The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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greater issues. "You will eat?" she went on.
"Yes, Wana. I'm hungry--very."
"So." The woman's eyes smiled into his, and she eagerly set the food on a table made of packing cases.
Steyne began at once. He was thoughtful while he ate. But after a while he looked up, and there was a peculiar gleam in his blue eyes as they rested on the warm, rich features of his willing slave.
"Pretty poor sort of place--this," he said. "It's not good enough for you, my Wana."
The woman had seated herself on a low stool near the table. It was one of her few remaining savage instincts she would not give up. It was not fitting that she should eat with him.
"How would you like a house, a big house, like--White River Farm?" he went on, as though he were thinking aloud. "And hundreds, thousands, of steers and cows? And buggies to ride in? And farm machinery? And--and plenty of fine clothes to wear, like--like Rosebud?"
The woman shook her head and indicated her humble belongings.
"This--very good. Very much good. See, you are here. I want you."
The man flushed and laughed a little awkwardly. But he was well pleased.
"Oh, we're happy enough. You and I, my Wana. But--we'll see."
Wanaha made no comment; and when his meat was finished she set a dish of buckwheat cakes and syrup before him.
He devoured them hungrily, and the woman's eyes grew soft with delight at his evident pleasure.
At last his thoughtfulness passed, and he put an abrupt question.
"Where's your brother, now?"
"Little Black Fox is by his tepee. He goes hunting with another sun. Yes?"
"I must go and see him this afternoon."
Steyne pushed his plate away, and proceeded to fill his pipe.
"Yes?"
The expressive eyes of the woman had changed again. His announcement seemed to give her little pleasure.
"Yes, I have things to pow-wow with him."
"Ah. Rosebud? Always Rosebud?"
The man laughed.
"My Wana does not like Little Black Fox to think of Rosebud, eh?"
Wanaha was silent for a while. Then she spoke in a low tone.
"Little Black Fox is not wise. He is very fierce. No, I love my brother, but Rosebud must not be his squaw. I love Rosebud, too."
The blue eyes of the man suddenly became very hard.
"Big Wolf captured Rosebud, and would have kept her for your brother. Therefore she is his by right of war. Indian war. This Seth kills your father. He says so. He takes Rosebud. Is it for him to marry her? Your brother does not think so."
Wanaha's face was troubled. "It was in war. You said yourself. My brother could not hold her from the white man. Then his right is gone. Besides----"
"Besides----?"
"A chief may not marry a white girl."
"You married a white man."
"It is different."
There was silence for some time while Wanaha cleared away the plates. Presently, as she was bending over the cook-stove, she spoke again. And she kept her face turned from her husband while she spoke.
"You want Rosebud for my brother. Why?"
"I?" Nevil laughed uneasily. Wanaha had a way of putting things very directly. "I don't care either way."
"Yet you pow-wow with him? You say 'yes' when he talks of Rosebud?"
It was the man's turn to look away, and by doing so he hid a deep cunning in his eyes.
"Oh, that's because Little Black Fox is not an easy man. He is unreasonable. It is no use arguing with him. Besides, they will see he never gets Rosebud." He nodded in the direction of White River Farm.
"I have said he is very fierce. He has many braves. One never knows. My brother longs for the war-path. He would kill Seth. For Seth killed our father. One never knows. It is better you say to him, 'Rosebud is white. The braves want no white squaw.'"
But the man had had enough of the discussion, and began to whistle. It was hard to understand how he had captured the loyal heart of this dusky princess. He was neither good-looking nor of a taking manner. His appearance was dirty, unkempt. His fair hair, very thin and getting gray at the crown, was long and uncombed, and his moustache was ragged and grossly stained. Yet she loved him with a devotion which had made her willing to renounce her people for him if necessary, and this means far more in a savage than it does amongst the white races.
Steyne put on his greasy slouch hat and swung out of the house. Wanaha knew that what she had said was right, Nevil Steyne encouraged Little Black Fox. She wondered, and was apprehensive. Nevertheless, she went on with her work. The royal blood of her race was strong in her. She had much of the stoicism which is, perhaps, the most pronounced feature of her people. It was no good saying more than she had said. If she saw necessity she would do, and not talk.
She was still in the midst of her work when a sound caught her ear which surely no one else could have heard. In response she went to the door. A rider, still half a mile away, was approaching. She went back to her washing-up, smiling. She had recognized the rider even at that distance. Therefore she was in nowise surprised when, a few minutes later, she heard a bright, girlish voice hailing her from without.
"Wana, Wana!" The tone was delightfully imperious. "Why don't you have some place to tie a horse to?"
It was Rosebud. Wanaha had expected her, for it was the anniversary of her coming to White River Farm, and the day Ma Sampson had allotted for her birthday.
Wanaha went out to meet her friend. This greeting had been made a hundred times, on the occasion of every visit Rosebud made to the woman's humble home. It was a little joke between them, for there was a large iron hook high up on the wall, just out of the girl's reach, set there for the purpose of tying up a horse. The squaw took the girl's reins from her hands, and hitched them to the hook.
"Welcome," she said in her deep voice, and held out a hand to be shaken as white folk shake hands, not in the way Indians do it.
"What is it I must say to you?" she went on, in a puzzled way. "Oh, I know. 'Much happy return.' That is how you tell me the last time you come."
The squaw's great black eyes wore their wonderful soft look as they gazed down upon her visitor. It was a strange contrast they made as they stood there in the full light of the summer afternoon sun.
Both were extremely handsome of figure, though the Indian woman was more natural and several inches taller. But their faces were opposite in every detail. The squaw was dark, with clear velvety skin, and eyes black and large and deeply luminous; she had a broad, intelligent forehead over which her straight black hair fell from a natural centre parting, and was caught back from her face at about the level of her mouth with two bows of deep red braid. Her features might have been chiseled by a sculptor, they were so perfectly symmetrical, so accurately proportioned. And there were times, too, when, even to the eyes of a white man, her color rather enhanced her beauty; and this was when her slow smile crept over her face.
Rosebud had no classical regularity of feature, but she had what is better. Her face was a series of expressions, changing with almost every moment as her swift-passing moods urged her. One feature she possessed that utterly eclipsed anything the stately beauty of the other could claim. She had large, lustrous violet eyes that seemed like wells of ever-changing color. They never looked at you with the same shade in their depths twice. They were eyes that madden by reason of their inconsistency. They dwarfed in beauty every other feature in the girl's face. She was pretty in an irregular manner, but one never noticed anything in her face when her eyes were visible. These, and her masses of golden hair, which flowed loosely about her head in thick, rope-like