Where the Trail Divides by Will Lillibridge

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WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES

By WILL LILLIBRIDGE

Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.

With Frontispiece in Colors
By The Kinneys

1907

CONTENTS

I. PRESENTIMENT

II. FULFILMENT

III. DISCOVERY

IV. RECONSTRUCTION

V. THE LAND OF LICENCE

VI. THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE

VII. A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN

VIII. THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET

IX. THE VOICE OF THE WILD

X. THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED

XI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

XII. WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY

XIII. THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE

XIV. FATE, THE SATIRIST

XV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

XVI. THE RECKONING

XVII. SACRIFICE

XVIII. REWARD

XIX. IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE

CHAPTER I

PRESENTIMENT

The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In
addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
repressed breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand gripping the
butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, the other,
big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a pendulum at his side.

Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in civilisation,
humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it here, solitary, exotic,
no observer would have laughed. Fear, mortal dogging fear, impersonate,
supreme, was in every look, every action. Somewhere back of that curved
line where met the earth and sky, lurked death. Nothing else would have
been adequate to arouse this phlegmatic human as he was now aroused. The
sweat oozed from his thick neck in streams and dripped drop by drop from
the month-old stubble which covered his chin, but apparently he never
noticed it. Now and then he attempted to moisten his lips; but his
tongue was dry as powder, and they closed again, parched as before.

No road nor trail, nor the semblance of a trail, marked the way he was
going; the hazy green fringe far to the east was his only landmark; yet
as hour after hour went by and the sun sank lower and lower he never
halted, never seemed in doubt as to his destination. The country was
growing more rolling now, almost hilly, and he approached each rise
cautiously, vigilantly. Once, almost at his feet a covey of frightened
prairie chickens sprang a-wing, and at the unexpected sound he dropped
like a stone in his tracks, all but concealing himself in the tall
grass; then, reassured, he was up again, plodding doggedly, ceaselessly
on.

It was after sundown when he paused; and then only from absolute
physical inability to go farther. Outraged nature had at last rebelled,
and not even fear could suffice longer to stimulate him. The grass was
wet with dew, and prone on his knees he moistened his lips therefrom as
drinks many another of the fauna of the prairie. Then, flat on his back,
not sleeping, but very wide awake, very watchful, he lay awaiting the
return of strength. Upon the fringe of hair beneath the brim of his hat
the sweat slowly dried; then, as the dew gathered thicker and thicker,
dampened afresh. Far to the east, where during the day had appeared the
fringe of green, the sky lightened, almost brightened; until at last,
like a curious face, the full moon, peeping above the horizon, lit up
the surface of prairie.

At last--and ere this the moon was well in the sky--the man arose,
stretched his stiffened muscles profanely--before he had not spoken a
syllable--listened a moment almost involuntarily, sent a swift,
searching glance all about; then moved ahead, straight south, at the old
relentless pace.

* * * * *

The lone ambassador from the tiny settlement of Sioux Falls vacillated
between vexation and solicitude.

"For the last time I tell you; we're going whether you do or not," he
announced in ultimatum.

Samuel Rowland, large, double-chinned, distinctly florid, folded his
arms across his chest with an air of finality.

"And I repeat, I'm not going. I'm much obliged to you for the warning.
I know your intentions are good, but you people are afraid of your own
shadows. I know as well as you do that there are Indians in this part of
the world, some odd thousands of them between here and the Hills, but
they were here when I came and when you came, and we knew they were
here. You expect to hear from a Dane when you buy tickets to 'Hamlet,'
don't you?"

The other made a motion of annoyance.

"If you imagine this is a time for juggling similes," he returned
swiftly, "you're making the mistake of your life. If you were alone,
Rowland, I'd leave you here to take your medicine without another word;
but I've a wife, too, and I thank the Lord she's down in Sioux City
where Mrs. Rowland and the kid should be, and for her sake--"

"I beg your pardon."

The visitor started swiftly to leave, then as suddenly turned back.

"Good God, man!" he blazed; "are you plumb daft to stickle for little
niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his
son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy
as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This isn't ancient history, man,
but took place this very day. It's Indian massacre, and at our own
throats. The boys are down below the falls getting ready to go right
now. By night there won't be another white man or woman within
twenty-five miles of you. It's deliberate suicide to stand here
arguing. If you will stay yourself, at least send away Mrs. Rowland and
the girl. I'll take care of them myself and bring them back when the
government sends some soldiers here, as it's bound to do soon. Listen to
reason, man. Your claim won't run away; and if someone should jump it
there's another just as good alongside. Pack up and come on."

Of a sudden, rough pioneer as he was, his hat came off and the tone of
vexation left his voice. Another actor, a woman, had appeared upon the
scene.

"You know what I'm talking about, Mrs. Rowland," he digressed. "Take my
advice and come along. I'll never forgive myself if we leave you
behind."

"You really think there's danger, Mr. Brown?" she asked unemotionally.

"Danger!" In pure impotence of language the other stared. "Danger, with
Heaven knows how many hostile Sioux on the trail! Is it possible you two
don't realise things as they are?"

"Yes, I think we realise all right," tolerantly. "I know the Tetons are
hostile; they couldn't well be otherwise. Any of us would rebel if we
were hustled away into a corner like naughty little boys, as they are;
but actual danger--" The woman threw a comprehensive, almost amused
glance at the big man, her husband. "We've been here almost two years
now; long before you and the others came. Half the hunters who pass this
way stop here. It wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a
whole antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of
those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would be in
Sioux City."

"But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the other. "I
don't merely surmise it. I saw it with my own eyes."

"There must have been some personal reason then." Mrs. Rowland glanced
at the restless, excited speaker analytically, almost superciliously.
"Indians are like white people. They have their loves and hates the same
as all the rest of us. Sam and I ran once before when everyone was
going, and when we got back not a thing had been touched; but the weeds
had choked our corn and the rabbits eaten up our garden. We've been good
to the Indians, and they appreciate it."

A moment Brown hesitated impotently; then of a sudden he came forward
swiftly and extended his hand, first to one and then to the other.

"Good-bye, then," he halted. "I can't take you by force, and it's pure
madness to stay here longer." Baby Elizabeth, a big-eyed, solemn-faced
mite of humanity, had come up now and stood staring the stranger
silently from the side of her mother's skirts. "I hope for the best, but
before God I never expect to see any of you again."

"Oh, we'll see you in the fall all right--when you return," commented
Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and without a backward
glance started at a rapid jog trot for the tiny settlement on the river
two miles away.

Behind him, impassive-faced Rowland stood watching the departing
frontiersman steadily, the pouches beneath his eyes accentuated by the
tightened lids.

"I don't believe there's a bit more danger here now than there ever
was," he commented; "but there's certainly an unusual disturbance
somewhere. I don't take any stock in the people down at the settlement
leaving--they'd go if they heard a coyote whistle; but Brown tells me
there've been three different trappers from Big Stone gone through south
in the last week, and when they leave it means something. If you say the
word we'll leave everything and go yet."

"If we do we'll never come back."

"Not necessarily."

"Yes. I'm either afraid of these red people or else I'm not. We went
before because the others went. If we left now it would be different.
We'd be tortured day and night if we really feared--what happens now and
then to some. We came here with our eyes wide open. We can't start again
in civilisation. We're too old, and there's the past--"

"You still blame me?"

"No; but we've chosen. Whatever comes, we'll stay." She turned toward
the rough log shanty unemotionally.

"Come, let's forget it. Dinner's waiting and baby's hungry."

A moment Rowland hesitated, then he, too, followed.

"Yes, let's forget it," he echoed slowly.

* * * * *

"Well, in Heaven's name!" Rowland's great bulk was upon its feet, one
hand upon the ever-ready revolver at his hip, the dishes on the rough
pine dining table clattering with the suddenness of his withdrawal. "Who
are you, man, and what's the trouble? Speak up--"

The dishevelled intruder within the narrow doorway glanced about the
interior of the single room with bloodshot eyes.

His great mouth was a bit open and his swollen tongue all but protruded.

"Water!" The word was scarce above a whisper.

"But who are you?"

"Water!" fiercely, insistently.

Of a sudden he spied a wooden pail upon a shelf in the corner, and
without invitation, almost as a wild beast springs, he made for it,
grasped the big tin dipper in both hands; drank measure after measure,
the overflow trickling down his bare throat and dripping onto the sanded
floor.

"God, that's good!" he voiced. "Good, good!"

After that first involuntary movement Rowland did not stir; but at his
side the woman had risen, and behind her, peering around the fortress of
her skirts as when before she had argued with Frontiersman Brown, stood
the little wide-eyed girl, type of the repressed frontier child.

Back to them came the stranger, his great jowl working unconsciously.

"You are Sam Rowland?" he enunciated thickly.

"Yes."

"The settlement hasn't broken up then?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Is it possible that you don't know, that they don't know?"
Involuntarily he seized his host by the arm. "I've heard of you; you
live two miles out. We've no time to lose. Come, don't stop to save
anything."

Rowland straightened. The other smelled evilly of perspiration.

"Come where? Who are you anyway, and what's the matter? Talk so I can
understand you."

"You don't know that the Santees are on the 'big trail'? of the massacre
along the Minnesota River?"

"I know nothing. Once more, who are you?"

"Who am I? What does it matter? My name is Hans Mueller. I'm a trapper."
Of a sudden he drew back, inspecting his impassive questioner
doubtfully, almost unbelievingly. "But come. I'll tell you along the
way. You mustn't be here an hour longer. I saw their signal smokes this
very morning. They're murdering everyone--men, women, and children. It's
Little Crow who started it, and God knows how many settlers they've
killed. They chased me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave
out yesterday; and since then--But come. It's suicide to chatter like
this." He turned insistently toward the door. "They may be here any
minute."

Rowland and his wife looked at each other. Neither spoke a word; but at
last the woman shook her head slowly.

Hans Mueller shifted restlessly.

"Hurry, I tell you," he insisted.

Rowland sat down again deliberately, his heavy double chin folding over
his soft flannel shirt.

"Where are you going?" he temporised with almost a shade of amusement.

"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. Hans
Mueller had been moving on and on; another half minute and he would have
been behind the base of the hill out of sight; when, as from the turf
at one's feet there springs a-wing a covey of prairie grouse, from the
tall grass about the retreating figure there leaped forth a swarm of
other similar dark figures: a dozen, a score--in front, behind, all
about. Apparently from mother earth herself they had come,
autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked his eyes; then,
as came swift understanding, instinctively he shielded the woman in his
arms from the sight, from the knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears
from over the prairie: not a single call for help. That black swarm
simply arose, there was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic
through the curling heat waves; then one and all, the original dark
figure, the score of others, disappeared--as suddenly as though the
earth from which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.

Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as pale as had
been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against the lintel of the
door.

"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he echoed.

CHAPTER II

FULFILMENT

The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it
was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown
of earth that filled the spaces between--like the longitudinal stripes
of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough
grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares
of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork
of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified
by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature
waves on the surface of a shallow lake. Back of it, stretching
northward, a vivid green blot, lay a field of sod corn: the ears already
formed, the ground whitened from the lavishly scattered pollen of the
frayed tassels. In the dooryard itself was a dug well with a mound of
weed-covered clay by its side and a bucket hanging from a pulley over
its mouth. It was deep, for on this upland water was far beneath the
surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a
rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her
meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it
was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the
spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away the
long, sultry afternoons.

Otherwise not an excrescence marred the face of nature. The single horse
Rowland owned, useless now while his crop matured, was breaking sod far
to the west on the bank of the Jim River. Not a live thing other than
human moved about the place. With them into this land of silence had
come a mongrel collie. For a solitary month he had stood guard; then one
night, somewhere in the distance, in the east where flowed the Big
Sioux, had sounded the long-drawn-out cry of a timber wolf, alternately
nearer and more remote, again and again. With the coming of morning the
collie was gone. Whether dead or answering the call of the wild they
never knew, nor ever filled his place.

Lonely, isolated as the place itself, was Sam Rowland that afternoon of
late August. Silent as a mute was he as to what he had seen; elaborately
careful likewise to carry out the family programme as usual.

"Sleepy, kid?" he queried when dinner was over.

Baby Bess, taciturn, sun-browned autocrat, nodded silent corroboration.

"Come, then," and, willing horse, the big man got clumsily to all fours
and, prancing ponderously, drew up at her side.

"Hang tight," he admonished and, his wife smiling from the doorway as
only a mother can smile, ambled away through the sun and the dust;
climbed slowly, the tiny brown arms clasped tightly about his neck, down
the ladder to the retreat, adjusted the pillow and the patchwork quilt
with a deftness born of experience.

"Go to sleepy, kid," he directed.

"Sing me to sleep, daddy," commanded the autocrat.

"Sing! I can't sing, kid."

"Yes, you can. Sing 'Nellie Gray.'"

"Too hot, girlie. My breath's all gone. Go to sleep."

"Please, papa; pretty please!"

The man succumbed, as he knew from the first he would do, braced himself
in the aperture, and sang the one verse that he knew of the song again
and again--his voice rough and unmusical as that of a crow, echoing and
re-echoing in the narrow space--bent over at last, touched his bearded
lips softly to the winsome, motionless brown face, climbed, an
irresistible catch in his breath, silently to the surface, sent one
swift glance sweeping the bare earth around him, and returned to the
cabin.

Very carefully that sultry afternoon he cleaned his old hammer shotgun,
and, loading both barrels with buckshot, set it handy beside the door.

"Antelope," he explained laconically; but when likewise he overhauled
the revolver hanging at his hip, Margaret was not deceived. This done,
notwithstanding the fact that the sun still beat scorchingly hot
thereon, he returned to the doorstep, lit his pipe, drew his
weather-stained sombrero low over his face, through half-closed eyes
inspected the lower lands all about, impassively silent awaited the
coming of the inevitable. Of a sudden there was a touch on his shoulder,
and, involuntarily starting, he looked up, into the face of Margaret
Rowland.

The woman sat down beside him, her hand on his knee.

"Don't keep it from me," she requested steadily. "You've seen
something."

In the brier bowl before his face the tobacco glowed more brightly as
Rowland drew hard.

"Tell me, please," repeated Margaret. "Are they here?"

The pipe left the man's mouth. The great bushy head nodded reluctant
corroboration.

"Yes," he said.

"You--saw them?"

Again the man's head spoke an affirmative. "It's perhaps as well, after
all, for you to know." One hand indicated the foot of the rise before
them. "They waylaid Mueller there."

"And you--"

"It was all over in a second." Puff, puff. "After all he--Margaret!"

"Don't mind me. I was thinking of baby. The hideous suggestion!"

"Margaret!" He held her tight, so tight he could feel the quiver of her
body against his, the involuntary catch of her breath. "Forgive me,
Margaret."

"You're not to blame. Perhaps--Oh, Sam, Sam, our baby!"

Hotter and hotter beat down the sun. Thicker and thicker above the
scorching earth vibrated the curling heat waves. The very breath of
prairie seemed dormant, stifled. Not the leaf of a sunflower stirred, or
a blade of grass. In the tiny patch of Indian corn each individual plant
drooped, almost like a sensate thing, beneath the rays, each broad leaf
contracted, like a roll of parchment, tight upon the parent stalk. In
sympathy the colour scheme of the whole lightened from the appearance of
the paler green under-surface. Though silently, yet as plainly as had
done Hans Mueller when fighting for life, they lifted the single plea:
"Water! Water! Give us drink!"

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