A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear each other breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the minister’s lips became audible; then came the end.  Incredible after it was over was that denouement, inexplicable to a legion of old men, then among the boys, who witnessed it, to this day.  Yet as the incredible continues to take place in this world it took place then.  As one man can ever dominate other men it was done that silent noon hour.  For that moment the first challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken.  The only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life found voice; and was not accepted.  One step he took toward that listening, expectant throng and halted.  With the old, old motion his arms folded across his chest.

“Men,” he said, “I don’t want trouble here to-day.  I’ve done my best to avoid it; but the end has come.  I’ve stood everything at your hands, every insult which you could conceive, things which no white man would have permitted for a second; and so far without resentment.  But I shall stand it no more.  I’m one to a hundred; but that makes no difference.  Bess Landor and I are to be married now and here; here before you all.  I shall not talk to you again.  I shall not ask you to leave us in peace; but as surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I shall kill that man.  No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing.”  A moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms; then, still facing, he moved back a step.  “Mr. Mitchell,” he said, “we are ready.”

And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married.  The minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the pages shook until the letters were blurred.  Yet it was done, and, save one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent stayed and listened to the end.  That one, a tall, modish alien with a red, flushed face covered with a two-days’ growth of bread, was likewise watching when it began.  But when it was over he was not there; and not one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE

Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling, sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving:  a white girl of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older.  Back of them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a straggling, desolate village.  Ahead, to either side, was the rolling brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material