The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Indian's Hand, by Lorimer Stoddard

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Title: The Indian's Hand
1892

Author: Lorimer Stoddard

Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23178]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INDIAN'S HAND ***

Produced by David Widger

THE INDIAN'S HAND

By Lorimer Stoddard

Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott & Co.

The men had driven away. Their carts and horses disappeared behind the
roll of the low hills. They appeared now and then, like boats on the
crest of a wave, further each time. And their laughter and singing and
shouts grew fainter as the bushes hid them from sight.

The women and children remained, with two old men to protect them. They
might have gone too, the hunters said. "What harm could come in the
broad daylight?--the bears and panthers were far away. They'd be back by
night, with only two carts to fill."

Then Jim, the crack shot of the settlement, said, "We'll drive home the
bears in the carts."

The children shouted and danced as they thought of the sport to come, of
the hunters' return with their game, of the bonfires they always built.

One pale woman clung to her husband's arm. "But the Indians!" she said.

That made the men all laugh. "Indians!" they cried; "why, there've been
none here for twenty years! We drove them away, down there"--pointing
across the plain--"to a hotter place than this, where the sand burns
their feet and they ride for days for water."

The pale woman murmured, "Ah, but they returned."

"Yes," cried her big husband, whose brown beard covered his chest, "and
burned two cabins. Small harm they did, the curs!"

"Hush," said the pale woman, pressing her husband's arm; and the men
around were quiet, pretending to fix their saddles, as they glanced at
another woman, dressed in black, who turned and went into her house.

"I forgot her boy," said the bearded man, as he gravely picked up his
gun.

They started off in the morning cool, toward the mountains where the
trees grew. And the long shadows lessened as the sun crept up the sky.

The woman in black stood silent by her door. No one bade her good-