“`But his manners, Father,’ Mary says and turns up her pretty nose. God bless her.
“`Manners be damned,’ says John Kearney. `A hero doesn’t have to have manners.’
“He will treat you like a son when you meet him again, Lew. As a matter of fact, what made him like me was because I beat him in a business deal. He despises the weak… that’s all. But now about the boy…Lew, you will be my savior if you can manage to get him out of my way. One hint, one whisper about such a thing in my past, would be the end of me with Mary. The absolute end. You see, I’m none too strong with her. She likes me. With her father egging her on to the match, she’s become engaged to me. But she keeps putting off the wedding date most damnably. I’m constantly worried for fear something may happen. Every day I have to handle her with gloves.”
I said to him slowly: “Why, Chuck, if she doesn’t really love you, of course you don’t want to marry her.”
“Don’t want to marry her?” he cried. “Are you mad? But you’ve only had a glimpse of her. Oh, I tell you that she’s rare. Marry her. I’d steal her with a band of Indians, if I thought that there were no other way. I’d do ten murders, if I thought it would help me to get her.”
He did not say this in a rage of emotion but in a cold and settled way that sent a chill through my blood, because I knew that he had not overstated things a whit.
He went on: “Now the very first thing, dear old man, is to get the youngster out of the way. Don’t look at me as if I were a ghost. I mean.. .take the boy away. I’ll supply all the money, of course. We’ll take him East, say, and put him in some school. He’ll be supported like a prince. But I’ll have to trust to you to arrange matters.”
I nodded.
“When can you start?”
“At once, I suppose.”
“Will you do it?”
“Yes.”
“God bless you, Lew. When you told me that you had brought the boy to the fort, you turned me to ice. Because something was apt to leak out. You can say that it’s the son of a trader who was murdered by the Indians. Say anything. But start soon… soon! Go anywhere you want with him. Place him well. Send me the bill. No, take cash enough with you… here.”
He tore open a safe that stood in the corner of his office and thrust two heavy bags of gold into my hands.
“You’ll want to see him, I suppose?” I asked.
“See him! Damnation, man, why should I want to see him? And be connected with him through gossip in that way? No, no, no! I wish him all the happiness in the world, and I hope that I never lay eyes on him again.”
It was rather hard talk, no matter how I tried to look at it. I stood up, very thoughtful, and Chuck followed me to the door. He had his hand on my shoulder all the way, muttering, “You’ll be back in a month, at the most. Leave everything with me. I’ll sell your horses and the rest of your stuff for twice what you could get for it. I’ll have it all cleaned up for you. In the meantime don’t let old Kearney see you. He’s sure to try it when he knows you’ve come. Don’t let him see you, and don’t let him see the boy. Lew, if you love me, get that boy out of the fort within the hour. Ride White Smoke to death. Every minute is precious. Now, hurry, hurry.”
I hurried, of course. I did not even say good bye but simply waved to him, because I was hot with anger. A man who disowns his past is to me a man who disowns himself. Yet, I knew that Chuck was not master of himself. Behind all of this emotion there were the blue eyes, there was the smiling mouth of Mary Kearney.
At any rate, I rode straight for my camp, leaped out of the saddle, then strode into the teepee and found, seated upon the floor with the bright-haired little boy between them, Mary Kearney herself and her father at her side.
CHUCK’S ULTIMATUM
It was as pat as any scene in a melodrama. It took me back like a loaded gun, pointed at my head. Here they were, standing up, she with the boy in her arms and the tumbled golden head on her shoulder.
“We came to call on you, sir,” said Mr. Kearney. “I owe you an apology, Mister Dorset. My daughter owes you another. By the Lord, I’ll make mine first with all my heart. Dorset, I treated you like a dog. I want your pardon and your hand.”
“Sir,” I said, “I have no unkind memory, but I thank you.” And we shook hands.
“Now, Mary,” commanded her father.
She was a little flushed. Her eyes were a little wide, but she cried back at him: “You don’t have to command me, Dad. I’m here because I want to be here, Mister Dorset, because of the atrocious things I’ve said before you. Of course, William has told us a great deal about you.. .and the beautiful things you’ve meant to one another-and I trust that you’ll forgive me, Mister Dorset.”
It was only by an effort of the mind that I made out that William referred to Chuck Morris.
I said: “I’m the happiest man in the world that Chuck has made my peace with you.”
“Chuck? Not a bit of it,” broke out Kearney. “Tush, man, we know everything. We have heard of what Black Bear has done. Well, well!” He seemed as happy as a child because he had identified me. “We know it all…we know it all,” he went on. “A trapper came in last week and told us that the Pawnees swear you are not a man but a devil, and that they will never fight with you again because it has been proved that bullets will not pierce you and that steel will not harm you. But is this your boy, Dorset?”
“No,” I said. “It is the son of a friend of mine.” I stammered a little. “The son of a trader… killed by Indians.”
“How terrible,” murmured the girl, but her keen eyes rested upon me for a cold instant, and I knew that she had detected the presence of a lie. She began to stiffen a little as she put down the youngster hastily. “We will have to go, Father,” she said.
“Not at all. Not at all,” said John Kearney. “Not until you have promised to come to my house….”
“I am leaving within an hour,” was my reply.
“What? What? Why, man, I have been promising myself that I should hear the wildest story of Indian fighting that ever….”
Here he was interrupted by a startled cry from Mary as she stepped out of the teepee. I sprang after her and found that the cause of her fright was two stalwart Dakotas with Sitting Wolf standing before them. Their impassive faces lighted when they saw me.
“They are Sioux… they are my friends,” I hastened to explain to Mary Kearney. “Is there trouble, Sitting Wolf?”
He had learned to speak excellent English, though he simply translated his Siouan dialect into the nearest English words.
He said: “Oh, my brother, Black Bear, there is no trouble except sadness among my people since you have left us. You departed in haste and left behind you…this. We followed to bring it.”
With that he held out to me the first Colt I had ever owned - the old gift of Chris Hudson that I had prized so much. In my haste I had left the gun behind me. I was as glad to see it as I would have been to see a friend’s face.
“Brother,” I said, speaking the Indian tongue, because I shrewdly feared what the Kearneys might overhear if the conversation were in English, “this is more to me than the hand of a dear friend beside me in a fight. This has taken the lives of my enemies. I thank you with all my heart.”
Sitting Wolf was as quick as a lightning flash to take a hint. He knew that I wanted the talk to be in Siouan, but the temptation to show off his English before strangers was too great for him. He took a little suit made of the softest deerskin and handed it to me next.
“And this,” he said, “belongs to the child of Rising Sun. We have brought it also that….”