“Calamity, you don’t think there is any danger to Father?”

Then Calamity did the strangest thing that ever Eleanor had seen her do.  She had thrown off the shawl.  She had drawn herself up on moccasined tip-toes, and seemed suddenly to have thrown off age and abuse and disgrace and rags and sin, with her eyes fixed stonily on the far spaces of her wrecked youth, the lids wide open, the whites glistening, a mad look in the dilated pupils shining like fire; and her fingers were knitting in and out of her palms.

“M’ man,” she whispered, “dey keel heem, dey hang heem!  M’ babee, dey take it away, d’ pries’ he sing—­sing an’ wave candle an’ bury it in snow.  Leetle Ford, d’ keel heem!  D’ punish Indian man, d’ hang heem, m’ man!  Moyese, he keel leetle Ford:  he go free, not’ng hurt heem!” She burst out laughing, low voiced cunning laughter.  “I go see,” she said.  “I ride down hog’s back t’ d’ mine!  I go see!  Messieu MacDonal’—­He help me!  I help heem!  I go see,” and before Eleanor had grasped the import of the words, the woman had darted out into the dark; and a moment later, Eleanor heard the basement door clang.  There was the pound-pound of a horse being pulled hither and thither, leaping to a wild gallop, then the figure of Calamity bare-headed, riding bareback and astride, cut the moonlight; and the ring of hoof beats echoed back from the rocks of some one going furious, heedless up the face of the Ridge towards the hog’s back trail.

Eleanor called up the Mission School telephone:  Mr. Williams had heard nothing; he didn’t believe there was any cause for alarm; the child was patently and plainly an astounding little liar!  About Calamity?  Oh, yes, Eleanor was not to be alarmed!  She had gone off in those mad fits ever since her baby died up on Saskatchewan.  It had been very distressing; was in winter time, and she wouldn’t release the dead child from her arms; they had to take it from her by force; she always came back after a week or two of wandering!  Would Eleanor like some one to come over and stay in the Ranch House?  And Eleanor being a true descendant of the Man with the Iron Hand flaunted personal fear; and went back to a sleepless but not unhappy night in her room.  Why did the news that Calamity’s child had died bring such a sense of relief?

How simply does life deck out her tragedies!  There is no prelude of low-toned plaintive orchestral music tuned to expectancy.  There is no thunder barrel; or if there is a thunder barrel, you may know that the tragedy is theatrical and hollow in proportion to the size of its emptiness.  And there is no graceful curtain-drop between it and real life, permitting you to rise from your place and go home happy.

MacDonald was stepping into the bucket to descend the last shaft of the mine when something on the edge of the Brule arrested his glance; in fact, two things:  one was Calamity coming out from the trail of the hog’s back through the young cottonwoods and poplars, riding bareback and looking very mad, indeed; the other, was O’Finnigan from Shanty Town on foot, staggering and mad as whiskey could make him, coming up the narrow rock trail from Smelter City.