The Watchers of the Plains

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  “Guess ther’ was suthin’ in that letter you didn’t read, Ma?” he said without preamble.

  Ma looked up. Her bright eyes peered keenly through her spectacles into her husband’s massive face.

  “An’ if ther’ was?” she said interrogatively.

  The old man shrugged.

  “Guess I was wonderin’,” he said, plying his knife and fork with some show of indifference.

  A silence followed. Ma helped herself to more tea and refilled her husband’s mug.

  “Guess we’ll have to tell the child,” she said presently.

  “Seems like.”

  A longer silence followed.

  “She was jest askin’ why Seth didn’t write.”

  “I kind o’ figgered suthin’ o’ that natur’. You’d best tell her.”

  Rube rested the ends of his knife and fork on the extremities of his plate and took a noisy draught from his huge mug of tea. A quiet smile lurked in the old woman’s eyes.

  “Rosebud’s mighty impulsive,” she observed slowly.

  “Ef you mean she kind o’ jumps at things, I take it that’s how.”

  The old woman nodded, and a reflection of her smile twinkled in her husband’s eyes as he gazed over at the little figure opposite him.

  “Wal,” said Rube, expansively, “it ain’t fer me to tell you, Ma, but we’ve got our dooty. Guess I ain’t a heap at writin’ fancy notions, but mebbe I ken help some. Y’ see it’s you an’ me. I ’lows Seth would hate to worrit Rosie wi’ things, but as I said we’ve got our dooty, an’ it seems——”

  “Dooty?” Ma chuckled. “Say, Rube, we’ll write to the girl, you an’ me. An’ we don’t need to ask no by-your-leave of nobody. Not even Seth.”

  “Not even Seth.”

  The two conspirators eyed one another slyly, smiled with a quaint knowingness, and resumed their supper in silence.

  A common thought, a common hope, held them. Neither would have spoken it openly, even though no one was there to overhear. Each felt that they were somehow taking advantage of Seth and, perhaps, not doing quite the right thing by Rosebud; but after all they were old, simple people who loved these two, and had never quite given up the hope of seeing them ultimately brought together.

  The meal was finished, and half an hour later they were further working out their mild conspiracy in the parlor. Ma was the scribe, and was seated at the table surrounded by all the appurtenances of her business. Rube, in a great mental effort, was clouding the atmosphere with the reeking fumes of his pipe. The letter was a delicate matter, and its responsibility sat heavily on this man of the plains. Ma was less embarrassed; her woman’s instinct helped her. Besides, since Rosebud had been away she had almost become used to writing letters.

  “Say, Rube,” she said, looking up after heading her note-paper, “how d’ you think it’ll fix her when she hears?”

  Rube gazed at the twinkling eyes raised to his; he gave a chuckling grunt, and his words came with elephantine meaning.

  “She’ll be all of a muss-up at it.”

  Ma’s smile broadened.

  “What’s makin’ you laff, Ma?” the old man asked.

  “Jest nuthin’. I was figgerin’ if the gal could—if we could git her reply before spring opens.”

  “Seems likely—if the boat don’t sink.”

  Ma put the end of her pen in her mouth and eyed her man. Rube scratched his head and smoked hard. Neither spoke. At last the woman jerked out an impatient inquiry.

  “Well?” she exclaimed.

  Rube removed his pipe from his lips with great deliberation and eased himself in his chair.

  “You’ve located the name of the farm on top, an’ the State, an’ the date?” he inquired, by way of gaining time.

  “Guess I ain’t daft, Rube.”

  “No.” The man spoke as though his answer were the result of deliberate thought. Then he cleared his throat, took a long final pull at his pipe, removed it from his mouth, held it poised in the manner of one who has something of importance to say, and sat bolt upright. “Then I guess we ken git right on.” And having thus clearly marked their course he sat back and complacently surveyed his wife.

  But the brilliancy of his suggestion was lost on Ma, and she urged him further.

  “Well?”

  “Wal—I’d jest say, ‘Honored Lady,’” he suggested doubtfully.

  “Mussy on the man, we’re writin’ to Rosebud!” exclaimed the old woman.

  “Sure.” Rube nodded patronizingly, but he seemed a little uncomfortable under his wife’s stare of amazement. “But,” he added, in a tone meant to clinch the argument, “she ain’t ’Rosebud’ no longer.”

  “Rubbish an’ stuff! She’s ‘Rosebud’—jest ’Rosebud.’ An’ ’dearest Rosebud’ at that, an’ so I’ve got it,” Ma said, hurriedly writing the words as she spoke. “Now,” she went on, looking up, “you can git on wi’ the notions to foller.”

  Again Rube cleared his throat. Ma watched him, chewing the end of her penholder the while. The man knocked his pipe out and slowly began to refill it. He looked out the window into the blackness of the winter night. His vast face was heavy with thought, and his shaggy gray brows were closely knit. As she watched, the old woman’s bright eyes smiled. Her thoughts had gone back to their courting days. She thought of the two or three letters Rube had contrived to send her, which were still up-stairs in an old trunk containing her few treasures. She remembered that these letters had, in each case, begun with “Honored Lady.” She wondered where he had obtained the notion which still remained with him after all these years.

  Feeling the silence becoming irksome Rube moved uneasily.

  “Y’ see it’s kind o’ del’cate. Don’t need handlin’ rough,” he said. “Seems you’d best go on like this. Mebbe you ken jest pop it down rough-like an’ fix it after. ‘Which it’s my painful dooty an’ pleasure——’”

  “La, but you always was neat at fixin’ words, Rube,” Ma murmured, while she proceeded to write. “How’s this?” she went on presently, reading what she had just written. “I’m sorry to have to tell you as Seth’s got hurt pretty bad. He’s mighty sick, an’ liable to be abed come spring. Pore feller, he’s patient as he always is, but he’s all mussed-up an’ broken shocking; shot in the side an’ got bones smashed up. Howsum, he’s goin’ on all right, an’ we hope for the best.”

  “I ’lows that’s neat,” Rube said, lighting his pipe. “’Tain’t jest what I’d fancy. Sounds kind o’ familiar. An’ I guess it’s li’ble to scare her some.”

  “Well?”

  “Wal, I tho’t we’d put it easy-like.”

  Ma looked a little scornful. Rube was certainly lacking in duplicity.

  “Say, Rube, you ain’t a bit smarter than when you courted me. I jest want that gal to think it’s mighty bad.”

  “Eh?” Rube stared.

  Ma was getting impatient.

  “I guess you never could see a mile from your own nose, Rube; you’re that dull an’ slow wher’ gals is concerned. I’ll write this letter in my own way. You’d best go an’ yarn with Seth. An’ you needn’t say nuthin’ o’ this to him. We’ll git a quick answer from Rosebud, or I’m ter’ble slow ’bout some things, like you.”

  The cloud of responsibility suddenly lifted from the farmer’s heavy features. He smiled his relief at his partner in conspiracy. He knew that in such a matter as the letter he was as much out of place as one of his own steers would be. Ma, he was convinced, was one of the cleverest of her sex, and if Seth and Rosebud were ever to be brought together again she would do it. So he rose, and, moving round to the back of his wife’s chair, laid his great hand tenderly on her soft, gray hair.

  “You git right to it, Ma,” he said. “We ain’t got no chick of our own. Ther’s jest Seth to foller us, an’ if you ken help him out in this thing, same as you once helped me out, you’re doin’ a real fine thing. The boy ain’t happy wi’out Rosebud, an’ ain’t never like to be. You fix it, an’ I’
ll buy you a noo buggy. Guess I’ll go to Seth.”

  Ma looked up at the gigantic man, and the tender look she gave him belied the practical brusqueness of her words.

  “Don’t you git talkin’ foolish. Ther’ was a time when I’d ’a’ liked you to talk foolish, but you couldn’t do it then, you were that slow. Git right along. I’ll fix this letter, an’ read it to you when it’s done.”

  Rube passed out of the room, gurgling a deep-throated chuckle, while his wife went steadily on with the all-important matter in hand.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXII

  ROSEBUD’S ANSWER

  It was a dazzling morning nearly five weeks after the dispatching of Ma Sampson’s letter to Rosebud. The heralds of spring, the warm, southern breezes, which brought trailing flights of geese and wild duck winging northward, and turned the pallor of the snow to a dirty drab hue, like a soiled white dress, had already swept across the plains. The sunlight was fiercely blinding. Even the plainsman is wary at this time of the year, for the perils of snow-blindness are as real to him as to the “tenderfoot.”

  There had been no reply from Rosebud. Two more letters from her reached the farm, but they had been written before the letter, which Rube helped to compose, had been received. Since then no word had come from the girl. Ma was satisfied, and accepted her silence with equanimity, but for appearances’ sake assumed an attitude of complaint. Rube said nothing; he had no subtlety in these matters. Seth was quite in the dark. He never complained, but he was distressed at this sudden and unaccountable desertion.

  Seth’s wound and broken shoulder had healed. He had been up a week, but this was his first day out of the house. Now he stood staring out with shaded eyes in the direction of the Reservations. During the past week he had received visits from many of the neighboring settlers. Parker, particularly, had been his frequent companion. He had learned all that it was possible for him to learn by hearsay of the things which most interested him; but, even so, he felt that he had much time to make up, much to learn that could come only from his own observation.

  Now, on this his first day out in the open, he found himself feeling very weak, a thin, pale shadow of his former self. Curiously enough he had little inclination for anything. He simply stood gazing upon the scene before him, drinking in deep draughts of the pure, bracing, spring air. Though his thoughts should have been with those matters which concerned the welfare of the homestead, they were thousands of miles away, somewhere in a London of his own imagination, among people he had never seen, looking on at a life and pleasures of which he had no knowledge of, and through it all he was struggling to understand how it was Rosebud had come to forget them all so utterly, and so suddenly.

  He tried to make allowances, to point out to himself the obligations of the girl’s new life. He excused her at every point; yet, when it was all done, when he had proved to himself the utter impossibility of her keeping up a weekly correspondence, he was dissatisfied, disappointed. There was something behind it all, some reason which he could not fathom.

  In the midst of these reflections he was joined by Rube. The old man was smoking his after-breakfast pipe.

  “She’s openin’,” he said, indicating the brown patches of earth already showing through the snow. Seth nodded.

  They were standing just outside the great stockade which had been completed during Seth’s long illness. There were only the gates waiting to be hung upon their vast iron hinges.

  After the old man’s opening remark a long silence fell. Seth’s thoughts ran on unchecked in spite of the other’s presence. Rube smoked and watched the lean figure beside him out of the corners of his eyes. He was speculating, too, but his thought was of their own immediate surroundings. Now that Seth was about again he felt that it would be good to talk with him. He knew there was much to consider. Though perhaps he lacked something of the younger man’s keen Indian knowledge he lacked nothing in experience, and experience told him that the winter, after what had gone before, had been, but for the one significant incident of Seth’s wound, very, very quiet—too quiet.

  “Say, boy,” the old man went on, some minutes later, “guess you ain’t yarned a heap ’bout your shootin’ racket?”

  Seth was suddenly brought back to his surroundings. His eyes thoughtfully settled on the distant line of woodland that marked the river and the Reservation. He answered readily enough.

  “That shootin’ don’t affect nothin’—nothin’ but me,” he said with meaning.

  “I thought Little——”

  Seth shook his head. He took Rube’s meaning at once.

  “That’s to come, I guess,” he said gravely.

  Rube suddenly looked away down the trail in the direction of Beacon Crossing. His quick ears had caught an unusual sound. It was a “Coo-ee,” but so thin and faint that it came to him like the cry of some small bird. Seth heard it, too, and he turned and gazed over the rotting sleigh track which spring was fast rendering impassable. There was nothing in sight. Just the gray expanse of melting snow, dismal, uninteresting even in the flooding sunlight.

  Rube turned back to the gateway of the stockade. His pipe was finished and he had work to do. Seth was evidently in no mood for talk.

  “I’d git around and breathe good air fer awhiles,” he said kindly, “y’ ain’t goin’ to git strong of a sudden, Seth.”

  “Guess I’ll ride this afternoon. Hello!”

  The cry reached them again, louder, still high-pitched and shrill, but nearer. Away down the trail a figure in black furs was moving toward them.

  Both men watched the object with the keenest interest. It was a mere speck on the gray horizon, but it was plainly human, and evidently wishful to draw their attention.

  “Some’un wantin’ us?” said Rube in a puzzled tone.

  “Seems.” Seth was intent upon the figure.

  Another “Coo-ee” rang out, and Rube responded with his deep guttural voice. And, in answer, the bundle of furs raised two arms and waved them beckoningly.

  Rube moved along the trail. Without knowing quite why, but roused to a certain curiosity, he was going to meet the newcomer. Seth followed him.

  Seth’s gait was slower than the older man’s, and he soon dropped behind. Suddenly he saw Rube stop and turn, beckoning him on. When he came up the old man pointed down the road.

  “It’s a woman,” he said, and there was a curious look in his eyes.

  The muffled figure was more than a hundred and fifty yards away, but still laboriously stumbling along the snow-bound trail toward them.

  Before Seth could find a reply another “Coo-ee” reached them, followed quickly by some words that were blurred by the distance. Seth started. The voice had a curiously familiar sound. He glanced at Rube, and the old man’s face wore a look of grinning incredulity.

  “Sounds like——” Seth began to speak but broke off.

  “Gee! Come on!” cried Rube, in a boisterous tone. “It’s Rosebud!”

  The two men hastened forward. Rube’s announcement seemed incredible. How could it be Rosebud—and on foot? The surface of the trail gave way under their feet at almost every step. But they were undeterred. Slush or ice, deep snow or floundering in water holes, it made no difference. It was a race for that muffled figure, and Rube was an easy winner. When Seth came up he found the bundle of furs in the bear-like embrace of the older man. It was Rosebud!

  Questions raced through Seth’s brain as he looked on, panting with the exertion his enfeebled frame had been put to. How? Why? What was the meaning of it all? But his questions remained unspoken. Nor was he left in doubt long. Rosebud laughing, her wonderful eyes dancing with an inexpressible delight, released herself and turned to Seth. Immediately her face fell as she looked on the shadow of a man standing before her.

  “Why, Seth,” she cried, in a tone of great pity and alarm that deceived even Rube, “what’s the matter that you look so ill?” She turned swiftly and flashed a meaning look into Rube’s eyes. “What is it? Qu
ick! Oh, you two sillies, tell me! Seth, you’ve been ill, and you never told me!”

  Slow of wit, utterly devoid of subterfuge as Rube was, for once he grasped the situation.

  “Why, gal, it’s jest nothin’. Seth’s been mighty sick, but he’s right enough now, ain’t you, Seth, boy?”

  “Sure.”

  Seth had nothing to add, but he held out his hand, and the girl seized it in both of hers, while her eyes darkened to an expression which these men failed to interpret, but which Ma Sampson could have read aright. Seth cleared his throat, and his dark eyes gazed beyond the girl and down the trail.

  “How’d you come, Rosie?” he asked practically. “You ain’t traipsed from Beacon?”

  Suddenly the girl’s laugh rang out. It was the old irresponsible laugh that had always been the joy of these men’s hearts, and it brought a responsive smile to their faces now.

  “Oh, I forgot,” she cried. “The delight of seeing you two dears put it out of my silly head. Why, we drove out from Beacon, and the wagon’s stuck in a hollow away back, and my cousin, I call her ’aunt,’ and her maid, and all the luggage are mired on the road, calling down I don’t know what terrible curses upon the country and its people, and our teamster in particular. So I just left them to it and came right on to get help. Auntie was horrified at my going, you know. Said I’d get rheumatic fever and pneumonia, and threatened to take me back home if I went, and I told her she couldn’t unless I got help to move the wagon, and so here I am.”

  Rube’s great face had never ceased to beam, and now, as the girl paused for breath, he turned for home.

  “Guess I’ll jest get the team out. Gee!” And he went off at a great gait.

  Seth looked gravely at the girl’s laughing face.

  “Guess you’d best come on home. Mebbe your feet are wet.”

  Thus, after months of parting, despite the changed conditions of the girl’s life, the old order was resumed. Rosebud accepted Seth’s domination as though it was his perfect right. Without one word or thought of protest she walked at his side. In silence he helped her over the broken trail to the home she had so long known and still claimed. Once only was that silence broken. It was when the girl beheld the fortified appearance of the farm. She put her question in a low, slightly awed tone.