LITMIR.BIZ

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mind the names," shortly. "I can learn them later."

      "We're homesteaders." Again it was stubby, sandy-whiskered McPherson who took the lead.

      "From where?"

      "Sioux Falls."

      "Any news?"

      Curt as the question came the answer, the tale of massacre now a day old.

      "And the rest of your settlement—where are they?"

      McPherson told him.

      "They all went, you say?"

      For the first time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he qualified.

      "There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"

      "Yes."

      "That you—men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously. "You come here with that story and ask me to let you inside?"

      McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently, his shoulders squared.

      "We're here," he announced laconically.

      "I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids. "Moreover, strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned forward involuntarily; his breath came quick. "It gives me the opportunity, sir, to tell you to your face that you're a damned coward." In spite of an obvious effort at repression, the great veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A damned coward, sir!"

      "What! You call me—"

      "Men! Gentlemen!"

      "Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight, every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here. If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade—not if the Santees scalped you before my eyes."

      For a second there was silence, inaction.

      "But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried—"

      "Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,—I'm afraid it is; but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me? Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"

      "Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're all with you—that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't cats, so we can't croak but once—and that might as well be now as ten years from now."

      "All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first twenty to return, go."

      From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.

      "Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.

      No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.

      For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an inverted V; then silent as they, equally swiftly, he followed.

      Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle back. Not in ignorance of possibilities in store did they come. They had no delusions concerning the red brother, these frontiersmen. Nor in the hot adventurous blood of youth did they respond. One and all were middle-aged men; many had families. All save Landor were strangers to the man they went to seek. Yet at a moment's call they responded; as they took it for granted others would respond were they in need. Had they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious, smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled, parchment-faced veteran, who alone had followed the Missouri to its source and, stranger to relate, had alone returned with his scalp. Then came Landor himself, the wiry little mustang he rode all but blanketed under the big army saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as though an event of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson, drew up in place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat appreciatively, but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one but many riders; a half dozen, a score,—enough to make up the allotment, and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho, the mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of apparel, from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or saddleless, across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel of a long rifle, at the hip of every rider hung a holster, from every belt peeped the hilt of a great knife. Long ere this word of the unusual had passed about, and now, on the rise of ground at the back of the stockade, a goodly group had gathered. Silent as the prairies, as the morning itself, they watched the scene below, awaited the dénouement. Not without influence was the taciturn example of the red man in this land from which he was slowly being crowded. From over the uplands to the east the red face of the morning sun was just peeping when Landor separated himself from the waiting group, led the way to the big gate and paused. "Twenty only, men," he repeated. "All ready."

      First through the opening went Crosby.

      "One."

      Close as before, at his horse's heels followed Conway.

      "Two."

      From out the motley, looking neither to right nor left, came Scotchman McPherson; but though he passed fair before the leader's eyes and not a yard away, no number was spoken; no hint of recognition, of cognisance, crossed the latter's face. Implacable, relentless as time, he awaited the next in line, then voiced the one word: "Three."

      On filed the line; close formed as convicts, as convicts silent—halting at a lifted hand. A moment they paused, one and twenty men who counted but as a score, started into motion, halted again; as by common consent every head save one of a sudden going bare. Hitherto silent as they, the watching group back in the stockade had that instant found voice. All but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again; tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the column one rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear. Implacable as Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that would bring with it renewed activity.

      And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From his position by the gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind him, impassive again as figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line. At first a mere walk, the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot. By this time the confines of the tiny frontier town were passed. Before them on the one hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown from its coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast, glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie. Straight into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier, which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off the passing miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.

      Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was the prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before;

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