Her father talked much of the young man. In his prophetic eye this fearless, vigorous young stranger was the incarnate spirit of that Gentile invasion to which the Lord had condemned them for their sins. He had come, resourceful, determined, talking of mighty enterprises, of cattle, and gold, and wheat, of wagon-trains, and railroad,--an eloquent forerunner of the Gentile hordes that should come west upon the shoulders of Israel, and surround, a.s.similate, and reduce them, until they should lose all their powers and gifts and become a mere sect among sects, their name, perhaps, a hissing and a scorn. He foresaw the invasion of which this self-poised, vital youth of three or four and twenty was a sapper; and he knew it was a just punishment from on high for the innocent blood they had shed. Yet now he viewed it rather impersonally, for he felt curiously disconnected from the affairs of the Church and the world.

He no longer preached on the Sabbath, giving his ill-health as an excuse. In truth he felt it would not be honest since, in his secret heart, he was now an apostate. But with his works of healing he busied himself more than ever, and in this he seemed to have gained new power.

Weak as he was physically, gray-haired, bloodless, fragile, with what seemed to be all of his remaining life burning in his deep-set eyes, he yet laid his hands upon the sick with a success so marked that his fame spread and he was sent for to rebuke plagues and fevers from as far away as Beaver.

For two weeks they heard nothing of the wandering Gentile, and Prudence had begun to wonder if she would ever see him again; also to wonder why an uncertainty in the matter should seem to be of importance.

But one evening early in June they saw him walking up in the dusk, the light sombrero, the scarlet kerchief against the blue woollen shirt, the holster with its heavy Colt's revolver at either hip, the easy moving figure, and the strong, yet boyish face.

He greeted them pleasantly, though, the girl thought, with some restraint. She could not hear it in his words, but she felt it in his manner, something suppressed and deeply hidden. They asked where his horse was and he replied with a curious air of embarra.s.sment:--

"Well, you see, I may be obliged to stop around here a quite some while, so I put up with this man Wardle--not wanting to impose upon you all--and thanking you very kindly, and not wishing to intrude--so I just came to say 'howdy' to you."

They expressed regret that he had not returned to them, Joel Rae urging him to reconsider; but he declined politely, showing a desire to talk of other things.

They sat outside in the warm early evening, the young man and Prudence near each other at one side of the door, while Joel Rae resumed his chair a dozen feet the other side and lapsed into silence. The two young people fell easily into talk as on the other evenings they had spent there. Yet presently she was again aware, as in the moment of his greeting, that he laboured under some constraint. He was uneasy and shifted his chair several times until at length it was so placed that he could look beyond her to where her father had tilted his own chair against the house and sat huddled with his chin on his breast. He talked absently, too, at first, of many things and without sequence; and when he looked at her, there was something back of his eyes, plain even in the dusk, that she had not seen there before. He was no longer the ingenuous youth who had come to them from off the Kanab trail.

In a little while, however, this uneasiness seemed to vanish and he was speaking naturally again, telling of his life on the plains with a boyish enthusiasm; first of the cattle drives, of the stampede of a herd by night, when the Indians would ride rapidly by in the dark, dragging a buffalo-robe over the ground at the end of a lariat, sending the frightened steers off in a mad gallop that made the earth tremble. They would have to ride out at full speed in the black night, over ground treacherous with prairie-dog holes, to head and turn the herd of frenzied cattle, and by riding around and around them many times get them at last into a circle and so hold them until they became quiet again. Often this was not until sunrise, even with the lullabys they sang "to put them to sleep."

Then he spoke of adventures with the Indians while freighting over the Santa Fe trail, and of what a fine man his father, Ezra Calkins, was. It was the first time he had mentioned the name and her ear caught it at once.

"Your father's name is Calkins?"

"Yes--I'm only an adopted son."

Unconsciously she had been letting her voice fall low, making their chat more confidential. She awoke to this now and to the fact that he had done the same, by noting that he raised his voice at this time with a casual glance past her to where her father sat.

"Yes--you see my own father and mother were killed when I was eight years old, and the people that murdered them tried to kill me too, but I was a spry little tike and give them the slip. It was a bad country, and I like to have died, only there was a band of Navajos out trading ponies, and one morning, after I'd been alone all night, they picked me up and took care of me. I was pretty near gone, what with being scared and everything, but they nursed me careful. They took me away off to the south and kept me about a year, and then one time they took me with them when they worked up north on a buffalo hunt. It was at Walnut Creek on the big bend of the Arkansas that they met Ezra Calkins coming along with one of his trains and he bought me of those Navajos. I remember he gave fifty silver dollars for me to the chief. Well, when I told him all that I could remember about myself--of course the people that did the killing scared a good deal of it out of me--he took me to Kansas City where he lived, and went to law and made me his son, because he'd lost a boy about my age. And so that's how we have different names, he telling me I'd ought to keep mine instead of taking his."

She was excited by the tale, which he had told almost in one breath, and now she was eager to question, looking over to see if her father would not also be interested; but the latter gave no sign.

"You poor little boy, among those wretched Indians! But why were your father and mother killed? Did the Indians do it?"

"No, not Indians that did it--and I never did know why they killed them--they that _did_ do it."

"But how queer! Don't you know who it was?"

Before answering, he paused to take one of the long revolvers from its holster, laying it across his lap, his right hand still grasping it.

"It was tiring my leg where it was," he explained. "I'll just rest myself by holding it here. I've practised a good smart bit with these pistols against the time when I'd meet some of them that did it--that killed my father and mother and lots of others, and little children, too."

"How terrible! And it wasn't Indians?"

"No--I _told_ you that already--it wasn't Indians."

"Don't you know who it was?"

"Oh, yes, I know all of them I want to know. The fact is, up there at Cedar City I met some people that got confidential with me one day, and told me a lot of their names. There was Mr. Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, and they talked right freely about some folks. I found out what I was wanting to know, being that they were drinking men."

He had moved slightly as he spoke and she glanced at the revolver still held along his knee.

"Isn't that dangerous--seems to me it's pointed almost toward father."

"Oh, not a bit dangerous, and it rests me to hold it there. You see it was hereabouts this thing happened. In fact, I came down here looking for a big man, and a little girl that I remembered, whose father and mother were killed at the same time mine was. This little girl was about three or four, I reckon, and she was taken by one of the murderers. He seemed like an awful big man to me. By the way, that's mean whiskey your Bishop sells on the sly up at Cedar City. Why, it's worse than Taos lightning. Well, this Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, they would drink it all right, but they said one drink made a man ugly and two made him so downright bad that he'd just as lief tear his wife's best bonnet to pieces as not. But they seemed to like me pretty well, and they drank a lot of this whiskey that the Bishop sold me, and then they got talking pretty freely about old times. I gathered that this man that took the little girl is a pretty big man around here. Of course I wasn't expecting anything like that; I thought naturally he'd be a low-down sort to have been mixed up in a thing like that."

He spoke his next words very slowly, with little pauses.

"But I found out what his name was--it was--"

He stopped, for there had been an indistinct sound from where her father sat, now in the gloom of the evening. She called to him:

"Did you speak, father?"

There was no reply or movement from the figure in the chair, and Follett resumed:

"I guess he was just asleep and dreaming about something. Well, anyway--I--I found out afterwards by telling it before him, that Mr.

Barney Carter and his drunken friend had given me his name right, though I could hardly believe it before."

"What an awful, awful thing! What wickedness there is in the world!"

"Oh, a tolerable lot," he a.s.sented.

He had been all animation and eagerness in the telling of the story, but had now become curiously silent and listless; so that, although she was eager with many questions about what he had said, she did not ask them, waiting to see if he would not talk again. But instead of talking, he stayed silent and presently began to fidget in his chair. At last he said, "If you'll excuse us, Miss Prudence, your pa and I have got a little business matter to talk over--to-night. I guess we can go down here by the corral and do it."

But she arose quickly and bade him good night. "I hope I shall see you to-morrow," she said.

She bent over to kiss her father as she went in, and when she had done so, warned him that he must not sit in the night air.

"Why your face is actually wet with a cold sweat. You ought to come in at once."

"After a very little, dear. Go to bed now--and always be a good girl!"

"And you've grown so hoa.r.s.e sitting here."

"In a little while,--always be a good girl!"

She went in with a parting admonition: "Remember your cough--good night!"

When she had gone neither man stirred for the s.p.a.ce of a minute. The little man, huddled in his seat, had not changed his position; he still sat with his chair tilted back against the house, his chin on his breast.

The other had remained standing where the girl left him, the revolver in his hand. After the minute of silence he crossed over and stood in front of the seated man.

"Come," he said, gruffly, "where do you want to go?"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.