The wind arose along toward midnight—the wind that many a hardened inhabitant would have foretold hours before had he been master of his time and thoughts. As a rule, no signal service was needed in the cow country. Men who practically lived in the open had a natural right to claim some close acquaintance with the portents of approaching changes. But it would have been well had some storm flag waved over the little town that day. For the wind that came slipping up in the night, first in little sighing whiffs and skirmishes, gradually growing more impatient, more domineering, more utterly contemptuous, haughty, and hungry, sweeping down from its northwest camping grounds, carried a deadly menace in its yet warm breath to the helpless and unprotected cattle huddled together in startled terror or already beginning their migration by intuition, running with the wind.
It rattled loose window-casings in the hotel, so that people turned uneasily in their beds. It sent strange creatures of the imagination to prowl about. Cowmen thought of the depleted herds when the riders should come in off the free ranges in the Spring should that moaning wind mean a real northwester.
Louise was awakened by a sudden shriek of wind that swept through the slight aperture left by the raised window and sent something crashing to the floor. She lay for a moment drowsily wondering what had fallen. Was it anything that could be broken? She heard the steady push of the wind against the frail frame building, and knew she ought to compel herself sufficiently to be aroused to close the window. But she was very sleepy. The crash had not awakened Mary. She was breathing quietly and deeply. But she would be amenable to a touch—just a light one—and she did not mind doing things. How mean, though, to administer it in such a cause. She could not do it. The dilapidated green blind was flapping dismally. What time was it? Maybe it was nearly morning, and then the wind would probably go down. That would save her from getting up. She snuggled under the covers and prepared to slip deliciously off into slumber again.
But she couldn’t go to sleep after all. A haunting suspicion preyed on her waking faculties that the crash might have been the water pitcher. She had been asleep and could not gauge the shock of the fall. It had seemed terrific, but what awakens one from sleep is always abnormal to one’s startled and unremembering consciousness. Still, it might have been the pitcher. She cherished no fond delusion as to the impenetrability of the warped cottonwood flooring. Water might even then be trickling through to the room below. She found herself wondering where the bed stood, and that thought brought her sitting up in a hurry only to remember that she was over the musty sitting room with its impossible carpet. She would be glad to see it soaked—it might put a little color into it, temporarily at least, and lay the dust of ages. But, sitting up, she felt herself enveloped in a gale of wind that played over the bed, and so wisely concluded that if she wished to see this court through without the risk of grippe or pneumonia complications, she had better close that window. So she slipped cautiously out of bed, nervously apprehensive of plunging her feet into a pool of water. It had not been the pitcher after all. Even after the window was closed, there seemed to be much air in the room. The blind still flapped, though at longer intervals. If it really turned cold, how were they to live in that barn-like room, she and Mary? She thought of the campers out on the flat and shivered. She looked out of the window musingly a moment. It was dark. She wondered if Gordon had come home. Of course he was home. It must be nearly morning. Her feet were getting cold, so she crept back into bed. The next thing of which she was conscious, Mary was shaking her excitedly.
“What is it?” she asked, sleepily.
“Louise! There’s a fire somewhere! Listen!”
Some one rushed quickly through the hall; others followed, knocking against the walls in the darkness. Then the awful, heart-clutching clang of a bell rang out—near, insistent, metallic. It was the meeting-house bell. There was no other in the town. The girls sprang to the floor. The thought had found swift lodgment in the mind of each that the hotel was on fire, and in that moment Louise thought of the poisoned meat that had once been served to some arch-enemies of the gang whose chief was now on trial for his liberty. So quickly does the brain work under stress of great crises, that, even before she had her shoes and stockings on, she found herself wondering who was the marked victim this time. Not Williston,—he was dead. Not Gordon,—he slept in his own room back of the office. Not Langford,—he was bunking with his friend in that same room. Jim Munson? Or was the Judge the proscribed one? He was not a corrupt judge. He could not be bought. It might be he. Mary had gone to the window.
“Louise!” she gasped. “The court-house!”
True. The cloudy sky was reddened above the poor little temple of justice where for days and weeks the tide of human interest of a big part of a big State—ay, a big part of all the northwest country, maybe—had been steadily setting in and had reached its culmination only yesterday, when a gray eyed, drooping-shouldered, firm-jawed young man had at last faced quietly in the bar of his court the defier of the cow country. To-night, it would dance its little measure, recite its few lines on its little stage of popularity before an audience frenzied with appreciation and interest; to-morrow, it would be a heap of ashes, its scene played out.
“My note books!” cried Louise, in a flash of comprehension. She dressed hastily. Shirt-waist was too intricate, so she threw on a gay Japanese kimono; her jacket and walking skirt concealed the limitations of her attire.
“What are you going to do?” asked Mary, also putting on clothes which were easy of adjustment. She had never gone to fires in the old days before she had come to South Dakota; but if Louise went—gentle, high-bred Louise—why, she would go too, that was all there was about it. She had constituted herself Louise’s guardian in this rough life that must be so alien to the Eastern girl. Louise had been very good to her. Louise’s startled cry about her note books carried little understanding to her. She was not used to court and its ways.
They hastened out into the hallway and down the stairs. They saw no one whom they knew, though men were still dodging out from unexpected places and hurrying down the street. It seemed impossible that the inconveniently built, diminutive prairie hotel could accommodate so many people. Louise found herself wondering where they had been packed away. The men, carelessly dressed as they were, their hair shaggy and unkempt, always with pistols in belt or hip-pocket or hand, made her shiver with dread. They looked so wild and weird and fierce in the dimly lighted hall. She clutched Mary’s arm nervously, but no thought of returning entered her mind. Probably the Judge was already on the court-house grounds. He would want to save some valuable books he had been reading in his official quarters. So they went out into the b............