Me Smith

reached her mother Smith was helping her to her feet, and it was Smith who led her into the house and ripped her sleeve.
    It was only a painful flesh-wound, but if the bullet had gone a few inches higher it would have shattered her shoulder. It was a shot which told Smith that he had lost none of his accuracy of aim.
    He always carried a small roll of bandages in his hip-pocket, and with these he dressed the woman’s arm with surprising skill.
    “When you needs a bandage, you generally needs it bad,” he explained.
    He wondered if she knew that it was his shot which had struck her. If she did know, she said nothing, though her eyes, bright with pain, followed his every movement.
    “Looks like somebody’s squeaked,” Smith said meaningly to Susie.
    “Nobody’s squeaked,” she lied glibly. “They’re mad, and they’re suspicious, but they didn’t see you.”
    “If they’d go after me like that on suspicion,” said Smith dryly, “looks like they’d be plumb hos-tile if they was sure. Is this here war goin’ to keep up, or has they had satisfaction?”
    Through Susie, a kind of armistice was arranged between Smith and the Indians. It took much argument to induce them to defer their vengeance and let the law take its course.
    “You’ll only get in trouble,” she urged, “and Mr. Ralston will see that Smith gets all that’s comin’ to him when he has enough proof. He’s stole more than horses from me,” she said bitterly, “and if I can wait and trust the white man to handle him as he thinks best, you can, too.”
    So the Indians reluctantly withdrew, but both Smith and Susie knew that their smouldering resentment was ready to break out again upon the slightest provocation.
    Susie’s assurance that the attack of the Indians was due only to suspicion did not convince Smith. He noticed that, with the exception of Yellow Bird, there was not a single Indian stopping at the ranch, and Yellow Bird not only refused to be drawn into friendly conversation, but distinctly avoided him.
    Smith knew that he was now upon dangerous ground, yet, with his unfaltering faith in himself and his luck, he continued to walk with a firm tread. If he could make one good turn and get the Indian woman’s stake, he told himself, then he and Dora could look for a more healthful clime.
    The Schoolmarm never had appeared more trim, more self-respecting, more desirable, than when in her clean, white shirt-waist and well-cut skirt she stepped forward to greet him with a friendly, outstretched hand. His heart beat wildly as he took it.
    “I was afraid you had gone ‘for keeps,’” she said.
    “Were you afraid ?” he asked eagerly.
    “Not exactly afraid, to be more explicit, but I should have been sorry.” She smiled up into his face with her frank, ingenuous smile.
    “Why?”
    “You were getting along so well with your lessons. Besides, I should have thought it unfriendly of you to go without saying good-by.”
    “Unfriendly?” Smith laughed shortly. “Me unfriendly! Why, girl, you’re like a mountain to me. When I’m tired and hot and all give out, I raises my eyes and sees you there above me—quiet and cool and comfortable, like—and I takes a fresh grip.”
    “I’m glad I help you,” Dora replied gently. “I want to.”
    “I’m in the way of makin’ a stake now,” Smith went on, “and when I gets it”—he hesitated—“well, when I gets it I aims to let you know.”
    When Dora went into the house, to her own room, Smith stepped into the living-room, where the Indian woman sat by the window.
    “You like dat white woman better den me?” she burst out as he entered.
    “Prairie Flower,” he replied wearily, “if I had a dollar for every time I’ve answered that question, I wouldn’t be lookin’ for no stake to buy cattle with.”
    “De white woman couldn’t give you no stake.”
    He made no reply to her taunt. He was thinking. The words of a cowpuncher came back to him as he sat and regarded with unseeing eyes the Indian woman. The cowpuncher had said: “When a feller rides the range month in and month out, and don’t see nobody but other punchers and Injuns, some Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes begins to look kind of good to him when he rides into camp and she smiles as if she was glad he had come. He gits used to seein’ her sittin’ on an antelope hide, beadin’ moccasins, and the country where they wear pointed-toed shoes and sit in chairs gits farther and farther away. And after