Me Smith

clucked at his horse; he removed his hat when he talked to women; he was a weak and innocent fool to Smith, who lost no occasion to belittle him. Now, when the prisoner saw him moving about, free to go and come as he pleased, while he, Smith, was tied like an unruly pup, it, of a sudden, made his gorge rise; and, with one of his swift, characteristic transitions of mood, Smith turned to the Indians who guarded him.
    “You never could find out who killed White Antelope—you smart-Alec Injuns!” he sneered contemptuously. “And you’ve always wanted to know, haven’t you?” He eyed them one by one. “Why, you don’t know straight up, you women warriors! I’ve a notion to tell you who killed White Antelope—just for fun—just because I want to laugh, me—Smith!”
    The Indians drew closer.
    “You think you’re scouts,” he went on tauntingly, “and you never saw White Antelope’s blanket right under your nose! Put it back, feller”—he nodded at McArthur. “I don’t aim to sleep on dead men’s clothes!”
    The Indians looked at the blanket, and at McArthur, whom they had grown to like and trust. They recognized it now, and in the corner they saw the stiff and dingy stain, the jagged tell-tale holes.
    McArthur mechanically held it up to view. He had not the faintest recollection where it had been purchased, or of whom obtained. Tubbs always had attended to such things.
    No one spoke in the grave silence, and Smith leered.
    “I likes company,” he said. “I’m sociable inclined. Put him in the dog-house with me.”
    Susie had listened with the Indians; she had looked at the blanket, the stain, the holes; she saw the blank consternation in McArthur’s face, the gathering storm in the Indians’ eyes. She stepped out a little from the rest.
    “Mister Smith !” she said. “ Mister Smith”—with oily, sarcastic emphasis—“how did you know that was White Antelope’s blanket, when you never saw White Antelope?”
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    XXII
A MONGOLIAN CUPID
    With his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, Ralston leaned against the corner of the bunk-house, from which point of vantage he could catch a glimpse of the Schoolmarm’s white-curtained window. He now had no feeling of elation over his success. Smith was a victorious captive. Ralston’s heart ached miserably, and he wished that the day was ended and the morning come, that he might go, never to return.
    He too had seen the mist in Dora’s eyes; and, with Smith’s words, the air-castles which had persistently built themselves without volition on his part, crumbled. There was nothing for him to do but to efface himself as quickly and as completely as possible. The sight of him could only be painful to Dora, and he wished to spare her all of that within his power.
    He looked at the foothills, the red butte rising in their midst, the tinted Bad Lands, the winding, willow-fringed creek. It was all beautiful in its bizarre colorings; but the spirit of the picture, the warm, glowing heart of it, had gone from it for him. The world looked a dull and lifeless place. His love for Dora was greater than he had known, far mightier than he had realized until the end, the positive end, had come.
    “Oh, Dora!” he whispered in utter wretchedness. “Dear little Schoolmarm!”
    In the room behind the white-curtained window the Schoolmarm walked the floor with her cheeks aflame and as close to hysteria as ever she had been in her life.
    “What will he think of me!” she asked herself over and over again, clasping and unclasping her cold hands. “What can he think but one thing?”
    The more overwrought she became, the worse the situation seemed.
    “And how he looked at me! How they all looked at me! Oh, it was too dreadful!”
    She covered her burning face with her hands.
    “There isn’t the slightest doubt,” she went on, “but that he thinks I knew all about it. Perhaps”—she paused in front of the mirror and stared into her own horrified eyes—“perhaps he thinks I belong to a gang of robbers! Maybe he thinks I am Smith’s tool, or that Smith is my tool, or something like that! Oh, whatever made him say such a thing! ‘Our stake— our stake’—and—‘I done it for you!’”
    Another thought, still more terrifying occurred to her excited mind:
    “What if he should have to arrest me as an accomplice!”
    She sat down weakly on the edge of the bed.
    “Oh,” and she rocked to and fro in misery, “if only I never had tried to improve