Frontier and pioneer life -- Dakota Territory -- Fiction
Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever
garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously
grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and
the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable
unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying
dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not
the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the
alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they
went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them,
at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and
noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope
saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where
the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in
sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to
the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed--for they were
in the residence section now--had its pair or multiple pairs peering out
through the slats of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a
performance, at the side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had
spread; like turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their
shells; yet everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to
take a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the pedestrians
were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding across the lawn to
pause at a safe distance and growl a menace; and again the all-noting
Indian had observed the cause of the unwonted bravery, had heard the low
voice from the kitchen that had urged the beast on.
Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm approached.
Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the girl not been
living in the future instead of the present, she would have recognised
its coming. For the pursuers were gaining rapidly now. They had crossed
onto the same street, the principal residence thoroughfare, and were
coming as a crowd ever moves: swiftly, those in the rear exerting
themselves to get to the fore, and so again. Far from silent by this
time, the man ahead, the man who never deigned a backward glance, could
hear their voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals,
interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without
seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a commander, a
directing spirit--and as well as he knew his own name he knew who that
leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in the ways of the world was this
man; but in the reading of his fellows he was a master.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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