Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1872-08-23

Law tired and restless, looking at the stars.
| How MANY strange things had lately oc-
Cured to disturb the scouts healthful life
he alone knew, and he was even now
| thinking of the morning when near this
same SPOT. he had found the footsteps in
the sand. A new and disturbing influence
had come upon him. His head was
turned, he thought, for the signs of his
profession even failed him. But this
meditating frontiersman little knew how
much his heart had to do with it.
Suddenly his alert senses caught a
sound. Not the barking of the coyote,
or the timid gallop of the rabbit. Thump,
thump. thump-faint and dull, but still a
definite and intermittent sound. They
who have lain in frontier camps could
hardly fail to recognize it, from its very
suggestion. It was the driving of a
picket-pin. So dim and muffled it was
that none but the scout would have needed
it. And it was not the sound that was
strange. but the circumstance; and Mari
ano knew, as he listened, that it was the
Apache's wooden pin driven with stone
Then he rose up stealtbiiy and so noise
lessly that none heard him, and took his
gun and crept away. Every sense was
alert and keen as the tigers when he
watches for his prey. What, he thought,
if, after all, the expedition should not be
unsuccessful. The sound ceased, and he
crouched upon his knees and slowly crept
on. Then he waited and listened, and
now the sound that came to his ears
was one which only he would have heard
or recognized-the faint tearing, crack
ling whisper, with, at long intervals, a
slow, dull footstep. 1t was that sign
which not even an Indian can prevent
pony grazing. He must be near now;
the gray dawn is breaking in the east,
and moments are hours. AS the scout
crept nearer and peered over the low rocks
he saw the pony grazing at the end of his
tether. and a figure-were there two?-
seated upon the ground. AS he watched
them he saw that they were few, and
wondered as much as he had at the foot
prints. Had Indians lost all cunning, he
thought, Or had be? He grew tired of
waiting, and rose up and walked rapidly
down the slope towards them. Then two
figures, indistinct in the morning gray,
darted away up the opposite slope, one of
them leading the other by the hand. The
instinct. of the Indian hunter was strong
in him, and the thirst for the blood of his
game came upon him. Without thought
of the fateful consequences of the swift
messenger to him, he raised his gun, and
with one hasty glance along the barrel,
fired upon the retreating figures. The
hindermost fell, and, as the echoes of the
shot died away ON the desert stiffness, the
scout drew near the victim of his skill.
There in the gray light lay woman
whose. long gray hair was tangled in the
coarse grass. Her face was worn and
wrinkled with the suffering of years, but
in the pallid features and dying eyes was
something far from Indian origin. Itwas
a poem-a story of faded beauty and long
waiting melting at last into the shadows
of death. And beside her knelt the
other, shapel-- creature whose eyes
were full of tear, and whose hand trem-
bled as she held before the filmy eyes a
small white cross, beside which glittered
one of yellow gold.
When at last awakened by the shot,
the soldiers came, the daredevil scout
lay prone upon the earth beside corpse.
His face was hidden upon the dead
breast, and while his strong frame was
convulsed in agony, his big brown hand
caressed his mothers pallid face. And
Kate-poor, innocent, ignorant Kate
born in the wilderness, but gathering,
nevertheless, something of that knowl-
edge which only mothers teach, who had
used her captivity to learn where and
how to bring her mother back and herself
to return to her lover, and with the cum
ming learned of her wild life had followed
close upon the trail of the white men for
security from pursuit by her own kindred,
sat and looked upon the scene, the cross
in her hand and her big eyes full OF won
der and horror and grief.
The very plainest life mas in it many
strange events, but it would be sad in
deed if the loves and sorrows which
come to us all ever resulted as the story
makers would fain have them. The
clouds pass, the sunshine comes at last,
and we find that of life's cup the very
lees are sweet. The half-breed learned
afterwards to understand more fully the
meaning of the symbol which had been
her mothers one poor keepsake OF home,
happiness and religion, and how she was
the second child of captivity. She had
many a lover afterwards, but never a
brother. Long ago the beautiful mother
of swarthy sons, she tells to her youngest
on her knee the curious story OF the camp
and the captivity, and shows him small
white cross. But she leaves out of the
story the sad death upon the hill side, and
says nothing of the remorseful and
gloomy hermit, who, far in the hill.coun-
try sits beside his door, bankrupt in all
the ties of kindred and love, and striving
still in the very luxury of vindictiveness,
to quench the remorse in his heart, and
wash out in many an Indians life blood
the stain upon his own red hands.