Me Smith

bone of an Ichthyopterygian!” Then he turned and faced his pursuers.
    Infuriated, they rode straight at him, but he did not flinch, and the horses swerved of their own accord.
    Susie had run from the house, and her mother had followed, expectancy upon her stolid face, for, like Smith, she had guessed the situation.
    The Indians circled, and, returning, pointed accusing fingers at McArthur.
    “He kill White Antelope!”
    By this time, the grub-liners had reached the corral, among them four Indians, all friends of the dead man. Their faces darkened.
    “White Antelope is dead in a gulch!” cried his accusers. “He is shot to pieces—here, there, everywhere!”
    A murmur of angry amazement arose. White Antelope, the kindly, peaceable Cree, who had not an enemy on the reservation!
    “This is dreadful!” declared McArthur. “Believe me”—he turned to them all—“I had but found the corpse myself when these men rode up. The Indian was cold; he certainly had been dead for hours. Besides,” he demanded, “what possible motive could I have?”
    “Them as likes lettin’ blood don’t need a motive.” The sneering voice was Smith’s.
    “But you, sir, met us on the hill. You know the direction from which we came.”
    “It’s easy enough to circle.”
    “But why should I go back?” cried McArthur.
    “They say there’s that that draws folks back for another look.”
    Smith’s insinuations, the stand he took, had its effect upon the Indians, who, hot for revenge, needed only this to confirm their suspicions. One of the Indians on horseback began to uncoil his rawhide saddle-rope. All save McArthur understood the significance of the action. They meant to tie him hand and foot and take him to the Agency, with blows and insults plentiful en route.
    They edged closer to him, every savage instinct uppermost, their faces dark and menacing. McArthur, his eyes sweeping the circle, felt that he had not one friend, not one, in the motley, threatening crowd fast closing in upon him; for Tubbs, hearing himself indirectly included in the accusation, had discreetly, and with perceptible haste, withdrawn.
    The Indian swung from his saddle, rope in hand, and advanced upon McArthur with unmistakable purpose; but he did not reach the little scientist, for Susie darted from the circle, her flashing gray eyes looking more curiously at variance than ever with her tawny skin.
    “No, no, Running Rabbit!” She pushed him gently backward with her finger-tips upon his chest.
    There was a murmur of protest from the crowd, and it seemed to sting her like a spur. Susie was not accustomed to disapproval. She turned to where the murmurs came loudest—from the white grub-liners, who were eager for excitement.
    “Who are you,” she cried, “that you should be so quick to accuse this stranger? You, Arkansaw Red, that skipped from Kansas for killin’ a nigger! You, Jim Padden, that shot a sheep-herder in cold blood! You, Banjo Johnson, that’s hidin’ out this minute! Don’t you all be so darned anxious to hang another man, when there’s a rope waitin’ somewhere for your own necks!
    “And lemme tell you”—she took a step toward them. “The man that lifts a finger to take this bug-hunter to the Agency can take his blankets along at the same time, for there’ll never be a bunk or a seat at the table for him on this ranch as long as he lives. Where’s your proof against this bug-hunter? You can’t drag a man off without something against him—just because you want to hang somebody!”
    Some sound from Smith attracted her attention; she wheeled upon him, and, with her thin arm outstretched as she pointed at him in scorn, she cried shrilly:
    “Why, I’d sooner think you did it, than him!”
    There was not so much as the flicker of an eyelid from Smith.
    “I know you’d sooner think I did it than him,” he said, playing upon the word. “You’d like to see me get my neck stretched.”
    His bravado, his very insolence, was his protection.
    “And maybe I’ll have the chanst!” she retorted furiously.
    Turning from him to the Indians, her voice dropped, the harsh language taking on the soft accent of the squaws as she spoke to them in their own tongue. Like many half-breeds, Susie seldom admitted that she either understood or could speak the Indian language. She had an amusing fashion of referring even to her relatives as “those Injuns”; but now, with hands outstretched, she pleaded:
    “We are all Indians