A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of
gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had
brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last, these
dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously. Rumour,
inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story
buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to
haunt the station at the time of the incoming train. The incident of the
morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had
followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become
certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the
point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its
place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the
girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street
through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a
prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the
ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet
well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as
on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet
call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous
familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an
instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace.
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