The game went on. It was the Swede boy's turn at the goal, and he put his hands over his face and began to count as the children scattered.

"Tane, twanety, thirty, forty, feefty," he chanted, "seexty, saventy, eighty." As he told the numbers he stealthily watched the kitchen window where the little girl stood.

The neighbor woman's boy, who was in hiding under the wagon and almost at his feet, saw him peeking through his fingers and jumped out to denounce him. "King's ex, king's ex!" he cried, holding up one hand.

"It's no fair; he's looking."

"Ay bane note," declared the Swede boy, stoutly, wheeling about; "yo late may alone."

"You are, too," persisted the other, springing away to hide again.

The Swede boy once more resumed his chanting, and the little girl, as she leaned from her vantage-point to listen, wished that she might return to the yard and take part in the game. But "Frenchy's" brother, though tired with his struggles, was still sitting menacingly on the wagon tongue, and she dared not leave her cover.

Suddenly the sight of a slat sunbonnet, hanging on a nail beside her, suggested a means of circ.u.mventing him. She took it down and put it on, tying the strings under her chin in a hard double knot. The long, stiff pasteboard slats buried her face completely, and n.o.body but Luffree, with his sharp muzzle, could have reached her cheeks to kiss them. So she sallied bravely into the yard.

The Swede boy had been counting slowly in the hope that she would hide, and when he saw her approaching he paused a moment, expecting "Frenchy's" brother to renew the attack. But the figure on the tongue never moved, even when the little girl, with a saucy swish of her skirts, paused daringly near it. So he sang out his last call:

"Boshel of wheat, boshel of raye, Who ain't radey, holer 'Ay.'"

"I," shouted the little girl, whisking triumphantly away, and the Swede boy began to count again.

She entered the house, going in at the sitting-room. He followed her movements as she threaded her way through the dancers toward the empty granary, and saw her sunbonnet pa.s.s the bedroom window and the open kitchen door. Then once more he sent out the last call. This time there was no response. So, after a hasty examination of the wagon, he began to creep about with an impressive show of hunting.

Often he came upon a new calico dress trailing in a dusty place, but pa.s.sed its wearer by as if he had not seen her. He surprised the colonel's son curled up in a box beneath a Jack-o'-lantern, and distanced him to the wagon. Then he went on searching for a girl, and the boys, cl.u.s.tered about the wheel, watched him as he sneaked through the yard. Finally, when he judged that enough time had pa.s.sed to warrant it, he made a wider search that brought him close to the granary door.

His courage almost failed him as he pa.s.sed in front of it, and he was glad when the delighted squeals of two girls, who were running toward the goal, gave him an excuse to delay his entrance. But when the girls had tapped the wheel, he bounded back and, spurring himself on, stepped within the dark room, where, in a far corner, he caught a faint glint of white.

He walked toward it timidly. It moved, and he stood still. "Yo there?"

he asked, at last, his throat so dry that he could scarcely find the words. A subdued giggle answered him. He recalled how kind and comrade-like she had been to him three months before when they had caught gophers together, and his spirits rose. "Yo there?" he asked again.

Suddenly she came from her corner and attempted to pa.s.s him. Emboldened by the darkness, he put out his arms and stopped her, and she laughed gaily up at him. He laughed shyly back and dropped her arms. She made no effort to get away. He stood still, awkwardly cracking his knuckles.

"Why don't you fight!" she demanded. He did not reply, but shuffled his feet and cracked his knuckles harder than ever. The music of a waltz floated in to them over the babble of the kitchen, and he turned his head that way as if to listen. As he did so she crept past him, her eyes sparkling with fun from the depths of the bonnet. When he turned back to look at her, she was gone.

He followed her out and paid no attention to the jeering inquiries of the other children. And as the colonel's son began to count from the wagon-wheel he walked slowly past the teams and smudges, and across a strip of backfire beyond, to the high, dry gra.s.s, where he lay on his back for the rest of the evening, looking sadly up at the stars.

The little girl sought a hiding-place, too, behind a hay-stack on the other side of the house. The colonel's son had seen her run that way, and as he sounded the final challenge his voice had a victorious ring.

He began a second mock hunt. But it was a short one, for, fearful that he might stumble upon one of the Dutchman's younger brood, he first penetrated the outer darkness to find a boy, and then ran round the house in the direction taken by the little girl.

He came upon her unexpectedly as he circled a stack. She was crouching in plain sight against the hay, her face still hidden in the recesses of the bonnet. He rushed up to her and took her by the shoulders. "I've got you!" he said, but so low that the neighbor woman's daughter, who was just a few steps away behind a fanning-mill, could scarcely hear him.

"Y-e-e-s," stammered the little girl. She drew back and looked down, all her a.s.surance supplanted by a wild desire to get away.

"Going to let me have my forfeit?" he whispered, shaking her a little.

The sunbonnet drooped until its wide cape stood up stiffly above her curls. "I hate that old French boy," she said.

The colonel's son moved closer, and a wisp of brittle gra.s.s in her hands crackled in a double grasp. She glanced up at him swiftly, as she felt his touch, and this time there was a nearing of the white frock to the suit of blue. "Well,--if--if--you've got t'," she added.

But the colonel's son, as he bent over her with all the gallantry of his nine years, had to learn by experience what "Frenchy's" brother had divined at a glance: the sunbonnet was in the way.

He was equal to the emergency, however, and hesitated only for a moment.

Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket and took out his clasp-knife. He could hear some one at the goal calling him, and there was a rattle of dishes in the house, where the music had ceased for a moment, that told him the plates were being pa.s.sed for supper. He knew that in a moment either the chaplain or the boys would be searching for him.

She heard the calls and clatter, too; yet she did not move except to raise her head until the bonnet strings were in plain sight under her dimpled chin. When he saw them, he straightened his knife out with a click and leaned once more toward her.

The fiddle was playing the opening strains of the supper dance now, and a hundred voices were singing with it; so the neighbor woman's daughter, who had been peering from behind the fanning-mill, hurried away to the house. And thus it came about that no one but a vagrant night-hawk, perched high on the top of the stack, remained near enough to hear the sawing sound of a dull knife-blade, making its way through cloth.

IN the early morning hours, as the gray team jogged homeward past the deserted school-house, the big brothers and their mother discussed the wedding, the dancing, and the supper. But the little girl, snugly wrapped in a quilt on the hay behind, lay still and silent, and only smiled when the night breeze from the west bore to her ear the clear notes of the departing bugle blowing a sweet retreat.

IX

THE PRICE OF CONVALESCENCE

EVERY morning a cloud appeared in the east, rushed westward across the northern sky, and vanished beyond the "Jim." Every afternoon it came up in the west again, swept back toward the east, and went out of sight in the Big Sioux. If a herd chanced to be grazing too near its path as it approached, they were scattered right and left in wild confusion by a shrill _toot_! _toot_! that could be heard at the farm-house. But when the way was clear the cloud traveled swiftly and silently, stringing itself, on sunny days, to a low white ribbon, or, if the air was damp and the heavens were gray, separating itself, from river to river, into many dark coughs of dense, high-sailing smoke.

For three months it had been crossing the plains as regularly as the sun itself. Before that it had loitered, attended, so the biggest brother said, by a great company of rough men carrying shovels and picks. It was this company, stray members of which, worn and grimy, had visited the farm-house now and then and talked in broad brogue, that had kept the little girl and the herd south of the reservation road throughout the early spring; and it was not until the men had dispersed and the cloud had begun its daily trips from horizon to horizon that she was permitted to ride northward on the pinto to see it go by.

The youngest brother went with her, mounted upon a skittish, bald-faced pony, and they halted together, near the low embankment that divided the prairie, to wait for the engine. But when it hurtled past, a screaming thing of iron and flying sparks, both the pinto and the pony, despite their riders' curbing, retreated so precipitately from the track that neither she nor the youngest brother caught more than a glimpse of the flying train, for their mounts ceased running only when the barn-yard was reached. Then the old mare came to a stop, blowing and trembling so wildly that she could scarcely keep her legs, while the bald-face kicked and snorted about among the granaries and pens in a perfect paroxysm of terror.

It was not long, however, before the pinto completely lost her fear of the engine, and would eat quietly near the embankment while the little girl lay flat on the ties to listen for a first faint rumble, or waved at the people in the cars. The flock, too, became so familiar with the track that they soon had a contempt for it, a feeling that they retained even after a dozen of their number had been mangled on its rails; but the cattle always kept it at a respectful distance, and only Napoleon ever showed the train enough hostility to shake his stubby horns angrily at it or charge toward it as it shot away over the plains. The herd was allowed, therefore, to feed along the railroad in the custody of the little girl.

But now, for nearly three weeks, the Swede boy had kept guard over the grazing stock, and the little girl had not even seen the cloud above the distant train. For she was ill: so ill that the neighbor woman, who shared the long night watches beside the canopied bed with the biggest brother and his mother, shook her head in the seclusion of the kitchen, and told herself that the little girl would never be well again.

The family were beginning to have the same awful thought, and had sent a telegraphic summons from the new station, ten miles away, to a physician in Sioux Falls. To them a cloud far heavier and darker than the engine's breath was hanging, day and night, over the farm-house, shutting out all sunshine, hope, and happiness.

One warm afternoon, while the little girl was riding the cultivator mare up and down in the Indian corn, she had suddenly been seized with a chill. That night a fever followed, and for a week she grew steadily worse. Her mother gave her every home remedy known to be good for malaria, and at the end of the second week moved her to the canopied bed, where an ever waving fan cooled her hot cheeks. It was here, almost at the end of the third week of her illness, that the Sioux Falls doctor found her.

She was tossing from side to side, murmuring in a delirium that had possessed her for days. Her face showed a scarlet flush against the white pillow-slip. The biggest brother, who scarcely left her bedside to rest or eat, was placing cold cloths upon her forehead and wetting her lips. White through his tan, he hung over her in an agony of fear, only lifting his eyes, now and then, to turn them sorrowfully upon his mother, seated opposite.

The little girl did not know of the doctor's arrival. As he hurried into the sitting-room, she was thinking of the floating cloud. Now it was pursuing her as she fled from it on a fleet pony; now it was stooping groundward, a huge, airy monster, to offer her a cake of ice; again it was sweeping over her, quenching the deadly fire that consumed her, and leaving her on the damp, green bank above the mooring-place of the bull-boat. She lay very still with her cool thoughts, her eyes, wide and l.u.s.trous, fixed upon the blue canopy overhead. But when, a moment later, the fever burned more hotly again, and the cloud changed to a blinding, blistering steam that enveloped her, she sat up and fought with her hands, and cried aloud for the biggest brother.

The doctor caught her wrists and gently put her back. One glance at her parched lips and brown tongue had told him what was the matter, and as he opened a valise and took out some medicines he answered the inquiring looks of the family. "Typhoid," he said. "She's a very sick child. But I think we may be able to pull her through."

With her mother and the big brothers looking on mournfully, the first step was taken toward aiding her. One by one her curls, so long her mother's pride and care, were snipped off close to her head; and when at last they lay on the bed in a newspaper, a little heap of soft, yellow tangles, there was sobbing all about in the sitting-room, and even the doctor, accustomed to sad sights, could not keep the tears from chasing down his cheeks and into his brown beard.

She looked pitifully thin and altered, shorn of her bright halo; yet at once she grew quieter, and when she was gently lowered into the br.i.m.m.i.n.g wash-tub and then laid between sheets wrung from cold water, she closed her eyes gratefully and ceased her outcries.

The doctor, collarless and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, worked over her all day. The little girl's mother and the neighbor woman a.s.sisted him, and the big brothers sat on the bench in front of the house, so as to be within easy call. But when twilight came, and everything possible had been done for his patient's comfort, the doctor, who was tired with his long ride and the day's strain, went into the little girl's room and took a much-needed sleep.

"Keep up your courage," he said cheerily to the biggest brother, as he left him at his post by the little girl; "her years of outdoor life will help her rally. I have hope; but wake me at once if you note any decided change."

The evening hours pa.s.sed slowly. In the sick-room the little girl's mother was resting on the lounge, which had been pulled close to the canopied bed. The neighbor woman dozed in the kitchen, beside the table where was spread the untasted supper. The eldest and the youngest brothers were stretched, still dressed, on their beds in the attic. The house was noiseless, and dark everywhere except in the sitting-room.

There, on the high clock-shelf, the same tall lamp that, nearly seven and a half years before, had burned like a beacon and lighted the coming of the stork, now, turned low, shone upon the faithful biggest brother and the suffering little girl.