John Ermine of the Yellowstone (21 page)

And Shockley urged his horse to the side of Miss Katherine Searles.

Observing the manœuvre, Captain Lewis poked her father in the ribs. “I don’t think your daughter wants a beau very much, Major; the youngsters are four files deep around her
now.”

“’Tis youth, Bill Lewis; we’ve all had it once, and from what I observe, they handle it pretty much as we used to.”

“The very same. I don’t see how men write novels or plays about that old story; all they can do is to invent new fortifications for Mr. Hero to carry before she names the
day.”

Lieutenant Shockley found himself unable to get nearer than two horses to Miss Searles, so he bawled: “And I thought you fellows were hunting wolves. I say, Miss Searles, if you ride one
way and the wolf runs the other, it is easy to see which will have the larger field. My money is on you—two to one. Who will take the wolf?”

“Oh, Mr. Shockley, between you and this Western sun, I shall soon need a new powder puff.”

“Shall I challenge him?” called Bowles to the young woman.

“Please not, Mr. Bowles; I do not want to lose him.” And every one greeted Shockley derisively.

“Guide right!” shouted the last, putting his horse into a lope. Miss Searles playfully slashed about with her riding-whip, saying, “Deploy, gentlemen,” and followed him.
The others broke apart; they had been beaten by the strategy of the loud mouth. Lieutenant Butler, however, permitted himself the pleasure of accompanying Miss Searles; his determination could not
be shaken by these diversions; he pressed resolutely on.

“I think Butler has been hit over the heart,” said one of the dispersed cavaliers.

“You bet, and it is a disabling wound too. I wonder if Miss Searles intends to cure him. When I see her handle her eyes, methinks, compadre, she’s a cruel little puss. I
wouldn’t care to be her mouse.”

“But, fellows, she’s pretty, a d——pretty girl, hey!” ventured a serious youngster. “You can bet any chap here would hang out the white flag and come
a-running, if she hailed him.”

And so, one with another, they kept the sacred fire alight. As for that matter, the aforesaid Miss Puss knew how her men valued the difficulties of approach, which was why she scattered them.
She proposed to take them in detail. Men do not weaken readily before each other, but alone they are helpless creatures, when the woman understands herself. She can then sew them up, tag them, and
put them away on various shelves, and rely on them to stay there; but it requires management, of course.

“I say, Miss Searles, those fellows will set spring guns and bear traps for me tonight; they will never forgive me.”

“Oh, well, Mr. Shockley, to be serious, I don’t care. Do you suppose a wolf will be found? I am so bored.” Which remark caused the eminent Lieutenant to open his mouth very
wide in imitation of a laugh, divested of all mirth.

“Miss Katherine Searles,” he said, in mock majesty, “I shall do myself the honor to crawl into the first badger-hole we come to and stay there until you dig me out.”

“Don’t be absurd; you know I always bury my dead. Mr. Butler, do you expect we shall find a wolf? Ah, there is that King Charles cavalier, Mr. Ermine—for all the world as
though he had stepped from an old frame. I do think he is lovely.”

“Oh, bother that yellow Indian; he is such a nuisance,” jerked Butler.

“Why do you say that? I find him perfectly new; he never bores me, and he stood between me and that enraged savage.”

“A regular play. I do not doubt he arranged it beforehand. However, it was well thought out—downright dramatic, except that the Indian ought to have killed him.”

“Oh, would you have arranged it that way if you had been playwright?”

“Yes,” replied the bilious lover.

Shaking her bridle rein, she cried, “Come, Mr. Shockley, let us ride to Ermine; at least you will admire him.” Shockley enjoyed the death stroke which she had administered to Butler,
but saying to himself as he thought of Ermine, “D——the curly boy,” and followed his charming and difficult quarry. He alone had ridden true.

The independent and close-lipped scout was riding outside the group. He never grew accustomed to the heavy columns, and did not talk on the march—a common habit of desert wanderers. But
his eye covered everything. Not a buckle or a horsehair or the turn of a leg escaped him, and you may be sure Miss Katherine Searles was detailed in his picture.

He had beheld her surrounded by the young officers until he began to hate the whole United States army. Then he saw her dismiss the escort saving only two, and presently she reduced her force to
one. As she came toward him, his blood took a pop into his head, which helped mightily to illumine his natural richness of color. She was really coming to him. He wished it, he wanted it, as badly
as a man dying of thirst wants water, and yet a whole volley of bullets would not disturb him as her coming did.

“Good morning, Mr. Ermine; you, too, are out after wolves, I see,” sang Katherine, cheerily.

“No, ma’m, I don’t care anything about wolves; and why should I care for them?”

“What are you out for then, pray?”

“Oh, I don’t know; thought I would like to see you after wolves. I guess that’s why I am out,” came the simple answer.

“Well, to judge by the past few miles I don’t think you will see me after them today.”

“I think so myself, Miss Searles. These people ought to go back in the breaks of the land to find wolves; they don’t give a wolf credit for having eyes.”

“Why don’t you tell them so, Mr. Ermine?” pleaded the young woman.

“The officers think they know where to find them; they would not thank me, and there might not be anywhere I would go to find them. It does not matter whether we get one or none,
anyhow,” came Ermine’s sageness.

“Indeed, it does matter. I must have a wolf.”

“Want him alive or dead?” was the low question.

“What! Am I to have one?”

“You are,” replied the scout, simply.

“When?”

“Well, Miss Searles, I can’t order one from the quartermaster exactly, but if you are in a great hurry, I might go now.”

“Mr. Ermine, you will surely kill me with your generosity. You have offered me your scalp, your body, and now a wolf. Oh, by the way, what did that awful Indian say to you? I suppose you
have seen him since.”

“Didn’t say anything.”

“Well, I hope he has forgiven you; but as I understand them, that is not the usual way among Indians.”

“No, Miss Searles, he won’t forgive me. I’m a-keeping him to remember you by.”

“How foolish; I might give you something for a keepsake which would leave better memories, do you not think so?”

“You might, if you wish to.”

The girl was visibly agitated at this, coming as it did from her crude admirer. She fumbled about her dress, her hair, and finally drew off her glove and gave it to the scout, with a smile so
sweet and a glance of the eye which penetrated Ermine like a charge of buckshot. He took the glove and put it inside of the breast of his shirt, and said, “I’ll get the wolf.”

Shockley was so impressed with the conversation that he was surprised into silence, and to accomplish that phenomenon took a most powerful jolt, as every one in the regiment knew. He could talk
the bottom out of a nose-bag, or put a clock to sleep. Ordinary verbal jollity did not seem at all adequate, so he carolled a passing line:

This came as an expiring burst which unsettled his horse though it relieved him. Shockley needed this much yeast before he could rise again.

“Oh, Mr. Shockley, you must know Mr. Ermine.”

“I have the pleasure, Miss Searles; haven’t I, Ermine?”

The scout nodded assent.

“We were side by side when we rushed the point of that hill in the Sitting Bull fight last fall; remember that, Ermine?”

“Yes, sir,” said the scout; but the remembrance evidently did not cause Ermine’s E string to vibrate. Fighting was easier, freer; but altogether it was like washing the dishes
at home compared with the dangers which now beset him.

Suddenly every one was whipping and spurring forward; the pack of greyhounds were streaking it for the hills. “Come on,” yelled Shockley, “here’s a run.” And that
mercurial young man’s scales tipped right readily from his heart to his spurs.

“It’s only a coyote, Miss Searles,” said Ermine; but the young woman spatted her horse with her whip and rode bravely after the flying Shockley. Ermine’s fast pony kept
steadily along with her under a pull; the plainsman’s long, easy sway in the saddle was unconscious, and he never took his eyes from the girl, now quite another person under the
excitement.

Every one in the hunting-party was pumping away to the last ounce. A pack of greyhounds make a coyote save all the time he can; they stimulate his interest in life, and those who have seen a
good healthy specimen burn up the ground fully realize the value of passing moments.

“Oh, dear; my hat is falling off!” shrieked the girl.

“Shall I save it, Miss Searles?”

“Yes! Yes! Catch it!” she screamed.

Ermine brought his flying pony nearer hers on the off side and reached his hand toward the flapping hat, struggling at a frail anchorage of one hat-pin, but his arm grew nerveless at the near
approach to divinity.

“Save it! Save it!” she called.

“Shall I?” and he pulled himself together.

Dropping his bridle-rein over the pommel of his saddle, standing in his stirrups as steadily as a man in church, he undid the hat with both hands. When he had released it and handed it to its
owner, she heard him mutter hoarsely, “My God!”

“Oh, Mr. Ermine, I hope the pin did not prick you.”

“No, it wasn’t the pin.”

“Ah,” she ejaculated barely loud enough for him to hear amid the rushing hoof-beats.

The poor man was in earnest, and the idea drove the horses, the hounds, and the coyote out of her mind, and she ran her mount harder than ever. She detested earnest men, having so far in her
career with the exception of Mr. Butler found them great bores; but drive as she would, the scout pattered at her side, and she dared not look at him.

These two were by no means near the head of the drive, as the girl’s horse was a stager, which had been selected because he was highly educated concerning badger-holes and rocky
hillsides.

Orderlies clattered behind them, and Private Patrick O’Dowd and Private Thompson drew long winks at each other.

“Oi do be thinkin’ the long bie’s harse cud roon fasther eff the divil was afther him. Faith, who’d roon away from a fairy?”

“The horse is running as fast as is wanted,” said Thompson, sticking his hooks into the Indian pony which he rode.

“Did yez obsarve the bie ramove the hat from the lady, and his pony shootin’ gravel into our eyes fit to smother?” shouted O’Dowd, using the flat of his hand as a
sounding-board to Thompson.

“You bet, Pat; and keeping the gait he could take a shoe off her horse, if she wanted it done.”

“They say seein’s believin’, but Oi’ll not be afther tellin’ the story in quarters. Oi’m eaight year in the ahrmy, and Oi can lie whin it’s
convanient.”

The dogs overhauled the unfortunate little wolf despite its gallant efforts, and it came out of the snarling mass, as some wag had expressed it, “like a hog going to war—in small
pieces.” The field closed up and dismounted, soldier fashion, at the halt.

“What’s the matter with the pony today, Ermine? Expected you’d be ahead of the wolf at least,” sang out Lewis.

“I stopped to pick up a hat,” he explained; but Captain Lewis fixed his calculating eye on his man and bit his mustache. Events had begun to arrange themselves; that drunken night
and Ermine’s apathy toward the Englishman’s hunting-party—and he had stopped to pick up her hat—oho!

Without a word the scout regained his seat and loped away toward the post, and Lewis watched him for some time, in a brown study; but a man of his years often fails to give the ardor of youth
its proper value, so his mind soon followed more natural thoughts.

“Your horse is not a very rapid animal, I observe, Miss Searles,” spoke Butler.

“Did you observe that? I did not notice that you were watching me, Mr. Butler.”

“Oh, I must explain that in an affair of this kind I am expected to sustain the reputation of the cavalry. I forced myself to the front.”

“Quite right. I kept the only man in the rear, who was capable of spoiling your reputation; you are under obligations to me.”

“That wild man, you mean. He certainly has a wonderful pony, but you need not trouble about him if it is to please me only.”

“I find this sun becoming too insistent; I think I will go back,” said Katherine Searles. Many of the women also turned their horses homeward, leaving only the more pronounced types
of sportsmen to search for another wolf.

“Having sustained the cavalry, I’ll accompany you, Katherine.”