Judith of the Plains

  XVIII

  Foreshadowed

  Alida awoke, knowing what was to happen. She had dreamed of it, justbefore daylight, and lay in bed stupefied by the horror of it, living,again and again, through each frightful detail. It had happened--there, inthe very room, and before the children; the noise of it had startled them;and then she woke and knew she had been dreaming. In the dream the noisehad wakened the children--when it really happened they must never know. Itwouldn't be fair to them; they needed a "clean start."

  What had she done to keep them quiet? There had been a thunderous knockingat the door. She had expected it and was prepared; because the lock wasfeeble, she had shoved the old brown bureau against the door.

  Nothing had happened. What a fool she was to lie there and think of it!There was the brown bureau against the wall; she could hear the deepbreathing of Jim in the room beyond. Jim had been unequal to the task ofconventionally going to bed the night before, and she had put a pillowunder his head and a quilt over him. She was the last woman in the worldto worry about Jim, drunk, or to nag him for it when sober. But she didn'tlike the children to see him that way.

  What was it that she had done to quiet the children when "they" rode up?She had done something and they had gone to sleep again, and she--andshe--oh no, it hadn't happened. What a fool she was to lie there thinking!There were the children to rouse and dress, and breakfast to cook, andJim--Jim would be feeling pretty mean this morning; he'd like a good cup ofcoffee. She was glad he was alive to make coffee for.

  She got up and, in the uncertainty bred of the dream, felt the brownbureau, felt it hungrily, almost incredulously. The brown bureau had beenpushed against the door when they had come, and knocked and knocked. Thenthey had thundered with the butts of their six-shooters, and the childrenhad wakened, and she had called out to them:

  "Sh-sh! It's only a bad dream. Mammy will give you some dough to baketo-morrow."

  And she had gone to press her face flat to the thin wall, and call, "ForGod's sake, don't wake the children!"

  And they had called out, "Let him come out quiet, then."

  And then she could feel that they put their shoulders to the door--theweather-beaten door--with its crazy lock that didn't half catch. The brownbureau had spun across the floor like a top, and they had crowded in. Thenshe had done something to quiet the children--it was queer that she couldnot remember what it was, when everything else in the dream still livedwithin her, horribly distinct and real.

  What a fool she was, with Jim asleep in the next room; she would not thinkabout it another minute. She began to dress, but her fingers were heavy,and the vague oppression of nightmare blocked her efficiency. Repeatedlyshe would detect herself subconsciously brooding over some one of thelinks in that pitiless memory--what they had said to Jim; his undauntedreplies; how she had left him and gone into the next room because Jim hadtold her to.

  She called the children, but the sight of them, happy and flushed withsleep, did not reassure her.

  "Mammy," said Topeka, eldest of the family, and lately on the invalidlist, the victim of a cactus thorn, "my toe's all well; can I gobarefoot?"

  "Topeka Rodney, what kind of feet do you expect to have when you are ayoung lady, if you run barefoot now?"

  Topeka, sitting on the side of the bed, with tousled hair, put her smallfeet together and contemplated them. The toe was still suspiciouslyinflamed for perfect convalescence, although Topeka, with a Spartancourage that won her a place in the annals of household valor, had the daybefore allowed her mother to pick out with a needle the torturing cactusthorn, scorning to shed a tear during the operation, though afterwards shehad taken the piece of dried apple that was offered her and devoured it tothe last bite, as only just compensation for her sufferings.

  "Dimmy dot a tore toe, too." But Jimmy showed a strange reticence aboutoffering proofs of his affliction. At the peril of his equilibrium, heclasped the allegedly injured member in his chubby hand and rolled over onthe bed in apparent anguish.

  "Less see, Jimmy," asked his mother, anxiously.

  "Don't bleeve him, mammy. He 'ain't ever cried. He'd a cried, for sure, ifhis toe was sore." At the age of five, little Judith, namesake of heraunt, was something of a doubting Thomas.

  "Let mammy see, Jimmy," and Alida bent over her son and heir.

  "Doth Dimmy det any apple?" The wee man sometimes succeeded in makingterms with his mother, when the other children were not present. Thoughfeeling himself a trifle over-confident, he held the disputed toe with theair of one keeping back a trump card, and looked his mother squarely inthe eyes.

  She struggled with the temptation to give him the apple. He had lifted thehorrors of her dream as nothing else could have done, but she answered himwith quiet firmness.

  "Jimmy must not tell stories."

  "Less see," insisted Topeka.

  "He dassent," affirmed Judith, junior, of little faith.

  "It hurths me," and Jimmy tried to squeeze out a tear. "It hurths me, mytore toe!"

  His mother tipped him over on his fat little back and opened the chubbyhand that held the trump toe. It was white from the pressure applied bythe infant dissembler, but there was no trace of the treacherous cactusthorn. She gave him an affectionate spank and went into the kitchen tomake coffee.

  "I with I had a tore toe," he crooned, quite unabashed at the discovery ofhis deception. "I with I toud det a tore toe 'thout the hurt."

  But the horror of the dream gripped her when she found herself alone inthe kitchen; and she remembered she had not told the children not to gointo the room where their father was sleeping. She went back and foundthat Jimmy had not left his post on the side of the bed, where he stillregretted that his perfectly well toe did not entitle him to gastronomicconsideration. Topeka, who had arrived at an age where little girls, inthe first subconscious attempt at adornment, know no keener delight thanplastering their heads with a wet hairbrush, till they present anappearance of slippery rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put downthe brush with guilty haste at sight of her mother.

  "I'm goin' to dress him soon as I've done my hair."

  "Any one think you was goin' to be married, the time you've took to it."

  "It's gettin' so long," urged Topeka.

  "I wouldn't give it a chance to grow no longer while Jimmy was waitin' toget dressed. And don't go into the front room. Your father's gettin' hissleep out."

  Topeka opened her round eyes. There was always something suspicious aboutthat sleep her father had to get out, but she felt it was something shemust not ask questions about. Her mother lingered; she dreaded to be alonein the kitchen. The little, familiar intimacies between herself and herchildren scattered the horrors of the dream which would come back to herwhen she was again at the mercy of her thoughts.

  "Judy, s'pose you dress Jimmy this morning! I want Topeka to help me getbreakfast."

  "Yessum," said Judith, dutifully. "Is he to have his face washed?"

  "He certainly is, Judy. I's ashamed to have you ask such a question.'Ain't you all been brought up to have your faces washed?"

  But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up this phase of familysuperiority. She merely inquired further:

  "Is he to have it washed with soap, maw?"

  "He shore is. Any one would think you had been born and raised in Arizonyor Nebrasky, to hear you talk. I'm plumb ashamed of you, Judy."

  "But, 'deed, maw, I ain't big enough to wash his face with soap. It takesTopeka to hold his head."

  The subject of the discussion still sat on the edge of the bed, a smalllord of creation, letting his women folk arrange among themselves whoshould minister to his wants. As an instrument of torture the washcloth,in the hands of his sister Judy, was no ignoble rival of the cactus thorn.The question of making terms for his sufferings again appealed to him inthe light of a feasible business proposition.

  "Muvvy, tan't I have the apple? Judy hurts me a lot when she wathes myface wis soap."


  "Yes, you can have the apple, honey; and, Judy, you be gentle with him.Don't rub his features up, and be careful and don't get soap in his eyes."

  "No'm." And Judy heroically stifled the longing to slick her hair, likeTopeka's, with the wet hairbrush. There were easier tasks than washing theface of her younger brother.

  When Topeka and her mother were alone in the kitchen, Topeka grinding thecoffee and all unconsciously working her jaw in an accompaniment to thecoffee-mill, her mother bent over her and said:

  "Did you dream of anything last night?"

  Topeka simultaneously stopped working the coffee-mill and her jaw, andregarded her mother solemnly. She did not remember having been thusquestioned about her dreams before.

  "No'm," she answered, after laborious consideration. But something in hermother's face held her.

  "You're sure you didn't dream nothing?"

  "Yes, maw."

  "Did Judy or Jim say that they dreamed anything?"

  "Jim said he dreamed he had a pup."

  "Was that all? Think hard, Topeka!"

  Topeka held the handle of the coffee-mill in her hand; her jaw continuedto work with the labor of her mental process. "I've thought hard, maw, andall he told was about the pup."

  Alida went back to her bedroom and again felt the brown bureau. "What'sthe matter with me, anyhow? It's the lonesomeness, and they bein' agin Jimthe way they are. God, this country's hard on women and horses!"

  When breakfast was over, and young Jim had received the reward of hisvalor in presenting a brave face to his ablution, and Judith the reward ofher skill, the evidence of which almost prevented the young martyr fromsmiling while he enjoyed his treat, their mother sent them all to play inthe canon. She told them not to come home till she should come for them,and if any one should ask about their father, to say that he was away fromhome. And this, as well as the mystery of her father's "getting his sleepout," roused some slight apprehension in Topeka, who was old for her age.They were seldom sent to the canon to play. Topeka looked at her mother asshe had when questioned about the dream, but there was no furtherconfidence between them.

  "You do as your sister Topeka tells you, and remember what I said aboutyour papa," Alida said to the younger children. Jim and Judy clasped eachother's hands in mute compact at the edict. Their sister Topeka had a realgenius for authority; they were minded all too well when she swayed thematernal sceptre vicariously.

  Alida made fresh coffee for Jim when the children had gone. She made itcarefully; there was this morning, unconsciously, about each little thingthat she did for him, the solemnity of a funeral rite. Struggle as shewould, she could not divest her mind of the conviction that what she didthis day she did for the dead. She would go to the door and listen to hisbreathing, and tell herself that she was a fool, then wring her hands atthe remembrance of the dream.

  As he tossed, half waking, she heard him groan and curse the cattle-menwith oaths that made her glad she had sent the children from home. Thenshe bent over him and woke him from his uneasy slumber.

  "Jim, don't you want me to bathe your head? And here's some nice, hotcoffee all ready for you."

  Jim woke slowly to a realization of his troubles and his blessings. Hiswife was bathing his head with hands that trembled. Not always had shegreeted his indiscretions with such loving forbearance. He noticed, thoughhis waking faculties were not over-keen, that her face was pale andfrightened, and that her eyes, meeting his, held a dumb, measurelessaffection.

  "What th' hell are you babying me for?" But his roughness did not deceiveher woman's wits. He was not getting the lecture he anticipated, and thiswas his way of showing that he was not embarrassed by her kindness. Themorning sunlight was pitilessly frank in its exposure of the grim pinch ofpoverty in the mean little room, but the woman was unconscious of thesethings; what she saw was that Jim, the reckless, Jim, the dare-devilterror of the country, Jim, who had married and settled with her intohome-keeping respectability, Jim, who had struggled with misfortune andfallen, had, young as he was, lost every look of youth; that hope had gonefrom his dull eyes, and that his face had become drawn until thedeath's-head grinned beneath the scant padding of flesh. But he wasto-day, as always, the one man in the world for her. In making a world oftheir own and reducing their parents to supplementary consideration, theirchildren, whom she had sent away that she might be alone with him, hadgiven a different quality to the love of this pair that had known so manycurious vicissitudes. The responsibilities of parenthood had placed themon a tenderer, as well as a securer footing; and as she saw his age andweariness, he recognized hers, and both felt a self-accusing twinge.

  "That's a blamed good cup of coffee," he said, by way of relieving thetension that had crept into the situation. "Any one would think you wassettin' your cap for me 'stead of us being married for years."

  Alida sighed. "It's better to end than to begin like this," she said, inthe far-away voice of one who thinks aloud. The word "end" had slipped outbefore she realized what she was saying, and the knowledge haunted her asan omen. She glanced at him quickly, to see if he had noticed it.

  "Why did you say end?" He saw that her eyes were full of tears and chafedher. "You ain't thinking of divorcing me, like Mountain Pink done Bosky?"

  "Oh, Jim," she said, and her face was all aquiver, "I never could divorceyou, no matter what you done." And then the grim philosophy of theplains-woman asserted itself. "I never can understand why women feed theirpride on their heart's blood; it never was my way."

  He did not like to remember that he had given her cause for a way."There's a lot of women as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or aSouthdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease the tightness in histhroat.

  "They'd be women of no judgment, then," she said, with conviction.

  Jim's head was tilted back, resting in the palm of his hand. His profile,sharpened by anxiety, more than suggested his quarter-strain of Siouxblood. He might almost have been old Chief Flying Hawk himself, as helooked steadily at the woman who had been a young girl and reckless, whenhe had been a boy and reckless; who had paid her woman's penalty and comeinto her woman's kingdom; who had made a man of him by the mystery of hermotherhood, and who had uncomplainingly gone with him into the wildernessand become an alien and an outcast.

  These things unmanned him as the sight of the gallows and the rope for hishanging could not have done. Shielding himself with an affected roughness,he asked:

  "What the hell's the matter with you? I've been drinking like a beast ofan Indian, and you give me coffee instead of a tongue-lashing."

  The color had all gone out of her face. She gasped the words:

  "Jim, I dreamed it last night--they came for you!"

  She cowered at the recollection.

  "Did they get me?" he asked. There was no surprise in his tone. He spokeas one who knew the answer.

  "Yes, the children saw. The noise woke them."

  "You mustn't let 'em see, when--they come. They've a right to a fair start;we didn't get it, old girl."

  "The children gave it to us," and she faced him.

  "Yes, yes, but we want them to have it from the start, like good folks."

  They looked into each other's eyes. The memory of dead and gone madnesstwinkled there a moment, then each remembered:

  "You must hurry, Jim. You haven't a moment to lose. I dreamed it was to beto-night--they'll come to-night!"

  "The game's all up, old girl! If I had a month I couldn't get away.Morrison's been looking for me over to the Owl Creek Range; he'sback--Stevens told me yesterday. He'll be heading here soon. The price onmy head is a strain on friendship."

  "Have the sheep-men gone back on you?"

  "Yes, damn them! A thousand dollars is big money, and they've had hardluck!"

  "They deserve it; I hope every herd in the State dies of scab."

  "There wasn't a scabby sheep in our bunch. What a sight they were, loadedwith tallow! There wasn't one of them that couldn't have weathered ablizzard; they c
ould have lived on their own tallow for a month."

  She tried to divert his attention from his lost flock. When he began totalk about them the despair of his loss drove him to drink. She was groundbetween the millstones of his going or staying. If he stayed they wouldcome for him; if he went, they would apprehend him before he was ten milesfrom the house.

  "Jim, we got to think. If there's a chance in a thousand that you can getaway, you got to take it; if there ain't, the children mustn't know. Wegot to think it out!"

  "There ain't a chance in a thousand, old girl. There ain't one in amillion. They're circling round in the hills out here now, waitin' for me,like buzzards waitin' for the eyes of a dyin' horse."

  She rocked herself, and the clutching fingers left white marks on herface, but the eyes that met his glittered tearless:

  "Then there ain't nothing left but to face it like a man?"

  "That's all there be." He might have been giving an opinion on a matter inwhich he had no interest.

  "Then there ain't no use in our having any more talk about it?"

  "'Tain't just what you'd call an agreeable subject," he answered, with thesinister humor of the frontiersman who has learned to make a crony ofdeath.

  She was tempted to kiss him--they were not given to demonstrations, thispair--then decided it were kinder to him, less suggestive of what theyanticipated, not to deviate from their undemonstrative marital routine.

  "Do you want your breakfast now?"

  "I guess you might bring it along."

  And for the same reason that she refrained from kissing him, she represseda desire to wring the neck of a young broiler and cook it for hisbreakfast, remembering that she had heard they gave folks pretty much whatthey wanted when they wouldn't want it long. So Jim got his usualbreakfast of bacon, uncooked canned tomatoes, soda-biscuit, and coffee.She sat with him while he ate, but they spoke no more of "them" or of howsoon "they" might be expected. She told him that young Jim had pretendedthat morning that he had a cactus thorn in his foot, so that he might havea piece of dried apple. And old Jim, in an excess of parental fondness andpride, said: "The damned little liar, he'll get to Congress yet!"

  But the children were a dangerous topic for overstrained nerves at thisparticular time, so Alida told Jim that she had put the black hen to setand she thought they'd have some chickens at last. Jim smoked while Alidawashed the dishes, and when Jim's back was turned she examined the lock onthe door--a good push would open it. Then she looked at the brown bureau,and the recklessness of despair came into her eyes. In the room beyond,Jim was reading a two weeks' old newspaper and smoking. He looked like alazy ranchman taking his ease.

  As she went about her household tasks that morning, Alida noticed thingsas she had never noticed them before. A sunbeam came through theshutterless window of the house and writhed and quivered on the wall as ifit were a live thing. She read a warning in this, and in the color of thesun, that was red, like blood, and in the whirr of the grasshoppers, thatwas sinister and threatening. The creeks had dried, and their slimy bedscrept along the willows like sluggish snakes. Gaunt range-cattle bellowedin their thirst, and the parched earth crackled beneath the sun that hungabove the house like a flaming disk. Sometimes she sank beneath the burdenof it; then she would wring her hands and call on God to help them; theywere beyond human power. She and Jim were alone all the morning; they didnot again refer to what they knew would happen. He read his old paper andshe put her house in order. She did it with especial care. It was meet tohave things seemly in the house of the dead. And every time she glanced atJim she repressed the desire to fling herself on his breast and cry outthe anguish that consumed her.

  At noon she brought the children home to dinner, and afterwards Jim taughtthem to throw the lasso and played buffalo with them. Alida did not trustherself to watch them; she stayed in the kitchen and saw the sunbeam growpale with the waning of the day, the day whose minutes dragged like lead,yet had rushed from her, leaving her the night to face. At sundown shecooked supper, but she no longer knew what she did. A crazy agility hadtaken possession of her and she spun about the kitchen, doing the sameerrand many times, finding herself doing always something different fromthat she had set about doing. The molten day was burning itself out like afever; hot gusts of air beat up from the earth, but the woman who waitedfelt chilled to the marrow, and took a cloak down from a peg and wrappedit about her while she waited for the biscuit to bake. At supper they satdown together, the man and his wife and their three children. The childrenwere in fine spirits from the fun they had had that afternoon. Never haddaddy been so nice to them. He had taught Topeka to throw the lasso sowell that she had caught the cat once and little Jim twice; and daddy hadplayed he was a buffalo and had charged them all with his head down, tillthey screamed in terror. But daddy seemed more quiet through the meal, andonce mother started up and cried:

  "What's that?"

  She ran to the door with her hand pressed to her side, but daddy calledafter her:

  "Don't you know the cowards better than that? They'll wait for nightfall."

  But these things had not worried the children, with their heads full ofplaying buffalo and throwing the lariat.

  "Jim," said his father, before they went to bed, "remember you are the manof the family." But young Jim was already nodding with sleep. Topeka andJudith were sleepy, too; they kissed their father and were glad to go tobed.

  The night began menacingly to close over the wilderness. Where the sun hadhung above the mountain a moment before there glowed a great pool of redthat dripped across the blackness in faint tricklings. The outlines of thefoot-hills loomed huge, formless, uncouth. In the half-light it seemed aworld struggling in the birth-throes. All day the dry, burning heat hadquivered over the desert, like hot-air waves flickering over a bed of livecoals, and now the very earth seemed to palpitate with the intensity ofits fever. The bellowing of the thirst-maddened cattle had not stoppedwith the twilight that brought no dew to slake their parched throats. Inthe hills the coyotes wailed like lost souls. It was night bereft ofbenisons, day made frightful by darkness. All the heat of a cycle ofdesert summers seemed concentrated in that house in the valley where theman and his wife waited. Each sound of the desert night Alida translatedinto the trampling of horses' feet; then, as the sound would die away, orprove to be but some night noise of the wilderness, the pallor would loseits pinch on her features, and she would stare into her husband's facewith eyes that did not see. Jim smoked his pipe and refilled it, smokedand filled again, but gave no sign of the object of his waiting.

  "Jim," she said, when the clock had struck ten, then eleven, "I am goingto fasten up the house."

  "Do you hear them?" he asked, without emotion, but as one who deferred tothe finer senses of women.

  She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

  He looked at the door that was shrunken and warped from the heat till itbarely held together, and there was no measure to the tenderness he putinto:

  "Oh, you poor little fool, do you think you could keep them out byfastening that?"

  "Jim, I must," and her voice broke. "They may think you are not here, thatit's only me and the children, and that's why the house is fastened." Shegot up and began to move about as though her thoughts scourged her toaction, even if futile. He shook the ashes from his pipe.

  "Do anything you blame please," he said, more by way of humoring her thanfrom faith in her stratagem. He felt strong enough to face his destiny, tomeet it in a way worthy of his mother's people.

  Alida seemed under a spell in her preparations for the night. Each thingshe did as she had done it in her dream the night before; it was as if shewere constrained by a power greater than her will to fulfil a sinisterprophecy. Yet now and then she would stop and wonder if she might notbreak the spell by doing things differently from the way she had dreamedthem. Her hand grasped the knob of the door uncertainly, and she swung itto and fro on its creaking hinges, while her mind seemed likewise to swayhither and thith
er. Should she fasten the door and push the bureau againstit, as it had been in the dream, or should she leave door and windowsgaping wide for them? And then, as one who walks and does familiar thingsin sleep, she shut the door and turned the key. Jim smiled at her, but shecould no longer look at him. One of the children wailed fretfully from theroom beyond. Sleep had become a scourge in the stifling heat. One by oneshe lowered the windows and nailed them down; then she dragged the brownbureau against the door, took the brace of six-shooters from the wall, andsat down with Jim to wait.

  "What are you going to do with them toys?" he asked, as he saw her examinethe chambers of one of the six-shooters.

  "You ain't going to let yourself be caught like a rat in a hole, are you?"she reproached him.

  "'Ain't we agreed that it's best to keep onpleasant family matters fromthe kids?" He smiled at her bravely. "The remembrance of what we'reanticipatin' ain't going to help young Jim to get to Congress when histime comes, nor it ain't going to help the girls get good husbands,either. This here country ain't what it was in the way of liberality sinceit's got to be a State."

  "Sh-sh-sh!" she said. "Is that the range-cattle stampedin' after water, oris it--" They listened. The furniture in the room crackled; there was not afibre of it to which the resistless heat had not penetrated. On the rangethe cattle bellowed in their thirst-torture; in the intervals of theircries sounded something far off, but regular as the thumping of a ship'sscrew. The woman did not need an answer to her question. The steadytrampling of hoofs came muffled through the dead air, but the sound wasunmistakable. She put her arms about the man's neck and crushed him to herwith all her woman strength. "Oh, Jim, you've been a good man to me!"

  "Steady--steady." He strained her close to him. "They'd be, by the sound ofthem, on the straight bit of road now, before the turn. Soon we'll heartheir hoofs ring hollow as they cross the plank bridge."

  His plainsman's faculty was as keen as ever; his calculation of thehorsemen's distance was made as though he were the least concerned. AllAlida's courage had gone, with the dread thing at hand. She clung to him,dazed.

  "They're sober, all right enough."

  "How do you know?"

  "They'd be cursing and bellowing if they were drunk."

  The hoofs rang hollow on the little plank bridge that crossed the ditchabout a stone's-throw from the door. Not a word was said either within orwithout. The lynchers seemed to have drilled for their part; there was nowhispering, no deferring to a leader. On they came, so close that Jim andAlida could hear the creaking of their saddles. There was the clank ofspurs and the straining of leather as they dismounted, then some oneknocked at the door till the warped boards rattled.

  Jim could feel the thudding of Alida's heart as she clung to him, but whenthe knock was repeated a new courage came to her, and she left Jim andwent on her knees close to the outer wall.

  "Jim, is that you?" she called, and now every sense was trained to battle;her voice had even a sleepy cadence, as if she had been suddenly roused.

  "That won't do at all, Miz Rodney. We know you got Jim in there, just ascertain as we're out here, and we want him to come out and we'll do thething square, otherwise he can take the consequences."

  Jim opened his mouth to speak, but she, still on her knees beside thewall, gained his silence by one supplicating gesture. There was a sleepy,fretful cry from the room beyond--the noise had roused one of the children.

  "Sh-sh, dear," she called. "It's only a bad dream. Go to sleep again;mother is here."

  Through the warped door came sounds of the whispering voices without,drowned by the shrieking bellow of the cattle. There was not a breath ofair in the suffocating room. Jim bent towards Alida:

  "I'm goin out to 'em. They'll do it square, over on the cotton-woods; thisrumpus'll only wake the kids."

  But she shook her head imploringly, putting her finger to her lips as asign that he was not to speak, and he had not the heart to refuse, thoughknowing that she made a desperate situation worse.

  "Gentlemen"--she spoke in a low, distinct voice--"Jim ain't here. He's beenaway from home five days. There's no one here but me and the children;you've woke them up and frightened them by pounding on the door. I ask youto go away."

  "If he ain't in there, will you let us search the house?" It was Hendersonthat spoke, Henderson, foreman of the "XXX" outfit.

  "I can't have them frightened; please take my word and go away."

  "Whas er matter, muvvy?" called Judith, sleepily. Young Jim was by thistime crying lustily. Only Topeka said nothing. With the precocity of afrontier child, she half realized the truth. She tried to comfort littleJim, though her teeth chattered in fear and she felt cold in the hot,still room. Then Judith called out, "Make papa send them away."

  "Your papa ain't here, Judith." But the fight had all gone out of Alida'svoice; it was the groan of an animal in a trap.

  "Where's papa gone to?"

  "Sh-sh, Judith! Topeka, keep your sister quiet."

  It was absolutely still, within and without, for a full minute. Then Alidaheard the shoving of shoulders against the door. Once, twice, thrice thelock resisted them. The brown bureau spun across the room like a child'stoy. The lynchers, bursting in, saw Alida with her arms around Jim. Whenthe last hope had gone it was instinct with her to protect him with herown body.

  "Go into the kids, old girl, this is no place for you." And there was thatin his voice that made her obey.

  Something of the glory of old Chief Flying Hawk, riding to battle, was inthe face of his grandson.

  "Remember, the children ain't to know," he said to his wife; and to thelynchers, "Gentlemen, I'm ready."