The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas. McCarter Margaret Hill
Verdigris," he concluded. "The waters, that kept me away from Springvale on this side, kept them off in the southwest. The Osages did us God's service in our peril, albeit their means were cruel after the manner of the savage."
A silence fell upon the group on the veranda, as the enormity of what we had escaped dawned upon us.
"Let us thank God that in his ways, past finding out, He has not forsaken his children." Dr. Hemingway spoke fervently.
I looked out on the broad street and down toward the river shining in the May sunlight. The air was very fresh and sweet. The oak trees, were in their heaviest green, and in the glorious light of day the commonest things in this little frontier town looked good to me. Across my vision there swept the picture of that wide, swift-flowing Verdigris River, and of the dead whose blood stained darkly that fatal sand-bar, their naked bodies hacked by savage fury, waiting the coming of pitiful hands to give them shelter in the bosom of the earth. And then I thought of all these beautiful prairies which the plough was beginning to subdue, of the homesteads whose chimney smoke I had seen many a morning from my windows up on Cliff Street. I thought of the little towns and unprotected villages, and of what an Indian raid would mean to these, – of murdered men and burning houses, and women dragged away into a slavery too awful to picture. I thought of Marjie and of what she had escaped. And then clear, as if he were beside me, I heard O'mie's voice:
"Phil, oh, Phil, come, come!" it pleaded.
I started up and stared around me.
CHAPTER IX
THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING
Also Time runnin' into years —
A thousand Places left be'ind;
An' Men from both two 'emispheres
Discussin' things of every kind;
So much more near than I 'ad known,
So much more great than I 'ad guessed —
An' me, like all the rest, alone,
But reachin' out to all the rest!
"Uncle Cam, where is O'mie? I haven't seen him yet," I broke in upon the older men in the council. "Could anything have happened to him?"
The priest rose hurriedly.
"I have been hoping to see him every minute," he said. "Has anybody seen him this morning?"
A flurry followed. Everybody thought he had seen somebody else who had been with O'mie, but nobody, first hand, could report of him.
"Why, I thought he was with the boys," Cam Gentry exclaimed. "Nobody could keep track of nobody else last night."
"I thought I saw him this morning," said Dr. Hemingway. "But" – hesitatingly – "I do not believe I did either. I just had him in mind as I watched Henry Anderson's boys go by."
"All three of us are not equal to one O'mie," Clayton Anderson declared.
"What part of town did he have, Philip?" asked Le Claire.
"No part," I answered. "We had to take the boys that were out there under the oak."
Dr. Hemingway called a council at once, and all who knew anything of the missing boy reported. I could give what had been told to Aunt Candace and myself only in a general way, in order to shield Tell Mapleson. Cam had seen O'mie only a minute, just before midnight.
"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.
"I'm afraid he's been foully dealt with. They suspected he knew too much," and Dr. Hemingway bowed his head in sorrow.
"He's run straight into a coil of them pisen Copperheads an' they've made way with him; an' to think we hadn't missed him," sobbed Cam in his chair.
Father Le Claire gripped his hands, and his face grew as expressionless as the Indian's behind him. It dawned upon us now that O'mie was lost, there was no knowing how. O'mie, who belonged to the town and was loved as few orphan boys are loved. Oh, any of us would have suffered for him, and to think that he should be made the victim of rebel hate, that the blow should fall on him who had given no offence. All his manliness, his abounding kindness, his sunny smile and joy in living, swept up in memory in the instant. Instinctively the boys drew near to one another, and there came back to me the memory of that pathetic look in his eyes as we talked of our troubles down in the tavern stables two nights before: "Whoiver it's laid on to suffer," I could almost hear him saying it. And then I did hear his voice, low and clear, a faint call again, as I had heard it before.
"Phil, oh Phil, come!"
It shot through my brain like an arrow. I turned and seized Le Claire by the hand.
"O'mie's not dead," I cried. "He's alive somewhere, and I'm going to find him."
"You bet your life he'th not dead," Bud Anderson echoed me. "Come on."
The boys with Le Claire started in a body through the crowd; a shout went up, a sudden determination that O'mie must be alive seemed to possess Springvale.
"Stay with Cam and Dollie," Le Claire turned Dr. Hemingway back with a word. "They need you now. We can do all that can be done."
He strode ahead of us; a stalwart leader of men he would make in any fray. It flashed into my mind that it was not the Kiowa Indian blood that made Jean Pahusca seem so stately and strong as he strode