The Watchers of the Plains: A Tale of the Western Prairies. Cullum Ridgwell

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and horizon; with a hearing always acute on the prairie, rendered doubly so now, and with a loaded rifle across his knees.

      It was dusk when he drove up to the farm. A certain relief came over him as he observed the peaceful cattle grazing adjacent to the corrals, the smoke rising from the kitchen chimney, and the great figure of Rube smoking reflectively in the kitchen doorway.

      He did not stop to unhitch the horses, just hooking them to the corral fence. Then he lifted the child from the buckboard and bore her to the house.

      Rube watched him curiously as he came with his burden. There was no greeting between these two. Both were usually silent men, but for different reasons. Conversation was a labor to Rube; a twinkling look of his deep-set eyes, and an expressive grunt generally contented him. Now he removed his pipe from his lips and stared in open-mouthed astonishment at the queer-looking bundle Seth was carrying.

      “Gee!” he muttered. And made way for his foster son. Any questions that might have occurred to him were banished from his slow-moving thoughts.

      Seth laid his charge upon the kitchen table, and 52 Rube looked at the deathlike face, so icy, yet so beautiful. A great broad smile, not untouched with awe, spread over his bucolic features.

      “Where’s Ma?” asked Seth.

      Rube indicated the ceiling with the stem of his pipe.

      “Ma,” cried Seth, through the doorway, up the narrow stairs which led to the rooms above. “Come right down. Guess I’ve kind o’ got a present for you.”

      “That you, Seth?” called out a cheery voice from above.

      “Guess so.”

      A moment later a little woman, with gray hair and a face that might have belonged to a woman of thirty, bustled into the room.

      “Ah, Seth,” she cried affectionately, “you jest set to it to spoil your old mother.” Then her eyes fell on the figure on the kitchen table. “La sakes, boy, what’s—what’s this?” Then as she bent over the unconscious child. “Oh, the pore—pore little beauty!”

      Rube turned away with a chuckle. His practical little wife had been astonished out of her wits. And the fact amused him immensely.

      “It’s a gal, Ma,” said Seth. He too was smiling.

      “Gracious, boy, guess I’ve got two eyes in my head!”

      There was a long pause. Ma fingered the silken curls. Then she took one of the cold hands in hers and stroked it softly. 53

      “Where—where did you git her?” she asked at last.

      “The Injuns. I shot Big Wolf yesterday. They’re on the war-path.”

      “Ah.” The bright-eyed woman looked up at this tall foster son of hers.

      “War-path—you shot Big Wolf?” cried Rube, now roused to unwonted speech. “Then we’d best git busy.”

      “It’s all right, father,” Seth reassured him. “The troops are on the trail.”

      There was another considerable pause while all eyes were turned on the child. At last Mrs. Sampson looked up.

      “Who is she?” she asked.

      Seth shook his head.

      “Don’t know. Maybe she’s yours—an’ mine.”

      “Don’t you know wher’ she come from?”

      Again Seth shook his head.

      “An’—an’ what’s her name?”

      “Can’t say—leastways her initials are M. R. You see I got her from—there that’s it. I got her from the Rosebuds. That’s her name. Rosebud!”

      54

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

A BIRTHDAY GIFT

       Table of Contents

      Rosebud struggled through five long months of illness after her arrival at White River Farm. It was only the untiring care of Rube and his wife, and Seth, that pulled her through. The wound at the base of the skull had affected her brain as well as body, and, until the last moment when she finally awoke to consciousness, her case seemed utterly without hope.

      But when at last her convalescence came it was marvelously rapid. It was not until the good old housewife began to question her patient that the full result of the cruel blow on her head was realized. Then it was found that she had no recollection of any past. She knew not who she was, her name, her age, even her nationality. She had a hazy idea of Indians, which, as she grew stronger, became more pronounced, until she declared that she must have lived among Indians all her life.

      It was this last that roused Seth to a sense of what he conceived to be his duty. And with that deliberateness which always characterized him, he set about it at once. From the beginning, after his first great burst of pitying sorrow for the little waif, when he 55 had clasped her in his arms and almost fiercely claimed her for his own, his treasure trove, he had realized that she belonged to some other world than his own. This thought stayed with him. It slumbered during the child’s long illness, but roused to active life when he discovered that she had no knowledge of herself. Therefore he set about inquiries. He must find out to whom she belonged and restore her to her people.

      There was no one missing for two hundred miles round Beacon Crossing except the Jasons. It was impossible that the Indians could have gone farther afield, for they had not been out twenty-four hours when Rosebud was rescued. So his search for the child’s friends proved unavailing.

      Still, from that day on he remained loyal to her. Any clue, however frail, was never too slight for him to hunt to its source. He owed it to her to restore her to her own, whatever regret it might cost him to lose her. He was not the man to shirk a painful duty, certainly not where his affections were concerned.

      During the six years, while Rosebud was growing to womanhood, Seth’s hands were very full. Those wonderful violet eyes belonged to no milk and water “miss.” From the very beginning the girl proved herself spirited and wilful. Not in any vicious way. A “madcap” best describes her. She had no thought of consequences; only the delight of the moment, the excitement and risk. These were the 56 things that plunged her into girlish scrapes from which it fell to the lot of Seth to extricate her. All her little escapades were in themselves healthy enough, but they were rarely without a smack of physical danger.

      She began when she learned to ride, a matter which of course devolved upon Seth.

      Once she could sit a wild, half-tamed broncho her career in the direction of accident became checkered. Once, after a day’s search for her, Seth brought her home insensible. She had been thrown from her horse, an animal as wildly wilful as herself.

      A СКАЧАТЬ