or prevent, I shall
kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing." A
moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms;
then, still facing, he moved back a step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we
are ready."

And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred
curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night
itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married. The
minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close
before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the
pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet it was done, and, save
one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent
stayed and listened to the end. That one, a tall, modish alien with a
red, flushed face covered with a two-days' growth of bread, was likewise
watching when it began. But when it was over he was not there; and not
one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE

Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling,
sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl
of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of
them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a
straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling
brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall,
the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after
three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though
the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey
flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the
ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the
ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at
intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of
the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried
grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was
no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny
town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he
was leaving ci