The Price of the Prairie: A Story of KansasMcCarter, Margaret Hill
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The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas
McCarter, Margaret Hill
Kansas -- Fiction; Western stories
"O'mie, I waked up suddenly last night. It was clear moonlight, and I
looked out of the window. There right under it, on a black pony just
like Tell Mapleson's, was Jean Pahusca. He was staring up at the window.
He must have seen me move for he only stayed a minute and then away he
went. I watched him till he had passed Judson's place and was in the
shadows beyond the church. He had on a new red blanket with a circle of
white right in the middle, a good target for an arrow, only I'd never
sneak up behind him. If I fight him I'll do it like a white man, from
the front."
"Then ye'll be dead like a white man, from the front clear back,"
declared O'mie. "But hadn't ye heard? This mornin' ould Tell was showin'
Tell's own pony he said he brought back from down at Westport. He got
home late las' night. An' Tell, he pipes up an' says, 'There was a arrow
fastened in its mane when I see it this mornin', but his dad took no
notice whatsoever av the boy's sayin'; just went on that it was the one
Jean Pahusca had stole when he was drunk last. What does it mean, Phil?
Is Jean hidin' out round here again? I wish the cuss would go to Santy
Fee with the next train down the trail an' go to Spanish bull fightin'.
He's just cut out for that, begorra; fur he rides like a Comanche. It ud
be a sort av disgrace to the bull though. I've got nothin' agin bulls."
"O'mie, I don't understand; but let's keep still. Some day when he gets
so drunk he'll kill one of the grand jury, maybe the rest of them and
the coroner can indict him for something."
We lay still in the warm water. Sometimes now in the lazy hot August
afternoons I can hear the rippling song of the Neosho as it prattled and
gurgled on its way. Suddenly O'mie gave a start and in a voice low and
even but intense he exclaimed:
"For the Lord's sake, wud ye look at that? And kape still as a snake
while you're doin' it."
Lying perfectly still, I looked keenly about me, seeing nothing unusual.
"Look up across yonder an' don't bat an eye," said O'mie, low as a
whisper.
I looked up toward the Hermit's Cave. Sitting on a point of rock
overhanging the river was an Indian. His back was toward us and his
brilliant red blanket had a white circle in the centre.
"He's not seen us, or he'd niver set out there like that," and O'mie
breathed easier. "He could put an arrow through us here as aisy as to
snap a string, an' nobody'd live to tell the tale. Phil Bar'net, he's
kapin' den in that cave, an' the devil must have showed him how to git
up there."
A shout up-stream told of other boys coming down to our swimming place.
You have seen a humming bird dart out of sight. So the Indian on the
rock far above us vanished at that sound.
"That's Bill Mead comin'; I know his whoop. I wish I knew which side av
that Injun's head his eyes is fastened on," said O'mie, still motionless
in the water. "If he's watchin' us up there, I'm a turtle till the sun
goes down."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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