第14章

Still, he was eager to see his sister, and if he should conclude to impart to her his secret, she might advise him.At all events, he decided to delay his departure until her arrival, a decision with which the commanding officer concurred, as a foraging party had that morning discovered traces of Indians in the vicinity of the fort, and the lately arrived commissary train had reported the unaccountable but promptly prevented stampede.

Unfortunately, his sister Jenny appeared accompanied by her husband, who seized an early opportunity to take Peter aside and confide to him his anxiety about her health, and the strange fits of excitement under which she occasionally labored.Remembering the episode of the Californian woods three years ago, Peter stared at this good-natured, good-looking man, whose life he had always believed she once imperiled, and wondered more than ever at their strange union.

"Do you ever quarrel?" asked Peter bluntly.

"No," said the good-hearted fellow warmly, "never! We have never had a harsh word; she's the dearest girl,--the best wife in the world to me, but"--he hesitated, "you know there are times when Ithink she confounds me with somebody else, and is strange!

Sometimes when we are in company she stands alone and stares at everybody, without saying a word, as if she didn't understand them.

Or else she gets painfully excited and dances all night until she is exhausted.I thought, perhaps," he added timidly, "that you might know, and would tell me if she had any singular experience as a child,--any illness, or," he went on still more gently, "if perhaps her mother or father"--"No," interrupted Peter almost brusquely, with the sudden conviction that this was no time for revelation of his secret, "no, nothing.""The doctor says," continued Lascelles with that hesitating, almost mystic delicacy with which most gentlemen approach a subject upon which their wives talk openly, "that it may be owing to Jenny's peculiar state of health just now, you know, and that if--all went well, you know, and there should be--don't you see--a little child"--Peter interrupted him with a start.A child! Jenny's child!

Silver Cloud's grandchild! This was a complication he had not thought of.No! It was too late to tell his secret now.He only nodded his head abstractedly and said coldly, "I dare say he is right."Nevertheless, Jenny was looking remarkably well.Perhaps it was the excitement of travel and new surroundings; but her tall, lithe figure, nearly half a head taller than her husband's, was a striking one among the officers' wives in the commandant's sitting-room.Her olive cheek glowed with a faint illuminating color;there was something even patrician in her slightly curved nose and high cheek bones, and her smile, rare even in her most excited moments, was, like her brother's, singularly fascinating.The officers evidently thought so too, and when the young lieutenant of the commissary escort, fresh from West Point and Flirtation Walk, gallantly attached himself to her, the ladies were slightly scandalized at the naive air of camaraderie with which Mrs.

Lascelles received his attentions.Even Peter was a little disturbed.Only Lascelles, delighted with his wife's animation, and pleased at her success, gazed at her with unqualified admiration.Indeed, he was so satisfied with her improvement, and so sanguine of her ultimate recovery, that he felt justified in leaving her with her brother and returning to Omaha by the regular mail wagon next day.There was no danger to be apprehended in her accompanying Peter; they would have a full escort; the reservation lay in a direction unfrequented by marauding tribes; the road was the principal one used by the government to connect the fort with the settlements, and well traveled; the officers' wives had often journeyed thither.

The childish curiosity and high spirits which Jenny showed on the journey to the reservation was increased when she reached it and drew up before the house of the Indian agent.Peter was relieved;he had been anxious and nervous as to any instinctive effect which might be produced on her excitable nature by a first view of her own kinsfolk, although she was still ignorant of her relationship.

Her interest and curiosity, however, had nothing abnormal in it.

But he was not prepared for the effect produced upon THEM at her first appearance.A few of the braves gathered eagerly around her, and one even addressed her in his own guttural tongue, at which she betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and Peter saw with satisfaction that she drew close to him.Knowing that his old interpreter and Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a hundred miles away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply introduced her as his sister.But he presently found that the braves had added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen demeanor, and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of the agent's wife, while he prosecuted his business of examination and inspection.Later, on his return to the cabin, he was met by the agent, who seemed to be with difficulty suppressing a laugh.

"Your sister is exciting quite a sensation here," he said."Do you know that some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist upon it that she's A SQUAW, and that you're keeping her in captivity against your plighted faith to them! You'll excuse me,"he went on with an attempt to recover his gravity, "troubling you with their d--d fool talk, and you won't say anything to HER about it, but I thought you ought to know it on account of your position among 'em.You don't want to lose their confidence, and you know how easily their skeery faculties are stampeded with an idea!""Where is she now?" demanded Peter, with a darkening face.