The Sunset Trail. Lewis Alfred Henry
“When they drift within twenty miles of us, they are sure to show up at the store, and I haven’t seen an Indian for two days.”
Count Banti took a Winchester rifle with him. There were two seats in the buckboard; Ruth Pemberton and Count Banti occupied the rear seat, the front seat being given over to the Mexican, and a basket flowing with a refection prepared by Mr. Hanrahan’s darky cook. Mr. Masterson, on his buckskin pony, Houston, rode by Ruth Pemberton’s side of the buckboard. Madam Pemberton remained behind with The Mill on the Floss.
The expedition skirted the suburbs of a prairie dog village, and the shrill citizens were set a-flutter, or pretended to be, and dived into their houses. The polite diminutive owls, the prairie dogs’ companions, stood their ground and made obeisances. Ruth Pemberton’s cheek flushed with an odd interest as she gazed at the prairie dogs and the little polite ground owls.
Off to one side a dozen coyotes loafed along, not unlike a dozen loafing dogs, keeping abreast of the buckboard. Ruth Pemberton pointed to them:
“Isn’t it strange,” she asked, “that they should accompany us?”
There was the emphasis of a half alarm in her tones; a coyote was not, to her eyes, without formidable characteristics. Mr. Masterson explained.
“They go with us to the kill. When we leave, there will be a battle royal between them and the buzzards for the beef.”
Mr. Masterson pushed forward to show the buckboard Mexican his way across a piece of broken ground. Count Banti took note of the parted lips, and that soft sparkle of the brown eyes, as Ruth Pemberton followed him with her glances. Count Banti made no criticism of these dulcet phenomena; he was too much of a gentleman and she too much of an heiress.
Count Banti, moved of a purpose to recall Ruth Pemberton from her train of fancy, did say that since a waggon, with the skinners, must go and come every day to bring in the buffalo hides, he was surprised that Mr. Masterson didn’t ride in that waggon. It was superfluous, nay foolish, to saddle a pony under such waggon circumstances.
This idiotic conversation earned the commentator on buffalo hunters and their ways immediate grief. Ruth Pemberton wheeled upon Count Banti like a little lioness, that is, a little lioness subdued of Vassar and Beacon Hill. Ruth Pemberton said that she had never been treated to a more preposterous remark! It was unworthy, Count Banti! Mr. Masterson in a waggon! One might as easily conceive of Sir Launcelot or Richard the Lion Heart in a waggon.
When Mr. Masterson returned to the buckboard, Ruth Pemberton deftly lost her handkerchief overboard. Mr. Masterson brought Houston to the right about, and riding back stooped from the saddle and swept up the scrap of cambric from the short grass.
“Because you are so good,” said Ruth Pemberton, with a smile, “you may keep it for your reward.”
Count Banti ground his teeth; he expected that Mr. Masterson would bind the sweet trophy in his sombrero. Count Banti gasped; instead of tucking the dainty guerdon behind that gold and silver rattlesnake, the favoured dull one continued to offer it to Ruth Pemberton.
“I’ve no place for it,” said Mr. Masterson; “I’d lose it.”
Ruth Pemberton’s brow was red as she received her property; for one wrathful moment a flame showed in the brown eye like a fire in a forest. Mr. Masterson’s own eye was as guileless as an antelope’s. Was he a fool? Was he deriding her? Ruth Pemberton decided that he was merely a white Indian. She appeased her vanity by turning her shoulder on the criminal and giving her conversation to Count Banti. Under these direct rays of the sun, our Frenchman’s noble soul expanded like a flower; as the fruit of that blossoming he began to brag like a Sioux.
Having caught some glint of the lady’s spirit, Count Banti told of adventures in India and Africa. He was a hero; he had haunted water-holes by night and killed black-maned lions; he had stalked tigers on foot; he had butchered Zulus who, moved of a tropical venom, assailed him with battle axes.
Count Banti, pressing forward, set forth that he had been sustained as he crossed the Atlantic by a hope that he might war with America’s red natives. Alas, they were broken and cowed; their spirit had been beaten down! He must return wrapped in disappointment.
Still – and now Count Banti became tender – it had been the most fortunate journey of his career. If not Mars then Venus! Count Banti had found the most lovely and most lovable woman in the world! And, by the way, would Ruth Pemberton make Count Banti delirious with joy by presenting him the handkerchief which the aborigine on the pony had had neither the wit nor the gentle fineness to accept?
For reply, Ruth Pemberton furtively wadded the poor rejected cambric into a ball about the size of a buckshot, and dropped it overboard again. And, because neither Mr. Masterson nor Count Banti saw its fall, there it lies among the buffalo grasses on the flat banks of the Canadian to this day.
Count Banti repeated his request and backed it with a sigh. Thereupon Ruth Pemberton opened both small hands to show how that desirable cambric had disappeared. Count Banti made rueful eyes rearward as though contemplating a search.
Mr. Masterson halted the buckboard; they had arrived within a mile of the buffaloes; he pointed where hundreds of them were grazing or reposing about the base of a gently sloping hill. The heavy dust-coloured creatures looked like farm cattle to the untaught Ruth Pemberton.
There was a bowl-like depression a few yards from where the buckboard came to a stop. It was grassed and regular, and one might have imagined that it had been shaped and sodded by a gardener. Mr. Masterson defined it as a buffalo wallow; he tried to make clear how, pivoting on one horn, a buffalo bull, shoulder to the ground, had excavated the cup-fashioned hollow they beheld.
While the Mexican was slipping free the team’s traces, and making the few camp arrangements required for their stay, Count Banti began a lively talk with Mr. Masterson.
How long would it take Mr. Masterson to complete his day’s kill?
Mr. Masterson, it seems, would kill thirty buffaloes; that would take an hour.
And then they would return? Yes; or if the visitors tired, they might hook up and start at any moment. It was not worth while to sit through the slaughter of thirty buffaloes. The killing of one would be as the killing of another; to see the first was to see all.
Ruth Pemberton interposed; she would wait and return with Mr. Masterson.
Count Banti said he could see that killing buffaloes was slow, insipid sport. Now there might be a gallant thrill in fighting Indians – painted and perilous! Count Banti would have summoned up an interest for Indians. Had Mr. Masterson ever slain an Indian? Probably not; Mr. Masterson was a young man.
Mr. Masterson bent a cold eye upon Count Banti. Saying never a word, he sauntered over to Houston, and began twisting a pair of rawhide hopples about his fetlocks, for Mr. Masterson, like all professional buffalo hunters, killed his game on foot. As Count Banti was ruffling over Mr. Masterson’s want of courtesy, the Mexican plucked him by the sleeve.
“See!” said the Mexican, pointing to the four braids of black hair hanging from Mr. Masterson’s bridle. “Cheyenne skelps; four!” And the Mexican held up four fingers.
“Scalps!” returned Count Banti, the burgundy colour deserting his heavy face. “Where did he get them?”
“Killed ’em here – anywhere!” vouchsafed the Mexican, waving a vague paw. “Killed ’em twelve weeks ago – mebby eight – no?”
What Count Banti might have thought concerning the sinister character of the region into which he had stumbled, he was given no chance to divulge, for Mr. Masterson came up, rifle in hand, and speaking to Ruth Pemberton, said:
“Make yourself comfortable; you will be able to follow all that goes on, should you be interested in it, from the buckboard. You’ve brought a pair of field glasses, I see. Lucky we’re down the wind! I can go straight to them.”
As the ground between him and the buffaloes on the slope lay flat and open, with not so much as a bush to act as a screen, Mr. Masterson’s remark about going straight to his quarry appeared a bit optimistic. However, Mr. Masterson did not think