"'The widdy at Windsor' 's got another pretty!" he taunted. Hate flared suddenly from his deep-set eyes; he could not have a.n.a.lyzed its cause.

"Jes' cut loose from home an' mammy," he continued, intemperately.

"Perhaps he's the queen's latest favorite, boys. We all know what women are!"

What was it? A crash of thunder? A living bolt of fire? Something threw the intervening men violently to the deck. The stripling who had accepted the traditional shilling brushed the crowd aside and knocked down the slanderer of all women--and of his queen!

"Take that back!" Philip breathed, not shouted, as one less angry might have done. "You will not? You shall!"

Burroughs sprang to his feet instantly and returned the blow valiantly.

He did not draw his Colt's as frontiersmen were p.r.o.ne to do, for he thought that a knock-down fight would show that a man must not stand too much on dignity on the upper Missouri. Besides, the lad was English, therefore to be punished.

At once the trifling affair widened into a promiscuous scrimmage of recruits against civilians. In the excitement Winifred, frightened at the uproar, came searching for her brother, just as Danvers again delivered a blow that sent Burroughs reeling against the deck railing.

It was not strong enough to withstand the collision and the aggressor in the fight barely kept his balance as the wood broke. But Winifred, pushed forward by the struggling men, clutched at the air and dropped into the whirling yellow river far below.

"My G.o.d!" groaned Charlie, springing after her. But his leap was preceded by that of Philip Danvers.

The alarm was given; the engines reversed. As the roustabouts jumped to lower the boats the men pressed forward, but the mate beat them back and got the crew to work.

Nowhere could the soft curls be seen. Charlie, nearly drawn into the revolving paddles, was taken into the boat. Presently the watchers saw Winifred's little red dress caught on an uprooted sapling. Tree and child were in the center of the current. While so much debris stayed near the sh.o.r.e or drifted on the shallow sand-bars, this one tree with its human freight hurried on.

"Save her! Save her!" sobbed Scar Faced Charlie, kept by force from jumping again into the stream. "_Let me go!_" he roared.

"No, Charlie," said the mate firmly. "We're goin' to pick up yer sister an' Danvers. No need fer yeh to risk yer life again. That English lad is goin' to turn the trick."

Philip swam on, strongly, while vociferous e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns reached him.

"That feller's got sand!" he heard Joe say, as he dexterously avoided a whirlpool and dodged a snag.

"He's a fool!"

"He'll drown, an' the girl, too!"

"It's caught--he'll overtake her!"

A devilfish-like snag held tree and burden. With a burst of speed Philip swam alongside. Winifred? Thank G.o.d! Still alive, although unconscious; face white, eyes closed. As he grasped her, her eyes opened.

After the excitement, the shouts and the cursings, the crashing of wood and the fighting, quiet reigned on the _Far West_.

Robert Burroughs, sitting in the long northern twilight, rubbed his sore muscles while Scar Faced Charlie and the doctor paced the deck.

"Danvers did a big thing. He saved my sister's life. I'll never forget it. If the time ever comes I'll do as much for him," declared Charlie.

"Perhaps you may," mused the doctor. "We can never tell what the future holds. Perhaps you'll not save his life, but life isn't everything. He may ask you to do something that you won't want to do."

The grating of the steamer on a sand-bar interrupted him.

Brought into high relief by the rising moon, the lead-man stationed forward called:

"Four feet scant--four feet--by the lead five n' a half! No bottom!"

Then came:

"Three--t-h-r-e-e--f-e-e-t--scant!" Again the boat sc.r.a.ped the sand.

As the pilot shouted down the tube to the engineers to pile on more steam Charlie reverted to the rescue.

"Danvers looked pretty well used up when he was brought aboard. But darned if he yipped. He was all for lookin' after Winnie."

"I like the lad," nodded the doctor approvingly. "He has the gift of silence. Shakespeare says: 'Give thy thoughts no tongue.'"

In their next turn they saw Burroughs.

"It'll never do for you to locate at Macleod, Bob, 'f you're goin' to aggravate every recruit you don't happen to like," suggested Charlie, with the privilege of friendship.

"I was a fool!" Burroughs confessed. "But somehow that youngster----"

"You an' he'll always be like two bull buffalo in a herd," said Charlie, wisely.

"I'll do him yet," snarled Burroughs, as he rose to go to the cabin.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chapter II

The Girl on the _Fontenelle_

The pa.s.sengers on the _Far West_ rose early. Danvers stood watching the slow sun uplift from the gently undulating prairie. He threw back his head, his lungs expanded as though he could not get enough of the air.

He did not know why, but he suddenly felt himself a part of the country--felt that this great, open country was his. The banks of the Missouri were not high and he had an un.o.bstructed view of the vast, gra.s.sy sea rolling uncounted miles away to where the sky came down to the edge of the world.

The song of the meadow lark, sweet and incessant as it balanced on a rosin-weed, of the lark bunting and lark finch, poured forth melodiously; twittering blue-birds looked into the air and back to their perch atop the dead cottonwood as they gathered luckless insects; the brown thrush, which sings the night through in the bright starlight, rivaled the robin and grosbeak as Philip gazed over the blue-skyed, green-gra.s.sed land. The blue-green of the ocean had not so fascinated as the mysticism of this broad view. He was glad to be alive, and anxious to be in the riot of life on the plains, where trappers, traders and soldiers moved in the strenuous game of making a new world.

His abounding vitality had recouped itself after the strain of yesterday and he forgot its unpleasantness in the glorious morning; yet at the sight of Burroughs coming from his cabin, the sunlight dulled and involuntarily he felt himself grow tense.

"I didn't mean a d.a.m.n thing," began Burroughs awkwardly.

"That's all right," broke in Philip, as uncomfortable as the other.

Just then the doctor, with Joe and Charlie, came on the upper deck.

"What 'd I tell you, Charlie?" triumphantly asked the physician, as he saw the trader and trooper shaking hands.

"What 'd you tell us?" repeated the man with the scarred face, in doubt, as Burroughs moved away and Danvers turned toward the prow of the boat staring, with eyes that saw not, into the western unknown.

"Didn't I tell you that Bob would do the right thing?" asked the charitable surgeon impatiently, unconscious that he had voiced no such sentiment.