Part 30 (2/2)

”Go away now!” the mother commanded the disappointed man.

He pa.s.sed into the dark. The old woman opened the bodice over the girl's heart, stripped away the stained lace that had served in three weddings on two sides of the Appalachians, and so got to the wound.

”It's in to the bone,” she said. ”It won't come out. Get me my scissors out of my bag. It's hanging right 'side the seat, our wagon.”

”Ain't there no doctor?” she demanded, her own heart weakening now. But none could tell. A few women grouped around her.

”It won't come out of that little hole it went in,” said stout Molly Wingate, not quite sobbing. ”I got to cut it wider.”

Silence held them as she finished the shreds of the ashen shaft and pressed to one side the stub of it. So with what tools she knew best she cut into the fabric of her own weaving, out of her own blood and bone; cut mayhap in steady snippings at her own heart, pulling and wrenching until the flesh, now growing purple, was raised above the girl's white breast. Both arms, in their white sleeves, lay on the trodden gra.s.s motionless, and had not shock and strain left the victim unconscious the pain must now have done so.

The sinew wrappings held the strap-iron head, wetted as they now were with blood. The sighing surgeon caught the base of the arrowhead in thumb and finger. There was no stanching of the blood. She wrenched it free at last, and the blood gushed from a jagged hole which would have meant death in any other air or in any patient but the vital young.

Now they disrobed the bride that was no bride, even as the rifle fire died away in the darkness. Women brought frontier drafts of herbs held sovereign, and laid her upon the couch that was not to have been hers alone.

She opened her eyes, moaning, held out her arms to her mother, not to any husband; and her mother, b.l.o.o.d.y, unnerved, weeping, caught her to her bosom.

”My lamb! My little lamb! Oh, dear me! Oh, dear me!”

The wailing of others for their dead arose. The camp dogs kept up a continual barking, but there was no other sound. The guards now lay out in the dark. A figure came creeping toward the bridal tent.

”Is she alive? May I come in? Speak to me, Molly!”

”Go on away, Sam!” answered the voice of the older woman. ”You can't come in.”

”But is she alive? Tell me!” His voice was at the door which he could not pa.s.s.

”Yes, more's the pity!” he heard the same voice say.

But from the girl who should then have been his, to have and to hold, he heard no sound at all, nor could he know her frightened gaze into her mother's face, her tight clutch on her mother's hand.

This was no place for delay. They made graves for the dead, pallets for the wounded. At sunrise the train moved on, grim, grave, dignified and silent in its very suffering. There was no time for reprisal or revenge.

The one idea as to safety was to move forward in hope of shaking off pursuit.

But all that morning and all that day the mounted Arapahoes hara.s.sed them. At many bends of the Sweet.w.a.ter they paused and made sorties; but the savages fell back, later to close in, sometimes under cover so near that their tauntings could be heard.

Wingate, Woodhull, Price, Hall, Kelsey stationed themselves along the line of flankers, and as the country became flatter and more open they had better control of the pursuers, so that by nightfall the latter began to fall back.

The end of the second day of forced marching found them at the Three Crossings of the Sweet.w.a.ter, deep in a cheerless alkaline desert, and on one of the most depressing reaches of the entire journey. That night such gloom fell on their council as had not yet been known.

”The Watkins boy died to-day,” said Hall, joining his colleagues at the guarded fire. ”His leg was black where it was broke. They're going to bury him just ahead, in the trail. It's not best to leave headboards here.”

Wingate had fallen into a sort of apathy. For a time Woodhull did not speak to him after he also came in.

”How is she, Mr. Wingate?” he asked at last. ”She'll live?”

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