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Again swift decision came to its own and Blount faced to the right, walking rapidly until he turned in at the foot of the worn double flight of stairs leading to the editorial rooms of The Plainsman. Blenkinsop, the editor, a lean, haggard man with a sallow face, coarse black hair worn always a little longer than the prevailing cut, and deep-set, gloomy eyes, was at his desk.
He shuddered again and again, but he was too much of the mountain ranger and plainsman now to turn aside because of horror. He concluded that the skeletons represented perhaps two families, surprised and slaughtered by the Sioux.
Thus he loafs on through the years, outside or inside his office, without a care beyond the getting of his whisky and his tobacco. Of course he has a history. He claims to be from a 'high up' Southern family, but has been a plainsman since 1851.
"Now, boys," said I, "there seems to me just one thing to do, and that is to pike out for water as fast as we can." "Where?" asked Denton. "Well," I argued, "I don't believe there's any water about this bay. Maybe there was when that chart was made. It was a long time ago. And any way, the old pirate was a sailor, and no plainsman, and maybe he mistook rainwater for a spring.
Jack was not imaginative, but he could not help thinking of the commotion which would follow if those around him should learn that "Black Mose" was at that moment seated among them. Mary, seeing the dark, stern face of the plainsman, had some such thought also. There was something gloriously unfettered, compelling, and powerful in his presence.
The trail, continually skirting the high bluff and bearing farther away from the river, turned sharply into a narrow ravine. There was a considerable break in the rocky barrier here, leading back for perhaps a hundred yards, and the plainsman turned his horse that way, dismounting when out of sight among the bowlders. He could rest here until night with little danger of discovery.
"Set but a foot outside these walls and you will reckon with me." It was Jondo's clear voice, and the big plainsman, towering up suddenly behind Ferdinand Ramero, filled the doorway. "You meant to hide in the old Church of San Miguel because it is so near to the home where you have kept this little girl.
"There's no timber, ore, nothing that could be used for east-bound shipment?" The plainsman looked searchingly into the face of the older man. "There's no timber this side the Missouri. Across the river it's reservation Sioux. We " He frowned and stopped. Smith stood up, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
Horsemen were common enough to forget in a moment, but when this one reappeared on the hither side of the ravine, I saw that the rider's face was very dark, that his dress, from the sombrero to the spurred heel, was Mexican, and that he was heavily armed, even for a plainsman.
To express the meaning of this revolt a flying squadron of radical orators had been commissioned and were in the field. Mary Ellen Lease with Cassandra voice, and Jerry Simpson with shrewd humor were voicing the demands of the plainsman, while "Coin" Harvey as champion of the Free Silver theory had stirred the Mountaineer almost to a frenzy.
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