"Wait," he said, smiling coldly. "Wait till you are stronger."

"You are right," I said, "but we shall settle these matters."

"That, of course. But in the meantime, I have only suggested to you that could you agree with me in my point of view our obligation as it stands would be settled."

"Orme," said I, suddenly, "your love is a disgrace to any woman."

"Usually," he admitted, calmly, "but not in this case. I propose to marry Miss Meriwether; and I tell you frankly, I do not propose to have anything stand in my way."

"Then, by G.o.d!" I cried, "take her. Why barter and d.i.c.ker over any woman with another man? The field is open. Do what you can. I know that is the way I'd do."

"Oh, certainly; but one needs all his chances even in an open field, in a matter so doubtful as this. I thought that I would place it before you--knowing your situation back in Virginia--and ask you--"

"Orme," said I, "one question--Why did you not kill me the other day when you could? Your tracks would have been covered. As it is, I may later have to uncover some tracks for you."

"I preferred it the other way," he remarked, still smiling his inscrutable smile.

"You surely had no scruples about it."

"Not in the least. I'd as soon have killed you as to have taken a drink of water. But I simply love to play any kind of game that tests me, tries me, puts me to my utmost mettle. I played that game in my own way."

"I was never very subtle," I said to him simply.

"No, on the contrary, you are rather dull. I dared not kill you--it would have been a mistake in the game. It would have cost me her sympathy at once. Since I did not, and since, therefore, you owe me something for that fact, what do you say about it yourself, my friend?"

I thought for a long time, my head between my hands, before I answered him. "That I shall pay you some day Orme, but not in any such way as you suggest."

"Then it is to be war?" he asked, quietly.

I shrugged my shoulders. "You heard me."

"Very well!" he replied, calmly, after a while. "But listen. I don't forget. If I do not have my pay voluntarily in the way I ask, I shall some day collect it in my own fashion."

"As you like. But we Cowles men borrow no fears very far in advance."

Orme rose and stood beside me, his slender figure resembling less that of a man than of some fierce creature, animated by some uncanny spirit, whose motives did not parallel those of human beings. "Then, Mr. Cowles, you do not care to go back down the valley, and to return to the girl in Virginia?"

"You are a coward to make any such request."

His long white teeth showed as he answered. "Very well," he said. "It is the game. Let the best man win. Shall it then be war?"

"Let the best man win," I answered. "It is war."

We both smiled, each into the other's face.

CHAPTER XXIV

FORSAKING ALL OTHERS

When finally our entire party had been gotten across the Platte, and we had resumed our westward journey, the routine of travel was, for the time, broken, and our line of march became somewhat scattered across the low, hilly country to which we presently came. For my own part, our progress seemed too slow, and mounting my horse, I pushed on in advance of the column, careless of what risk this might mean in an Indian country. I wished to be alone; and yet I wished to be not alone. I hoped that might occur which presently actually did happen.

It was early in the afternoon when I heard her horse's feet coming up behind me as I rode. She pa.s.sed me at a gallop; laughing back as though in challenge, and so we raced on for a time, until we quite left out of sight behind us the remainder of our party. Ellen Meriwether was a Virginia girl with Western experience, and it goes without saying that she rode well--of course in the cavalry saddle and with the cross seat.

Her costume still was composed of the somewhat shriveled and wrinkled buckskins which had been so thoroughly wetted in crossing the river. I noticed that she had now even discarded her shoes, and wore the aboriginal costume almost in full, moccasins and all, her gloves and hat alone remaining to distinguish her in appearance at a distance from a native woman of the Plains. The voluminous and beruffled skirts of the period, and that feminine monstrosity of the day, the wide spreading crinoline, she had left far behind her at the Missouri River. Again the long curls, which civilization at that time decreed, had been forgotten.

Her hair at the front and sides half-waved naturally, but now, instead of neck curls or the low dressing of the hair which in those days partly covered the fashionable forehead, she had, like a native woman, arranged her hair in two long braids. Her hat, no longer the flat straw or the flaring, rose-laden bonnet of the city, was now simply a man's cavalry hat, and almost her only mark of coquetry was the rakish c.o.c.kade which confined it at one side. Long, heavy-hooped earrings such as women at that time wore, and which heretofore I had never known her to employ, she now disported. Brown as her face was now becoming, one might indeed, at a little distance, have suspected her to be rather a daughter of the Plains than a belle of civilization. I made some comment on this. She responded by sitting the more erect in her saddle and drawing a long, deep breath.

"I think I shall throw away my gloves," she said, "and hunt up some bra.s.s bracelets. I grow more Indian every day. Isn't it glorious, here on the Plains? Isn't it _glorious_!"

It so seemed to me, and I so advised her, saying I wished the western journey might be twice as long.

"But Mr. Orme was saying that he rather thought you might take an escort and go back down the river."

"I wish Mr. Orme no disrespect," I answered, "but neither he nor any one else regulates my travel. I have already told you how necessary it was for me to see your father, Colonel Meriwether."

"Yes, I remember. But tell me, why did not your father himself come out?"

I did not answer her for a time. "My father is dead," I replied finally.

I saw her face flush in quick trouble and embarra.s.sment. "Why did you not tell me? I am so sorry! I beg your pardon."

"No," I answered quietly, "we Quakers never wish to intrude our own griefs, or make any show of them. I should have told you, but there were many other things that prevented for the time." Then, briefly, I reviewed the happenings that had led to my journey into the West. Her sympathy was sweet to me.

"So now, you see, I ought indeed to return," I concluded, "but I can not. We shall be at Laramie now very soon. After that errand I shall go back to Virginia."

"And that will be your home?"

"Yes," I said bitterly. "I shall settle down and become a staid old farmer. I shall be utterly cheerless."

"You must not speak so. You are young."

"But you," I ventured, "will always live with the Army?"

"Why, our home is in Virginia, too, over in old Albemarle, though we don't often see it. I have been West since I came out of school, pretty much all the time, and unless there should be a war I suppose I shall stay always out here with my father. My mother died when I was very young."

"And you will never come back to quiet old Virginia, where plodding farmers go on as their fathers did a hundred years ago?"

She made no immediate answer, and when she did, apparently mused on other things. "The Plains," she said, "how big--how endless they are!

Is it not all wild and free?"

Always she came back to that same word "free." Always she spoke of wildness, of freedom.

"For all one could tell, there might be lions and tigers and camels and gazelles out there." She gestured vaguely toward the wide horizon. "It is the desert."

We rode on for a time, silent, and I began to hum to myself the rest of the words of an old song, then commonly heard: