“He’s wrong,” Tib said, “I can honestly say that at no time have I had such an idea.”
“The war isn’t over for my brother. And when I saw—your poor hands—”
“That’s past,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you as if it had never happened.”
“He wouldn’t like it,” she said, and then added, “but I would. If he knew you were at this hotel—”
“I can go to another.”
There was a sudden interruption. Tib was hailed by three young men across the room who started over toward him.
“I want to see you,” he whispered hurriedly. “Couldn’t you meet me this afternoon in front of the post office?”
“Tonight is better. Seven o’clock.”
Josie paid her bill and went out, followed by the eyes of the new arrivals, a dark young man with undefeated southern eyes burning under a panama and two red-headed twins.
“It didn’t take you long, Tib,” said the former, Mr. Ben Cary, late of Stuart’s staff. “We’ve been here three days and we haven’t found anything like that.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Tib, “I have reasons.”
Seated in another restaurant, they demanded, “What’s it all about, Tib? Is there a husband in the wind?”
“Not a husband, “ said Tib. “There’s a Yankee brother—he’s a dentist.”
The three men exchanged a glance.
“A dentist. Boy, you interest us strangely. Why are you running away from a dentist?”
“Some trouble during the war. Suppose you tell me why you’re in St. Paul. I was starting out to meet you in Leesburg tomorrow.”
“We’re here on business, Tib—or rather it’s a matter of life and death. We’re having Indian trouble up there. About two thousand Sioux are camped on our door-step threatening to tear our fences down.”
“You’ve come to get help?”
“Fat chance. Do you reckon the government would back a rebel colony against a privileged Indian. No, we’re on our own. We think we can persuade the chief that we’re his friends, if we can do him a big favor. Tell us more about the dentist.”
“Forget the dentist,” said Tib impatiently. “He just arrived here. I don’t like him and that’s the whole story.”
“Just arrived here,” repeated Cary meditatively, “that’s very interesting. They have three here already and we’ve been to see them all and they’re the most cowardly white men that ever breathed—” He broke off and demanded, “What’s this man’s name?”
“Pilgrim,” said Tib, “but I won’t introduce you.”
Another glance passed between them and they were suddenly uncommunicative. Tomorrow they would all start for Leesburg—Tib was relieved that it was not tonight. But his relief would have been brief had he heard their conversation when he left them.
“If this dentist has just arrived he’s still traveling, so to speak—a little bit further won’t hurt him.”
“We won’t consult him. We’ll have the consultation out where the patient is.”
“Old Tib would enjoy it—right in the Mosby line. But then again he might object. It’s been a long time since I saw a girl like that.”
IV
Dr. Pilgrim began the installation of his office that evening—Josie gave an excuse to remain at the hotel to sew. She slipped out at seven to the post office where Tib waited with a rented rig, and they drove up on the cliff above the river. The town twinkled below, a mirage of metropolis against the darkening prairie.
“That represents the future,” he said. “It doesn’t seem much to leave Virginia for—but I’m not sorry.”
“I’m not either,” Josie said. “When we got here yesterday I felt a little sad and lost. But today it’s different.”
“The trouble is that now I don’t want to go any further,” he said. “Do you know what made me change?”
Josie didn’t want him to tell her yet.
“It must have been the little signs of the east,” she said. “Somebody’s planted some lilac trees and I saw a big grand piano going through the street.”
“There’ll be no pianos where I’m going, but then there hasn’t been much music in Virginia for the last few years.” He hesitated. “Sometime I’d like you to see Virginia—the valley in Spring.”
“‘Lynchburg thy guardsmen bid thy hills farewell’,” she quoted.
“You remember that?” He smiled. “But I didn’t want to stay there. My father and two brothers were killed and when Mother died this spring it was all gone. And then life seemed to start all over again when I saw your pretty face in the hotel.”
This time she didn’t change the subject.
“I remembered waking up that morning two years ago and crawling off through the woods trying to think whether a girl cut me down or whether it was part of the nightmare. Afterwards I liked to believe it was you.”
“It was me.” She shivered. “We really ought to start back. I must be there when my brother comes in.”
“Give me a minute to think about it,” he begged, “it’s a very beautiful thought. Of course I would have fallen in love with you anyhow.”
“You hardly know me. I’m just the only girl you’ve met here—” She was really talking to herself, and not very convincingly. Then after a minute neither of them were talking at all. In such a little time, that place, that hour, the shadow cast by the horse and buggy under the stars had suddenly become the center of the world.
After a while she drew away and Tib unwillingly flapped the rein on the horse’s back. They should have made plans now but they were under a spell more pervasive than the breath of northern autumn in the night. They would meet tomorrow somehow—the same place, the same time. They were so sure that they would meet—
Dr. Pilgrim had not returned and Josie, all wide awake, walked up the street to his office, a frame building with rooms for professional men. She stepped into a scene of confusion. A group gathered around the colored scrubwoman trying to find out exactly what had happened. One thing was certain—before Dr. Pilgrim had so much as hung out his shingle he had been violently spirited away.
“They wasn’t Indians,” cried the negress, “they was white people dressed up like Indians. They said the chief was sick. Whenever I told them they wasn’t Indians they begun whoopin’ and carryin’ on, sayin’ they was goin’ to scalp me sure enough. But two of them had red hair and they talk like they come from Virginia.”
The life went out of Josie—and terror took its place. No vindictiveness, no revenge—and this was what his friends had done while he gallantly occupied her attention. An eye for an eye—no better than men had been a thousand years ago.
Traces of the guilty parties appeared. A number of citizens had noticed the “Indians” when they entered the building, and assumed it was horse-play. Later that night a wagon, accompanied by riders who answered the negress’s description, had driven out of town on the run.
Josie remembered the name Leesburg, a trading post, two days journey west of St. Paul. She had letters of introduction not yet presented and next day some sympathetic merchants helped her get the ear of the commandant at Fort Snelling. At noon, accompanied by a detail of six troopers, she started for Leesburg on the Fargo stage.
V
Dr. Pilgrim had once before been kidnapped for professional reasons, so the experience did not even have the charm of novelty. To be carried off by imitation Indians somewhat paralyzed his faculties at first, but when he learned the reason for the abduction he expressed this opinion fluently:
“For the sake of a savage!” he raged. “Why, Indians don’t know what dentistry is: they have their medicine men—or nature takes care of them.”
They sat in a wooden blockhouse, one of the half dozen edifices of Leesburg. A caucus of citizens, all hailing from below the Mason-Dixon line, listened with interest to the conversation.
“Nature didn’t take care of Chief Red Weed,” said Ben Cary, “so you’ll have to. You see before he had the toothache he didn’t mind the fences—now he’s calling in his braves from over the Dakota line. Like to ride out to their village and take a look?”
“I don’t want to see hide or hair of any Indians!”
“It isn’t his hide—it’s his teeth.”
“Confound his teeth! They can rot away for all I care.”
“Now, doctor, that seems kind of inhuman. The Chief is a savage, like you say, but the government says he’s a noble savage. If he was a darky wouldn’t you go for that tooth?”
“That’s different.”
“Not so different. This Indian is mighty dark, isn’t he boys? Especially when you get him in his wigwam. While you’re operating you can just pretend he’s a nigger—then you won’t mind it a bit.”
The tone of bitterness only stiffened the doctor’s resolution.
“It’s the insult to my profession. Would you kidnap a surgeon to sew up an injured wildcat?”
“Red Weed isn’t so wild. He may even take you into his tribe. You’d be the only redskin dentist in the world.”
“The honor does not appeal to me.”
Cary tried another tack.
“In a way, you’ve got us, Doctor—we can’t force you. But we believe that if you fix up one sick Indian you can save women and children from what happened here in ’62.”
“That’s a matter for the army—they handled the rebellion.”
He was on thin ice now but there was no answer except a long silence.
“Boys, we’ll let the doctor think it over.” Cary turned to the Indian interpreter, “Say to Red Weed that the white medicine man won’t come to the village today because he must purify himself on his arrival.”
An hour after this interview Tib Dulany accompanied by a guide rode into Leesburg on lathered ponies; he
