Me Smith

explained. “I named her after a Schoolmarm we had—she looks so solemn and important. I can keep her on a chain, and she needn’t eat until we get there,” Susie pleaded.
    Trying not to smile at the mental picture of himself arriving in the staid college town, with a tawny-skinned child in a red, green, and black frock, a crop-eared cayuse, and a badger on a chain, McArthur ventured it as his opinion that the climate would be detrimental to Daisy May’s health.
    “You undoubtedly will prefer to spend your summers here, and it will be pleasant to have Croppy and Daisy May home to welcome you.”
    Susie’s face sobered.
    “Oh, yes, I must come back when school is over. I wouldn’t feel it was right to go away for always and leave Dad and Mother here. Besides, I guess I’d want to come back; because, after all, you know, I’m half Injun.”
    “I wish you’d try and sleep, and let me sit here,” urged McArthur kindly.
    Susie shook her head.
    “No; Ling will stay after awhile, and I’m not sleepy or tired now.”
    “Well, good-night, little sister.” He patted her head, while all the kindliness of his gentle nature shone from his eyes.
----
    XXIII
IN THEIR OWN WAY
    Through the chinks in the logs, where the daubing had dropped out, Smith watched the lights in the ranch-house. He relieved the tedium of the hours by trying to imagine what was going on inside, and in each picture Dora was the central figure. Now, he told himself, she was wiping the dishes for Ling, and teaching him English, as she often did; and when she had finished she would bring her portfolio into the dining-room and write home the exciting events of the day. He wondered what had “ailed” the Indian woman, that she should die so suddenly; but it was immaterial, since she was dead. He knew that Susie would sit by her mother; probably in the chair with the cushion of goose-feathers. It was his favorite chair, though it went over backwards when he rocked too hard. Ralston—curse him!—was sitting on one of the benches outside the bunk-house, telling the grub-liners of Smith’s capture, and the bug-hunter was making notes of the story in his journal. But, alas! as is usual with the pictures one conjures, nothing at all took place as Smith fancied.
    When all the lights, save the one in the living-room, had gone out, there was nothing to divert his thoughts. Babe, who was on guard outside, refused to converse with him, and he finally lay down, only to toss restlessly upon the blankets. The night seemed unusually still and the stillness made him nervous; even the sound of Babe’s back rubbing against the door when he shifted his position was company. Smith’s uneasiness was unlike him, and he wondered at it, while unable to conquer it. It must have been nearly midnight when, staring into the darkness with sleepless eyes, he felt, rather than heard, something move outside. It came from the rear, and Babe was at the door for only a moment before he had struck a match on a log to light a cigarette. The sound was so slight that only a trained ear like Smith’s would have detected it.
    It had sounded like the scraping of the leg of an overall against a sage-brush, and yet it was so trifling, so indistinct, that a field mouse might have made it. But somehow Smith knew, he was sure, that something human had caused it; and as he listened for a recurrence of the sound, the conviction grew upon him that there was movement and life outside. He was convinced that something was going to happen.
    His judgment told him that the prowlers were more likely to be enemies than friends—he was in the enemies’ country. But, on the other hand, there was always the chance that unexpected help had arrived. Smith still believed in his luck. The grub-liners might come to his rescue, or “the boys,” who had been waiting at the rendezvous, might have learned in some unexpected way what had befallen him. Even if they were his enemies, they would first be obliged to overpower Babe, and, he told himself, in the “ruckus” he might somehow escape.
    But even as he argued the question pro and con, unable to decide whether or not to warn Babe, a stifled exclamation and the thud of a heavy body against the door told him that it had been answered for him. Wide-eyed, breathless, his nerves at a tension, his heart pounding in his breast, he interpreted the sounds which followed as correctly as if he had been an eye-witness to the scene.
    He could hear Babe’s heels