Me Smith

the dreams when you wake up screamin’ and you have to tell yourself over and over it isn’t so—except that I have to tell myself over and over it is so.”
    “Susie, I think you’re wrong.”
    She shook her head sadly.
    “I wish I was wrong, but I’m not.”
    “She worries when you are late getting home, or are not well.”
    “Yes, she’s like that,” she nodded. “Mother would fight for me like a bear with cubs if anybody would hurt me so she could see it, but the worst hurt—the kind that doesn’t show—I guess she don’t understand. Before now I could tell anybody that come on the ranch and wasn’t nice to me to ’git,’ and mother would back me up. Even yet I could tell you or Tubbs or Mr. Ralston to leave, and they’d have to go. But Smith?—no! He’s come back to stay. And she’ll let him stay, if she knows it will drive me away from home. Mother’s Injun, and she can only read a little and write a little that my Dad taught her, and she wears blankets and moccasins, but I never was ’shamed of Mother before. If she marries Smith, what can I do? Where can I go? I could take my pack outfit and start out to hunt Dad’s folks, but if Mother marries Smith, she’ll need me after a while. Yet how can I stay? I feel sometimes like they was two of me—one was good and one was bad; and if Mother lets Smith turn me out, maybe all the bad in me would come to the top. But there’s one thing I couldn’t forget. Dad used to say to me lots of times when we were alone—oh, often he said it: ‘Susie, girl, never forget you’re a MacDonald!’”
    McArthur turned quickly and looked at her.
    “Did your father say that?”
    Susie nodded.
    “Just like that?”
    “Yes; he always straightened himself and said it just like that.”
    McArthur was studying her face with a peculiar intentness, as if he were seeing her for the first time.
    “What was his first name, Susie?”
    “Donald.”
    “Donald MacDonald?”
    “Yes; there was lots of MacDonalds up there in the north country.”
    “Have you a picture, Susie?”
    A rifle-shot broke the stillness of the droning afternoon. Susie was on her feet the instant. There was another—then a fusillade!
    “It’s the Indians after Smith!” she cried. “They promised me they wouldn’t! Come—stand up here where you can see.”
    McArthur took a place beside her on a knoll and watched the scene with horrified eyes. The Indians were grouped, with Bear Chief in advance.
    “They’re shootin’ into the stable! They’ve got him cornered,” Susie explained excitedly. “No—look! He’s comin’ out! He’s goin’ to make a run for it! He’s headed for the house. He can run like a scared wolf!”
    “Do they mean to kill him?” McArthur asked in a shocked voice.
    “Sure they mean to kill him. Do you think that’s target practice? But look where the dust flies up—they’re striking all around him—behind him—beside him—everywhere but in him! They’re so anxious that they’re shootin’ wild. Runnin’ Rabbit ought to get him—he’s a good shot! He did ! No, he stumbled. He’s charmed—that Smith. He’s got a strong medicine.”
    “He’s not too brave to run,” said McArthur, but added: “I ran, myself, when they were after me.”
    “He’d better run,” Susie replied. “But he’s after his gun; he means to fight.”
    “He’ll make it!” McArthur cried.
    Susie’s voice suddenly rang out in an ascending, staccato-like shriek.
    “Oh! Oh! Oh! Mother, go back!” but the cracking rifles drowned Susie’s shrill cry of entreaty.
    The Indian woman, with her hands high above her head, the palms open as if to stop the singing bullets, rushed from the house and stopped only when she had passed Smith and stood between him and danger. She stood erect, unflinching, and while the Indians’ fire wavered Smith gained the doorway.
    Gasping for breath, his short upper lip drawn back from his protruding teeth in the snarl of a ferocious animal, he snatched a rifle from the deer-horn gun-rack above the door.
    The Indian woman was directly in line between him and his enemies.
    “Get out of the way!” he yelled, but she did not hear him.
    “The fool!” he snarled. “The fool! I’ll have to crease her.”
    He lifted his rifle and deliberately shot her in the fleshy part of her arm near the shoulder. She whirled with the shock of it, and dropped.
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    XVIII
A BAD HOMBRE
    The Indians ceased firing when the woman fell, and when Susie