The U. P. Trail. Zane Grey
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or emotion. Some voice had called him. He swore it. If he did not make sure he would always be haunted. So with clear, deliberate eyes he surveyed the scene. Then he strode for the ledge of rock.
Tufts of sage grew close at its base. He advanced among them. The surface of the rock was uneven—and low down a crack showed. At that instant a slow, sobbing, gasping intake of breath electrified Neale.
“Red—come here!” he yelled, in a voice that made the cowboy jump.
Neale dropped to his knees and parted the tufts of sage. Lower down the crack opened up. On the ground, just inside that crack he saw the gleam of a mass of chestnut hair. His first flashing thought was that here was a scalp the red devils did not get.
Then Red King was kneeling beside him—bending forward. “It’s a girl!” he ejaculated.
“Yes—the one Slingerland told me about—the girl with big eyes,” replied Neale. He put a hand softly on her head. It was warm. Her hair felt silky, and the touch sent a quiver over him. Probably she was dying.
Slingerland came riding up. “Wal, boys, what hev you found?” he asked, curiously.
“That girl,” replied Neale.
The reply brought Slingerland sliding out of his saddle.
Neale hesitated a moment, then reaching into the aperture, he got his hands under the girl’s arms and carefully drew her out upon the grass. She lay face down, her hair a tumbled mass, her body inert. Neale’s quick eye searched for bloodstains, but found none.
“I remember thet hair,” said Slingerland. “Turn her over.”
“I reckon we’ll see then where she’s hurt,” muttered Red King.
Evidently Neale thought the same, for he was plainly afraid to place her on her back.
“Slingerland, she’s not such a little girl,” he said, irrelevantly. Then he slipped his hands under her arms again. Suddenly he felt something wet and warm and sticky. He pulled a hand out. It was blood-stained.
“Aw!” exclaimed Red.
“Son, what’d you expect?” demanded Slingerland. “She got shot or cut, an’ in her fright she crawled in thar. Come, over with her. Let’s see. She might live.”
This practical suggestion acted quickly upon Neale. He turned the girl over so that her head lay upon his knees. The face thus exposed was deathly pale, set like stone in horror. The front of her dress was a bloody mass, and her hands were red.
“Stabbed in the breast!” exclaimed King.
“No,” replied Slingerland. “If she’d been stabbed she’d been scalped, too. Mebbe thet blood comes from an arrow an’ she might hev pulled it out.”
Neale bent over her with swift scrutiny. “No cut or hole in her dress!”
“Boys, thar ain’t no marks on her—only thet blood,” added Slingerland, hopefully.
Neale tore open the front of her blouse and slipped his hand in upon her breast. It felt round, soft, warm under his touch, but quiet. He shook his head.
“Those moans I heard must have been her last dying breaths,” he said.
“Mebbe. But she shore doesn’t look daid to me,” replied King. “I’ve seen daid people. Put your hand on her heart.”
Neale had been feeling for heart pulsations on her right side. He shifted his hand. Instantly through the soft swell of her breast throbbed a beat-beat-beat. The beatings were regular and not at all faint.
“Good Lord, what a fool I am!” he cried. “She’s alive! Her heart’s going! There’s not a wound on her!”
“Wal, we can’t see any, thet’s sure,” replied Slingerland.
“She might hev a fatal hurt, all the same,” suggested King.
“No!” exclaimed Neale. “That blood’s from some one else—most likely her murdered mother. … Red, run for some water. Fetch it in your hat. Slingerland, ride after the troops.”
Slingerland rose and mounted his horse. “Wal, I’ve an idee. Let’s take the girl to my cabin. Thet’s not fur from hyar. It’s a long ride to the camp. An’ if she needs the troop doctor we can fetch him to my place.”
“But the Sioux?”
“Wal, she’d be safer with me. The Injuns an’ me are friends.”
“All right. Good. But you ride after the troops, anyhow, and tell Dillon about the girl—that we’re going to your cabin.” Slingerland galloped away after the dust cloud down the trail.
Neale gazed strangely down at the face of the girl he had rescued. Her lips barely parted to make again the low moan. So that was what had called to him. No—not all! There was something more than this feeble cry that had brought him back to search; there had been some strong and nameless and inexplicable impulse. Neale believed in his impulses—in those strange ones which came to him at intervals. So far in his life girls had been rather negative influences. But this girl, or the fact that he had saved her, or both impressions together, struck deep into him; life would never again be quite the same to Warren Neale.
Red King came striding back with a sombrero full of water.
“Take your scarf and wash that blood off her hands before she comes to and sees it,” said Neale.
The cowboy was awkward at the task, but infinitely gentle. “Poor kid! I’ll bet she’s alone in the world now.”
Neale wet his scarf and bathed the girl’s face. “If she’s only fainted she ought to be reviving now. But I’m afraid—”
Then suddenly her eyes opened. They were large, violet-hued, covered with a kind of veil or film, as though sleep had not wholly gone; and they were unseeingly, staringly set with horror. Her breast heaved with a sharply drawn breath; her hands groped and felt for something to hold; her body trembled. Suddenly she sat up. She was not weak. Her motions were violent. The dazed, horror-stricken eyes roved around, but did not fasten upon anything.
“Aw! Gone crazy!” muttered King, pityingly.
It did seem so. She put her hands to her ears as if to shut out a horrible sound. And she screamed. Neale grasped her shoulders, turned her round, and forced her into such a position that her gaze must meet his.
“You’re safe!” he cried sharply. “The Indians have gone! I’m a white man!”
It seemed as though his piercing voice stirred her reason. She stared at him. Her face changed. Her lips parted and her hand, shaking like a leaf, covered them, clutched at them. The other hand waved before her as if to brush aside some haunting terror.
Neale held that gaze with all his power—dominant, masterful, masculine. He repeated what he had said.
Then it became a wonderful and terrible sight to watch her, to divine in some little way the dark and awful state of her mind. The lines, the tenseness, the shade, the age faded out of her face; the deep-set frown smoothed itself out of her brow and it became young. Neale saw those staring eyes fix upon his; he realized a dull, opaque blackness of horror, hideous veils let down over the windows of a soul, images of hell limned forever on a mind. Then that film, that unseeing cold thing, like the shade of sleep or of death, passed from her eyes. Now they suddenly were alive, great dark-violet gulfs, full of shadows, dilating, changing into exquisite and beautiful lights.
“I’m a white man!” he said, tensely. “You’re saved! The Indians are gone!”
She understood him. She realized the meaning of his words. Then, with a low, agonized, and broken cry she shut her eyes tight and reached blindly out with both hands; she screamed aloud. Shock claimed her again. Horror and fear convulsed her, and it must have been fear that was uppermost. She clutched