Trouble Shooter. Ernest Haycox
glance afterward came and for a long moment she explored his face, her eyes reading him with a sharp care.
Overmile said: "This is Frank Peace, Cherry. A friend of Archie's."
She murmured, "How do you do," carefully. Yet Peace saw her emotions change in that little interval. She had read him. She had felt his antagonism, and her own eyes hardened against him and dropped. She turned toward the stove.
"What's the railroad want now?" said Mormon Charley.
Peace took a chair. He got his pipe packed and nursed it a moment until the smoke was drawing. "It's the Indians, Charley."
Mormon Charley grunted. "Sure. Why wouldn't it be? Your dam' rails are headin' across the finest game land in the world. I've seen a thousand antelope in one band runnin' that plain. Injuns don't like to see their grounds busted up, no better than whites."
"We scrapped the Sioux and Cheyenne all last year, in Nebraska," went on Peace. "Well, that part of the road is done and we can defend it. Far as that goes, we can defend the rest of the way. But it slows us up—and we're due into Salt Lake twelve months from now."
"Tell the Injuns that," remarked Mormon Charley, and laughed shortly.
"What will they do?" said Peace.
Mormon Charley hoisted one foot over the arm of his chair, "The Shoshones won't hurt you. Washakie's friendly to you and he'll keep his people on their blankets. But that's all the help you'll get. The Arapahoes have moved from their proper grounds—just knockin' around this country and Iookin' for trouble. The Sioux don't properly belong this far south, but they're fightin' the Shoshones now'days, and they'll send parties down this year. That applies to the Crows, too. Injuns are all busted up. White men have pushed 'em from one place to another. They're stirrin', like hornets. You can expect trouble. Mebbe not open raids on your track. Last year taught 'em that a bullet won't go through an engine, and they got respect for your Irishmen. But when you get a hundred yards off from your right of way you're a-goin' to be in trouble."
"Charley," said Peace, "why don't you go talk to them?"
"Me?" said Mormon Charley. He shook his head. "No. Was a time when I had a welcome in any lodge. But there's too many whites around here now, and I'm white, and the Injuns don't make any distinctions. The old days are gone. Used to be strong friends with the Arapahoes. Took a wife from the tribe. Week ago when I went huntin', I near lost my hair to a bunch of young Arapahoes. Shows you the change. I can't help the road, Frank. Ain't sure I'd want to, anyhow. You've spoiled my country."
Cherry slipped up to the table with cups and the coffeepot. She poured their drink enigmatically, never looking at them, and went back into the shadows. Millard came forward and took his cup, still standing. Mormon Charley raked the young officer with a keen, bright glance.
"Whar's the fun? Mountain days are gone, and the settlers comin' in ain't my style. I'm considerin' a move down to Navajo country. Settlers won't be thar for another hundred years, and mebbe I can potter around my melon patch till I'm rubbed out. I never was no good livin' white style, I can remember when this was a pretty land."
Archie Millard dropped his cup on the table, wheeling and leaving the cabin. Peace, intent on catching all this, saw Cherry's glance race across the room, round and vivid and alarmed. He finished his coffee and got up. Outside, he waited for Overmile and for Mormon Charley. They all went a little way into the meadow's shadowy stillness. Millard's shape vanished somewhere beyond the troopers' fire. Peace said abruptly: "Can't you stop this, Charley?"
Mormon Charley's talk wasn't pleased. "My girl's good enough for Archie, She's a woman with manners. I didn't raise her to be some Arapahoe's squaw."
Peace shook his head. "No," he said quietly, "it isn't that at all. Archie's on the edge of throwing up his commission. Then what will he do? He was educated to be a soldier. It's all he likes. Suppose he throws it over and marries your girl. It will be fine for a while. But he'll keep remembering what he might have been—and in time it will turn him bitter. No happiness there for either of them, Charley."
Mormon Charley said: "And why can't my girl be an army officer's wife? I told you she had learnin'."
Peace looked for a match and found it. Its exploding light raveled along the pipe bowl; it showed his cheeks to be hard and skeptical. The light went out. Overmile stirred on his feet, saying nothing.
"No," murmured Peace. "There are no officers with Indian wives."
Mormon, Charley cleared his throat. He had been brusque, he had been impatient. But he spoke now in a deeply regretting way. "I wondered about that. It's been a fine thought—that she'd be a white man's legal wife. She's my girl, Frank. I got to see her happy."
"It won't work," said Peace.
"No," agreed Mormon Charley, very soft with his words, "maybe not. I felt it was pushin' luck too far. But it is somethin' I can't tell Cherry. There's half of her with my blood, which is the half I can understand. The other half's Arapahoe. That's the part I've got no influence with."
He turned away from them, moccasined feet making no noise along the meadow. Peace and Overmile strolled toward the main house.
"You can be tough," murmured Overmile, "Where's your pity?"
"It won't work," repeated Peace doggedly, There was a shadow moving along a deeper part of the meadow. He saw it and paid no particular attention. Overmile swung toward the troopers' fire. "Think I'll sit in with the boys awhile."
Peace continued on toward the house porch. He was at the edge of it when a woman's voice said, "Mr. Peace." It turned him and pulled him along the side of the house, deeper into the darkness. Charley's girl stood there, straight and motionless; when he got closer he saw the oval surface of her face dimly showing him hatred.
"I'm sorry, Cherry."
She didn't lift her voice, yet in its huskiness was a passion capable of killing him. "Let us alone, Mr. Peace! Let us alone!" That was all. She whirled and ran back into the meadow's farther obscurity, leaving him with his unpleasant reflections.
The white blood in this girl cut her away frorn her own people, it made her dissatisfied with her lot. It put a ferment in her mind, a hope and an ambition. She was in love with Archie Millard, her white blood permitting her to believe that happiness was possible. She would be loyal to him with a stubborn, steadfast intensity. And yet it was the Indian strain in this girl that dominated all her actions and all her impulses—as in every blood mixture. In the end she would fall back to a primitiveness she could not escape; and beautiful as she was now, another ten years would see her a stolid Arapahoe squaw, pulled back to Indian habits and Indian reasoning. The tragedy of Cherry was a plain thing to Frank Peace. She was not responsible for that warfare in her own veins, and she could not escape it.
He went back to the porch and smoked out his pipe, and afterward rolled his blankets by the troopers' fire for the night. Millard hadn't returned.
V
At six o'clock they rounded into Fort Sanders. Overmile was restless and wanted to be directly on the way to Laramie but they had supper in the officers' quarters before swinging out upon the muddy trail north. Archie Millard walked beside their horses to the guard gate, moody and withdrawn.
He said: "General Gibbon tells me I am at your disposal, Frank. I shall be here whenever you want me."
The morning before there had been no track here; but now the fresh yellow grade held fresh steel and a line of supply trains crept across it, Laramie bound, the engine fireboxes guttering raw crimson into the swelling dusk. All the cars held Irishmen, pleasure bent, to christen this new town.
Overmile said: "They sure do work fast."
"Millard," sald Peace, "is about ready to jump his commission. We've got to stop that, Leach."
"How do you stop the