he was familiar.

The best of his nature, whatever of good there was in him, was uppermost when with Dora. He really believed at such times that he was what she thought him, and he condemned the shortcomings of others like one speaking from the lofty pinnacle of unimpeachable virtue.

In her presence, new ambitions, new desires, awakened, and sentiments which he never had suspected he possessed revealed themselves. He was happy in being near her; content when he felt the touch of her loose cape on his arm.

It never before had occurred to Smith that the world through which he had gone his tumultuous way was a beautiful place, or that there was joy in the simple fact of being strongly alive. When the sage-brush commenced to turn green and the many brilliant flowers of the desert bloomed, when the air was stimulating like wine and fragrant with the scents of spring, it had meant little to Smith beyond the facts that horse-feed would soon be plentiful and that he could lay aside his Mackinaw coat. The mountains suggested nothing but that they held big game and were awkward places to get through on horseback, while the deserts brought no thoughts save of thirst and loneliness and choking alkali dust. Upon a time a stranger had mentioned the scenery, and Smith had replied ironically that there was plenty of it and for him to help himself!

But this spring was different--so different that he asked himself wonderingly if other springs had been like it; and to-day, as he sat in the sunshine and looked about him, he saw for the first time grandeur in the saw-toothed, snow-covered peaks outlined against the dazzling blue of the western sky. For the first time he saw the awing vastness of the desert, and the soft pastel shades which made their desolation beautiful. He breathed deep of the odorous air and stared about him like a blind man who suddenly sees.

During a silence, Smith looked at Dora with his curiously intent gaze; his characteristic stare which held nothing of impertinence--only interest, intense, absorbing interest--and as he looked a thought came to him, a thought so unexpected, so startling, that he blinked as if some one had struck him in the face. It sent a bright red rushing over him, coloring his neck, his ears, his white, broad forehead.

He thought of her as the mother of children--his children--bearing his name, miniatures of himself and of her. He never had thought of this before. He never had met a woman who inspired in him any such desire. He followed the thought further. What if he should have a permanent home--a ranch that belonged to him exclusively--"Smith's Ranch"--where there were white curtains at the windows, and little ones who came tumbling through the door to greet him when he rode into the yard? A place where people came to visit, people who reckoned him a person of consequence because he stood for something. He must have seen a place like it somewhere, the picture was so vivid in his mind.

The thought of living like...