Here he was stopped by a startled cry from Mary Kearney. My own heart had leaped into my throat.
“Dad,” she said. “Did you hear?”
I looked at Kearney. He was very pale, very grave. That one word had damned Chuck Morris. For my part, I only wondered that the golden hair of the boy had not made them do some shrewd guessing long before. But, oh, what a consummate dolt I had been to bring the boy near the fort in the first place.
“I heard,” snapped out Kearney. “I am not deaf, my dear. Dorset, I think this needs a little explaining.”
Where was the tongue, then, that had learned to tell fluent lies even in the presence of so keen a judge as my Uncle Abner? Where was the stony presence of mind I had learned among my Sioux brothers? All was gone. I could only stare like a fool, while the wind came cold against the perspiration on my forehead.
“Damn it, man!” exclaimed Kearney. “It’s too horrible! Can you say nothing? Are you dumb? By the eternal, you have been hand in hand with the villain while he was at tempting to take my daughter….”
Rage and shame stifled him. He forgot his dignity enough to shake his fist in my face, and that gesture was almost his last on earth. The hand of Sitting Wolf moved just a trifle faster than the paw of a panther when it strikes. I managed to knock up his hand and the knife it gripped, with the scream of the girl, tingling in my ears. The two braves behind Sitting Wolf had been slower, and my shout made them stand back.
John Kearney and his daughter made for their horses and swept away toward the town. I remained behind, a very sick man, indeed.
“What is wrong, brother?” asked Sitting Wolf. “The dog deserved to feel this tooth between his ribs. What is wrong?”
I could only say: “This is a sad day, Sitting Wolf. You have done me a great harm. You have done a great harm to Rising Sun. Oh, lad, remember what I say to you. Words spoken among white men are dried powder with sparks always near it. Now forget what has happened. Come into the teepee. We must smoke the pipe. We must eat. And you must tell me of the people.”
They went gloomily into the tent, and there the squaw hurried about to feed them. They had barely begun to eat, it seemed to me, with Sitting Wolf watching me in a nervous anxiety, when I heard the rush of a horse’s hoofs outside and then the voice of Chuck Morris.
By the mere tone of it I knew that Kearney had gone straight to my friend to hear an explanation, gone straight to him while Morris was unprepared with any manner of lie whatever to explain away the child. I hurried out to meet him and found him like a man in a frenzy. He leaped off his horse and came raging at me. He caught me by the shoulders with such a grip that the tips of his ringers bit against the bone, and he groaned: “I warned you, Lew! I warned you! Now you’ve ruined my life!”
“I couldn’t help it,” I said. “listen to me, Chuck. They were in the teepee when I arrived. They….”
“Why did you ever bring the boy to the fort?” he snarled. “What right had you? Did I ask you to do it? Did you have my permission?”
When a man asks such questions as these, he doesn’t want an answer. He has established the answer long before in his own mind. I said nothing and waited in the hope that he would grow calmer. But he went about striking his heavy fist against his forehead, saying: “He looked at me as if I had been a leper. He called me a sneaking hypocrite. I tried to make some explanation. He wouldn’t listen. He told me that he never wanted me in his door again. But I’ll go there in spite of him. I’ll hear the last word from the girl, not from that stodgy old fool. If he stands between me and her, I’ll wring his neck… I’ll break him to bits! I’ve lived this sleepy town life long enough, and now I want action.. .1 want action! I’ll find something to do.”
He was utterly beside himself, and I tried to stop his talk, but he went on savagely, clutching me by the shoulder again: “What is she that they should hide her behind a hedge? Does she know anything worth knowing? Has she done anything in her life that’s worth boasting of? Bah! She’s only a pretty piece of flesh, and yet they act as though she were carved out of one entire diamond. By heavens, it maddens me, and mad I’ll go, in fact, if I don’t have her. Lew, will you help me to her? Will you help me, Lew?”
“Do you want any man’s help?” I asked him.
“No,” said Morris with a huge oath. “I’m enough by myself. I’ll have her… or no other man shall have her. So be it.”
With that, he flung away and left me in a deadly fear. Not a fear of him or for myself, but a terror lest he should actually lay hands on Mary Kearney and force her to marry him. He was capable of it. I could see that clearly enough, and, looking back through his life, I could see also that he had never been able to deny to himself anything that he really wanted. Only to me he had been the soul of honor and of generosity. For the rest of the world he had a use only insofar as it was a help to Chuck Morris.
When I went back into the teepee, I found that the three Indians had stopped eating and sat with their blankets folded around them, stiff as statues. The face of Sitting Wolf was as stony as the faces of the others. I tried to urge them to eat and be merry, but Sitting Wolf, as the spokesman, told me that he saw now that he had done me a great harm, indeed, and that he and his friends would leave me. It was quite useless to attempt persuasion, and they stalked off, one behind the other. Their horses galloped away. I was left with the greatest problem of my life.
To leave Kearney unwarned seemed to me the worst crime I could imagine. Still, to warn him was an act of treason to Chuck. I sat with that problem spinning through my mind for an hour. At last I saw the first honorable step before me. I went back to Chuck and found him, lying in his room at the back of the big store, face downward on his bed, with his great hands sunk in the pillow as though they were buried in a man’s throat. He did not stir when he heard me come in. I stood over him in a yellow shaft of sunshine and said: “Chuck, have you changed your mind?”
“About what?” he groaned.
“About the girl. Have you changed your mind about forcing yourself on her?”
He thrust himself erect and glared at me. “I have not,” he said. “I intend to see her again.”
“You’re wrong. You’re mightily wrong, Chuck. It will make trouble if you start that sort of work. If you weren’t half insane just now, you’d never think of such a thing. They’ll be warned, and they’ll be ready to defend her.”
“Who’ll warn them?” he asked.
“I shall.”
An old rifle hung on the wall beside him. His hand darted out to it instinctively, and then relaxed its grip again.
“Why, Lew, I haven’t heard you say that. I haven’t heard you say that you’d turn against me.”
“Not against you, heaven knows. But not for you, if you try to do this thing.”
He ran his hand over his forehead, throwing his hair into the wildest confusion. “Lew,” he groaned, “don’t tell me that you’re in love with her, too?”
“You’ll hate me if I confess it, but I have to confess it. I love her.”
“Don’t say it!” cried Chuck Morris, and, as I remember his face now, I think there was more horror on it than there was anger. “Because if you’re crooked, there’s no honest men in this cursed world.”
“I’m coming to you to tell you the truth,” I said sadly. “Chuck, you’ve missed her. Not that I’ll ever have her. Heaven knows she’s far beyond any wild hope of mine. But you’ve missed her. And if you try to steal her away….”
“Wait,” broke in Chuck. “If you talk like that, I shall go mad… murderous mad. I want to go over this thing with you, bit by bit, as if we were back in school, studying a lesson. If I’m wrong in anything, stop me and tell me so. Lew, when I met you, we fought. I beat you fairly and squarely.”