r into gossip. Hard upon this had
followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become
certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the
point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its
place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the
girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street
through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the
ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet
well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as
on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet
call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous
familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an
instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace. Not once did
he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his
side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when
he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor
realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as
surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise--and
that soon, very, very soon.

Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever
garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously
grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and
the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable
unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying
dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not
the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the
alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they
went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them,
at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and
noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope
saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain
William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where
the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in
sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to
the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed--for they were
in the residence section now--