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HOW DEER EYES THREW A STICK AT TOM

Orton’s red-veined beefy face grew purple. He glared at Tom savagely. Not many men in this part of the country knew him, and he had not expected to be recognized.

The road agent was nonplussed. He could not safely follow his impulse, which was to force a quarrel on Tom and shoot him down: not here, in the stronghold of the enemy, with company servants probably within call. He smothered his rage, externally at least, and called on the bartender for a drink of rum.

Tom sat down on a bench, his back to a wall. They watched each other, the boy and the bandit, without appearing to do so. Except the keeper of the place, there was nobody else in the room. Tom was waiting only for a few minutes to pass before leaving. He did not want Orton to think that he was afraid to stay. Soon, now, he would stroll casually out, and as quickly as possible would get word to Rivers that the road agent was here intent on mischief.

The door opened. A girl walked in, a young Arapahoe Indian named Deer Eyes. She was the daughter of a scout known as Spit-in-the-Fire. Tom had seen her around her father’s tepee both here and at Julesburg. The girl came in shyly, half a dozen young sage hens in her hand.

“Mr. Massie—he here?” she asked the bartender.

“Not right now. He’s out with the bull outfit. Want to trade yore birds?”

She said she wanted to exchange them for powder and shot.

“Leave ’em here. He’ll settle with Spit-in-the-Fire.“

Orton’s cold, protruding eyes had fastened on the girl the moment she entered the room. She was the most attractive Indian woman Tom had seen. Her brown skin was fine-textured, soft as satin. The eyes that lifted diffidently when she spoke were soft and liquid, doglike in their fidelity. Despite the slenderness of immaturity there was in her motions the promise of bodily enticement.

Her business finished, she flatfooted out of the place without again raising her eyes. Orton’s gloating gaze had caught for a moment her fluttering glance, and Tom could have sworn that she was afraid of the man. Distinctly, this was none of Tom’s business. An Indian girl was only a potential squaw. She was any man’s game. Nobody else had any right to interfere any more than he would in the case of a horse trade. None the less, Tom was a little disturbed. There was something helpless and appealing about the girl. She seemed more a child than a woman.

Orton followed her from the room. The door had hardly closed before Tom was moving toward it. In the darkness, forty or fifty yards away, he saw Orton’s long body and heard his voice.

“Hold on there, you Injun girl. I want to see you.”

Tom drew closer. Again the voice of Orton, heavy and domineering, came to him. “It’ll be like I say. My squaw, understand. From right damn now. Mine.”

Then came that of the girl, tremulous and excited, in broken English: “Me heap hurry. Go damn queeck yes.”

“You’ll go when I give the word, savez? I like yore looks. My squaw. I’ll pay cash on the barrel head to yore old man if his price is right.”

The soft voice broke into pleadings, more in French than in English, for trappers from the north had been here before the gold hunters.

Abruptly the entreaties ended in a stifled gasp. There was the sound of shuffling feet. Tom took a dozen swift steps forward.

The moon came from behind a scudding cloud and showed him Deer Eyes struggling with the outlaw.

“Let go,” Tom shouted, and his fist drove at Orton’s cheek bone.

Startled, the big man released the girl. She slipped away from him. Orton was a man of one idea. He focussed his attention on this fool boy who had dared to interfere with him.

“You slit-eyed horse thief, I’ll beat yore head off right now,” he roared.

He proceeded to carry out his threat. His arms went like a flail as he rushed his victim. Never for a moment was Tom in the fight, if by courtesy this could be called one. His guard was beaten down by the long bone-and-flesh pistons strung with ropes of muscle. They battered at his face, flung him down, and dragged him to his feet again. Gnarled fists beat upon his mouth and cheeks. Heavy boots kicked his ribs when once more he sank down.

Orton came out of his fury to recollection of how much this youth knew against him. He jerked out a revolver to finish the job.

But he was too late. He heard voices, running footsteps. It was time to be gone. He thrust the six-shooter back into its scabbard and ran.

Tom came back from unconsciousness and found Spit-in-the-Fire bending over him.

“You hurt—seeck—me help,” the Indian said.

The beaten lad was weak, in pain, and nauseated. He tried to rise, but found it difficult. The scout put an arm around him. Tom stumbled forward, lurching like a drunkard, Presently, he found himself in front of a tepee. Deer Eyes, who had been hovering about, lifted the flap. He stooped and went in.

The girl made him lie on some buffalo robes, after which she sponged and bathed his swollen face and battered head. Very gently her soft hands ministered to him. The touch of the cold water stung his wounds, but there was healing in its freshness.

Spit-in-the-Fire returned and looked at him impassively. He grunted. His face told nothing, but, after he had gone, his daughter murmured to Tom a welcome. “He say you stay—no go.”

Tom did not argue the point. He did not want to move even a finger. It was better to lie there and let her wait on him. When he stirred, though ever so slightly and carefully, his aching flesh cried out in torment.

“I want to see Rivers,” he told her. “To-night. Right away.”

She tried to put him off as one would a child, but he was so insistent that she had her father send for the bull-train boss.

The young man had fallen into a kind of coma when Rivers appeared, but he aroused himself to tell what he had heard and what he guessed.

Rivers stroked his beard. “If they are aimin’ to hold up the stage with Slade as a passenger, they won’t have any luck. I’ll promise you that, Tom. It will sure be guarded.” The wagon master’s eyes flashed anger. “From what I can hear, this fellow Orton weighs fifty pounds more than you, boy. He’d better light out before we find him.”

Tom stayed two days as the guest of Spit-in-the-Fire. From Deer Eyes, he learned the story of her troubles. Both Orton and Mose Wilson wanted to buy her from her father as a squaw. Mose had served notice on him that he intended to have the girl regardless of what she wished.

Her young guest was sorry for her. She was gentle and kind. In the undemonstrative Indian fashion, she had capacity for much affection. But there was nothing he could do. He had no influence. Nobody in the community was of less importance than he—at least, no white man.

Three days later, Tom joined the wagon train on its way to Julesburg. Rivers made a good deal of him. He liked the young fellow, and he had been impressed by the fact that Slade had become interested in him.

“They didn’t tackle the stage,” he told Tom. “Maybe they have got a spotter somewhere. We were fixed to give ’em a warm reception if they had showed up. By the way, Tom, you ain’t to go through with us to Denver. Slade says for you to stay at Julesburg in the blacksmith shop till he sees you.”

A few days later, Spit-in-the-Fire set up his tepee at Julesburg. Tom saw a good deal of Deer Eyes. It seemed to him that he was always meeting her by chance. There was no personal vanity in his make-up, but it was impossible not to know that she was his for the taking. Her tongue was silent, but love looked out of her faithful eyes. They followed him as those of a dog do its master.

One day she brought him news. He had been away for the better part of a week. Some wagons had broken down on the trail, and he had driven out to mend them. He got back after dark, and before he had been ten minutes in his cabin, her low voice was calling him.

The news was disquieting. Taking advantage of Slade’s absence, the Wilson gang had come to town and was carrying things with a high hand. Orton and his chief had quarrelled about her. They had fought and been separated. It was understood that the truce between them was likely to be terminated at any moment.

Tom knew that if this outfit of bad men learned of his presence, he would be in great danger. The wise thing would be to slip quietly away. Mose was a killer. His followers were desperate outlaws who had a motive for wishing Tom out of the way. But young Collins did not want to be prudent at the expense of his self-respect.

Grown bold by the extremity of her fear, Deer Eyes told Tom what was in her mind. In the tribal language, she threw a stick at him, the equivalent of proposing marriage.

“I go with you,” she pleaded. “I cook for you. I work. I your squaw.”

Tom was very much embarrassed. His face flamed to a fiery red. Somehow, he managed to convey to her that he could not accept her offer.

She did not understand why. “You no like me?” she asked.

“Yes, I like you a lot, but I can’t marry you.”

“I good. I work for you. I give you papoose.”

There was no use trying to explain that he was white and she red. What effect could such an argument have when she knew twenty squaw men, some of them hunters and trappers of high repute? He took refuge in flat refusal expressed as gently as possible.

Yet he was sorry for her. She had nursed him when he was ill. Her devotion touched him. He understood the dread that preoccupied all her thoughts, and he sympathized with it. He knew it was all wrong that she should have no defence against the outrageous claims of such men as Wilson and Orton. If she had been a white girl, twenty men would have run to protect her. But an Injun was an Injun, a squaw girl only a squaw.

Whether she had a claim on him or not, Tom could not ignore the fact that she came to him as her only hope of escape. This troubled him. He began to find himself thinking about her. He had some money and a small bunch of horses. Why not buy her from her father and send her to the new town Auraria on Cherry Creek? Uncle Dick Wootten would take care of her. She could fit into his family of half-breeds and earn her keep. Maybe Mose Wilson and Orton would never find out what had become of her.

A man’s motives are never absolutely clear, even to himself. At odd moments, very likely the enticement of her sex flared up in his brain, but if so, he trod down the thought. He wanted to help her. That was his basic intention. She had put her trust in him, and he could not desert her.

He went to her father’s tepee and made a bargain. Six ponies was the price he paid for her.