Part 19 (2/2)
”Rubbis.h.!.+” she said pettishly. ”You'll be saying Leff's a gentleman next.”
From which it will be seen that Low Courant had not been communicative about himself. Such broken sc.r.a.ps of information as he had dropped, when pieced together made a scanty narrative. His grandfather had been one of the early French settlers of St. Louis, and his father a prosperous fur trader there. But why he had cut loose from them he did not vouchsafe to explain. Though he was still young--thirty perhaps--it was evident that he had wandered far and for many years.
He knew the Indian trails of the distant Northwest, and spoke the language of the Black Feet and Crows. He had pa.s.sed a winter in the old Spanish town of Santa Fe, and from there joined a regiment of United States troops and done his share of fighting in the Mexican War.
Now the wanderl.u.s.t was on him, he was going to California.
”Maybe to settle,” he told the doctor. ”If I don't wake up some morning and feel the need to move once more.”
When they reached the fort he was hailed joyously by the bourgeois himself. The men cl.u.s.tered about him, and there were loud-voiced greetings and much questioning, a rumor having filtered to his old stamping ground that he had been killed in the siege of the Alamo. The doctor told the bourgeois that Courant was to go with his train to California, and the apple-cheeked factor grinned and raised his eyebrows:
”Vous avez de la chance! He's a good guide. Even Kit Carson, who conducted the General Fremont, is no better.”
The general satisfaction did not extend to Susan. The faint thrill of antagonism that the man had roused in her persisted. She knew he was a gain to the party, and said nothing. She was growing rapidly in this new, toughening life, and could set her own small prejudices aside in the wider view that each day's experience was teaching her. The presence of such a man would lighten the burden of work and responsibility that lay on her father, and whatever was beneficial to the doctor was accepted by his daughter. But she did not like Low Courant. Had anyone asked her why she could have given no reason. He took little notice of any of the women, treating them alike with a brusque indifference that was not discourteous, but seemed to lump them as necessary but useless units in an important whole.
The train was the focus of his interest. The acceleration of its speed, the condition of the cattle, the combination of lightness and completeness in its make-up were the matters that occupied him. In the evening hour of rest these were the subjects he talked of, and she noticed that Daddy John was the person to whom he talked most. With averted eyes, her head bent to David's murmurings, she was really listening to the older men. Her admiration was reluctantly evoked by the stranger's dominance and vigor of will, his devotion to the work he had undertaken. She felt her own insignificance and David's also, and chafed under the unfamiliar sensation.
The night after leaving Ash Hollow, as they sat by the fire, David at her side, the doctor had told Courant of the betrothal. His glance pa.s.sed quickly over the two conscious faces, he gave a short nod of comprehension, and turning to Daddy John, inquired about the condition of the mules' shoes. Susan reddened. She saw something of disparagement, of the slightest gleam of mockery, in that short look, which touched both faces and then turned from them as from the faces of children playing at a game. Yes, she disliked him, disliked his manner to Lucy and herself, which set them aside as beings of a lower order, that had to go with them and be taken care of like the stock, only much less important and necessary. Even to Bella he was off-hand and unsympathetic, unmoved by her weakness, as he had been by her sufferings the night he came. Susan had an idea that he thought Bella's illness a misfortune, not so much for Bella as for the welfare of the train.
They had been at the fort now for four days and were ready to move on.
The wagons were repaired, the mules and horses shod, and Bella was mending, though still unable to walk. The doctor had promised to keep beside the McMurdos till she was well, then his company would forge ahead.
In the heat of the afternoon, comfortable in a rim of shade in the courtyard, the men were arranging for the start the next morning. The sun beat fiercely on the square opening roofed by the blue of the sky and cut by the black shadow of walls. In the cooling shade the motley company lay sprawling on the ground or propped against the doors of the store rooms. The open s.p.a.ce was brilliant with the blankets of Indians, the bare limbs of brown children, and the bright serapes of the Mexicans, who were too lazy to move out of the sun. In a corner the squaws played a game with polished cherry stones which they tossed in a shallow, saucerlike basket and let drop on the ground.
Susan, half asleep on a buffalo skin, watched them idly. The game reminded her of the jack-stones of her childhood. Then her eye slanted to where Lucy stood by the gate talking with a trapper called Zavier Leroux. The sun made Lucy's splendid hair s.h.i.+ne like a flaming nimbus, and the dark men of the mountains and the plain watched her with immovable looks. She was laughing, her head drooped sideways. Above the collar of her blouse a strip of neck, untouched by tan, showed in a milk-white band. Conscious of the admiring observation, she instinctively relaxed her muscles into lines of flowing grace, and lowered her eyes till her lashes shone in golden points against her freckled cheeks. With entire innocence she spread her little lure, following an elemental instinct, that, in the normal surroundings of her present life, released from artificial restraints, was growing stronger.
Her companion was a voyageur, a half-breed, with coa.r.s.e black hair hanging from a scarlet handkerchief bound smooth over his head. He was of a sinewy, muscular build, his coppery skin, hard black eyes, and high cheek bones showing the blood of his mother, a Crow squaw. His father, long forgotten in the obscurity of mountain history, had evidently bequeathed him the French Canadian's good-humored gayety.
Zavier was a light-hearted and merry fellow, and where he came laughter sprang up. He spoke English well, and could sing French songs that were brought to his father's country by the adventurers who crossed the seas with Jacques Cartier.
The bourgeois, who was aloft on the bastion sweeping the distance with a field gla.s.s, suddenly threw an announcement down on the courtyard:
”Red Feather's village is coming and an emigrant train.”
The s.p.a.ce between the four walls immediately seethed into a whirlpool of excitement. It eddied there for a moment, then poured through the gateway into the long drainlike entrance pa.s.sage and spread over the gra.s.s outside.
Down the face of the opposite hill, separated from the fort by a narrow river, came the Indian village, streaming forward in a broken torrent.
Over its barbaric brightness, beads and gla.s.s caught the sun, and the nervous fluttering of eagle feathers that fringed the upheld lances played above its s.h.i.+fting pattern of brown and scarlet. It descended the slope in a broken rush, spreading out fanwise, scattered, disorderly, horse and foot together. On the river bank it paused, the web of color thickening, then rolled over the edge and plunged in. The current, beaten into sudden whiteness, eddied round the legs of horses, the throats of swimming dogs, and pressed up to the edges of the travaux where frightened children sat among litters of puppies. Ponies bestrode by naked boys struck up showers of spray, squaws with lifted blankets waded stolidly in, mounted warriors, feathers quivering in their inky hair, indifferently splas.h.i.+ng them. Here a dog, caught by the current, was seized by a sinewy hand; there a horse, struggling under the weight of a travaux packed with puppies and old women, was grasped by a l.u.s.ty brave and dragged to sh.o.r.e. The water round them frothing into silvery turmoil, the air above rent with their cries, they climbed the bank and made for the camping ground near the fort.
Among the first came a young squaw. Her white doeskin dress was as clean as snow, barbarically splendid with cut fringes and work of bead and porcupine quills. Her mien was sedate, and she swayed to her horse lightly and flexibly as a boy, holding aloft a lance edged with a flutter of feathers, and bearing a round s.h.i.+eld of painted skins.
Beside her rode the old chief, his blanket falling away from his withered body, his face expressionless and graven deep with wrinkles.
”That's Red Feather and his favorite squaw,” said the voice of Courant at Susan's elbow.
She made no answer, staring at the Indian girl, who was handsome and young, younger than she.
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