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
"He went racin' out draggin' somethin' after him, an' jumped over the
porch railin' here," pointing to the north, "stid o' goin' down the
steps. O'mie's double-geared lightin' for quickness anyhow, but last
night he jist made lightnin' seem slow the way he got off the
reservation an' into the street. It roused me up. I was half asleep
settin' here waitin' to put them strangers to bed again. So I set up an'
waited fur the boy to show up an' apologize fur his not bein' no
quicker, when in comes Phil; an' ye all know the rest. I've not laid an
eye on O'mie sence, but bein' short on range I took it he was here but
out of sight. Oh, Lord!" Cam groaned, "can anything have happened to
him?"
While Cam was speaking I noticed that Jean Pahusca who had been loafing
about at the far side of the crowd, was standing behind Father Le
Claire. No one could have told from his set, still face what his
thoughts were just then.
The last one who had seen O'mie was Marjie.
"I had left the door open so I could find the way better," she said. "At
the gate O'mie came running up. I thought he was a girl, for he had my
cloak around him and the hood over his head. His face was very white.
"I supposed it was just the light behind me, made it look so, for he
wasn't the least bit scared. He called to me twice. 'Don't hurry,' he
said; 'I'm taking your cloak home.' Mrs. Judson shut the door just then,
thinking I had gone on, and I ran home, but O'mie flew ahead of me. Just
before I came around the corner I heard a horse start up and dash off to
the river. I ran in to mother and shut the door."
"I met a horse down by the river as I ran to grandpa's after Bill. He
was staying over there last night." It was Dave Mead who spoke. "I made
a grab at the rein. I was crazy to think of such a thing, but--" Dave
didn't say why he tried to stop the horse, for that would mean to repeat
what Tell had told us, and we had to keep Tell's part to ourselves. "The
horse knocked me twenty feet and tore off toward the river."
And then for the first time we noticed Dave Mead's right arm in a sling.
Too much was asked of us in those hours for us to note the things that
mark our common days.
"It put my shoulder out of place," Dave said simply. "Didn't get it in
again for so long, it's pretty sore. I was too busy to think about it at
first."
Dave Mead never put his right hand to his head again. And to-day, if the
broad-shouldered, fine-looking American should meet you on the streets
of Hong Kong, he would offer you his left hand. For hours he forgot
himself to save others. It is his like that have filled Kansas and made
her story a record of heroism like to the story of no other State in all
the nation.
But as to O'mie we could find nothing. There was something strange and
unusual about his returning the borrowed cloak at that late hour. The
whole thing was so unlike O'mie.
"They've killed him and put him in the river," wailed Dollie Gentry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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