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Title: Cressy
Author: Bret Harte
Release Date: October, 2001 [Etext #2858]
Edition: 10
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CRESSY
by Bret Harte
CRESSY
CHAPTER I.
As the master of the Indian Spring school emerged from the pine
woods into the little clearing before the schoolhouse, he stopped
whistling, put his hat less jauntily on his head, threw away some
wild flowers he had gathered on his way, and otherwise assumed the
severe demeanor of his profession and his mature age--which was at
least twenty. Not that he usually felt this an assumption; it was
a firm conviction of his serious nature that he impressed others,
as he did himself, with the blended austerity and ennui of deep and
exhausted experience.
The building which was assigned to him and his flock by the Board
of Education of Tuolumne County, California, had been originally a
church. It still bore a faded odor of sanctity, mingled, however,
with a later and slightly alcoholic breath of political discussion,
the result of its weekly occupation under the authority of the
Board as a Tribune for the enunciation of party principles and
devotion to the Liberties of the People. There were a few dog-
eared hymn-books on the teacher's desk, and the blackboard but
imperfectly hid an impassioned appeal to the citizens of Indian
Spring to "Rally" for Stebbins as Supervisor. The master had been
struck with the size of the black type in which this placard was
printed, and with a shrewd perception of its value to the round
wandering eyes of his smaller pupils, allowed it to remain as a
pleasing example of orthography. Unfortunately, although
subdivided and spelt by them in its separate letters with painful
and perfect accuracy, it was collectively known as "Wally," and its
general import productive of vague hilarity.
Taking a large key from his pocket, the master unlocked the door
and threw it open, stepping back with a certain precaution begotten
of his experience in once finding a small but sociable rattlesnake
coiled up near the threshold. A slight disturbance which followed
his intrusion showed the value of that precaution, and the fact
that the room had been already used for various private and
peaceful gatherings of animated nature. An irregular attendance of
yellow-birds and squirrels dismissed themselves hurriedly through
the broken floor and windows, but a golden lizard, stiffened
suddenly into stony fright on the edge of an open arithmetic,
touched the heart of the master so strongly by its resemblance to
some kept-in and forgotten scholar who had succumbed over the task
he could not accomplish, that he was seized with compunction.
Recovering himself, and re-establishing, as it were, the decorous
discipline of the room by clapping his hands and saying "Sho!" he
passed up the narrow aisle of benches, replacing the forgotten
arithmetic, and picking up from the desks here and there certain
fragmentary pieces of plaster and crumbling wood that had fallen
from the ceiling, as if this grove of Academus had been shedding
its leaves overnight. When he reached his own desk he lifted the
lid and remained for some moments motionless, gazing into it. His
apparent meditation however was simply the combined reflection of
his own features in a small pocket-mirror in its recesses and a
perplexing doubt in his mind whether the sacrifice of his budding
moustache was not essential to the professional austerity of his
countenance. But he was presently aware of the sound of small
voices, light cries, and brief laughter scattered at vague and
remote distances from the schoolhouse--not unlike the birds and
squirrels he had just dispossessed. He recognized by these signs
that it was nine o'clock, and his scholars were assembling.
They came in their usual desultory fashion--the fashion of country
school-children the world over--irregularly, spasmodically, and
always as if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead
of or dropped behind their elders; some in straggling groups more
or less coherent and at times only connected by far-off intermediate
voices scattered on a space of half a mile, but never quite alone;
always preoccupied by something else than the actual business on
hand; appearing suddenly from ditches, behind trunks, and between
fence-rails; cropping up in unexpected places along the road after
vague and purposeless detours--seemingly going anywhere and
everywhere but to school! So unlooked-for, in fact, was their final
arrival that the master, who had a few moments before failed to
descry a single torn straw hat or ruined sun-bonnet above his
visible horizon, was always startled to find them suddenly under his
windows, as if, like the birds, they had alighted from the trees.
Nor was their moral attitude towards their duty any the more varied;
they always arrived as if tired and reluctant, with a doubting
sulkiness that perhaps afterwards beamed into a charming hypocrisy,
but invariably temporizing with their instincts until the last
moment, and only relinquishing possible truancy on the very
threshold. Even after they were marshalled on their usual benches
they gazed at each other every morning with a perfectly fresh
astonishment and a daily recurring enjoyment of some hidden joke in
this tremendous rencontre.
It had been the habit of the master to utilize these preliminary
vagrancies of his little flock by inviting them on assembling to
recount any interesting incident of their journey hither; or
failing this, from their not infrequent shyness in expressing what
had secretly interested them, any event that had occurred within
their knowledge since they last met. He had done this, partly to
give them time to recover themselves in that more formal atmosphere,
and partly, I fear, because, notwithstanding his conscientious
gravity, it greatly amused him. It also diverted them from their
usual round-eyed, breathless contemplation of himself--a regular
morning inspection which generally embraced every detail of his
dress and appearance, and made every change or deviation the subject
of whispered comment or stony astonishment. He knew that they knew
him more thoroughly than he did himself, and shrank from the
intuitive vision of these small clairvoyants.
"Well?" said the master gravely.
There was the usual interval of bashful hesitation, verging on
nervous hilarity or hypocritical attention. For the last six
months this question by the master had been invariably received
each morning as a veiled pleasantry which might lead to baleful
information or conceal some query out of the dreadful books before
him. Yet this very element of danger had its fascinations. Johnny
Filgee, a small boy, blushed violently, and, without getting up,
began hurriedly in a high key, "Tige ith got," and then suddenly
subsided into a whisper.
"Speak up, Johnny," said the master encouragingly.
"Please, sir, it ain't anythin' he's seed--nor any real news," said
Rupert Filgee, his elder brother, rising with family concern and
frowning openly upon Johnny; "it's jest his foolishness; he oughter
be licked." Finding himself unexpectedly on his feet, and
apparently at the end of a long speech, he colored also, and then
said hurriedly, "Jimmy Snyder--HE seed suthin'. Ask HIM!" and sat
down--a recognized hero.
Every eye, including the master's, was turned on Jimmy Snyder. But
that youthful observer, instantly diving his head and shoulders
into his desk, remained there gurgling as if under water. Two or
three nearest him endeavored with some struggling to bring him to
an intelligible surface again. The master waited patiently.
Johnny Filgee took advantage of the diversion to begin again in a
high key, "Tige ith got thix," and subsided.
"Come, Jimmy," said the master, with a touch of peremptoriness.
Thus adjured, Jimmy Snyder came up glowingly, and bristling with
full stops and exclamation points. "Seed a black b'ar comin' outer
Daves' woods," he said excitedly. "Nigh to me ez you be. 'N big
ez a hoss; 'n snarlin'! 'n snappin'!--like gosh! Kem along--ker--
clump torords me. Reckoned he'd skeer me! Didn't skeer me worth a
cent. I heaved a rock at him--I did now!" (in defiance of murmurs
of derisive comment)--"'n he slid. Ef he'd kem up furder I'd hev
up with my slate and swotted him over the snoot--bet your boots!"
The master here thought fit to interfere, and gravely point out
that the habit of striking bears as large as a horse with a school-
slate was equally dangerous to the slate (which was also the
property of Tuolumne County) and to the striker; and that the verb
"to swot" and the noun substantive "snoot" were likewise
indefensible, and not to be tolerated. Thus admonished Jimmy
Snyder, albeit unshaken in his faith in his own courage, sat down.
A slight pause ensued. The youthful Filgee, taking advantage of
it, opened in a higher key, "Tige ith"--but the master's attention
was here diverted by the searching eyes of Octavia Dean, a girl of
eleven, who after the fashion of her sex preferred a personal
recognition of her presence before she spoke. Succeeding in
catching his eye, she threw back her long hair from her shoulders
with an easy habitual gesture, rose, and with a faint accession of
color said:
"Cressy McKinstry came home from Sacramento. Mrs. McKinstry told
mother she's comin' back here to school."
The master looked up with an alacrity perhaps inconsistent with his
cynical austerity. Seeing the young girl curiously watching him
with an expectant smile, he regretted it. Cressy McKinstry, who
was sixteen years old, had been one of the pupils he had found at
the school when he first came. But as he had also found that she
was there in the extraordinary attitude of being "engaged" to one
Seth Davis, a fellow-pupil of nineteen, and as most of the
courtship was carried on freely and unceremoniously during school-
hours with the full permission of the master's predecessor, the
master had been obliged to point out to the parents of the devoted
couple the embarrassing effects of this association on the
discipline of the school. The result had been the withdrawal of
the lovers, and possibly the good-will of the parents. The return
of the young lady was consequently a matter of some significance.
Had the master's protest been accepted, or had the engagement
itself been broken off?
Either was not improbable. His momentary loss of attention was
Johnny Filgee's great gain.
"Tige," said Johnny, with sudden and alarming distinctness, "ith
got thix pupths--mothly yaller."
In the laugh which followed this long withheld announcement of an
increase in the family of Johnny's yellow and disreputable setter
"Tiger," who usually accompanied him to school and howled outside,
the master joined with marked distinctness. Then he said, with
equally marked severity, "Books!" The little levee was ended, and
school began.
It continued for two hours with short sighs, corrugations of small
foreheads, the complaining cries and scratchings of slate pencils
over slates, and other signs of minor anguish among the more
youthful of the flock; and with more or less whisperings, movements
of the lips, and unconscious soliloquy among the older pupils. The
master moved slowly up and down the aisle with a word of
encouragement or explanation here and there, stopping with his
hands behind him to gaze abstractedly out of the windows to the
wondering envy of the little ones. A faint hum, as of invisible
insects, gradually pervaded the school; the more persistent droning
of a large bee had become dangerously soporific. The hot breath of
the pines without had invaded the doors and windows; the warped
shingles and weather-boarding at times creaked and snapped under
the rays of the vertical and unclouded sun. A gentle perspiration
broke out like a mild epidemic in the infant class; little curls
became damp, brief lashes limp, round eyes moist, and small eyelids
heavy. The master himself started, and awoke out of a perilous
dream of other eyes and hair to collect himself severely. For the
irresolute, half-embarrassed, half-lazy figure of a man had halted
doubtingly before the porch and open door. Luckily the children,
who were facing the master with their backs to the entrance, did
not see it.
Yet the figure was neither alarming nor unfamiliar. The master at
once recognized it as Ben Dabney, otherwise known as "Uncle Ben," a
good-humored but not over-bright miner, who occupied a small cabin
on an unambitious claim in the outskirts of Indian Spring. His
avuncular title was evidently only an ironical tribute to his
amiable incompetency and heavy good-nature, for he was still a
young man with no family ties, and by reason of his singular
shyness not even a visitor in the few families of the neighborhood.
As the master looked up, he had an irritating recollection that Ben
had been already haunting him for the last two days, alternately
appearing and disappearing in his path to and from school as a more
than usually reserved and bashful ghost. This, to the master's
cynical mind, clearly indicated that, like most ghosts, he had
something of essentially selfish import to communicate. Catching
the apparition's half-appealing eye, he proceeded to exorcise it
with a portentous frown and shake of the head, that caused it to
timidly wane and fall away from the porch, only however to reappear
and wax larger a few minutes later at one of the side windows. The
infant class hailing his appearance as a heaven-sent boon, the
master was obliged to walk to the door and command him sternly
away, when, retreating to the fence, he mounted the uppermost rail,
and drawing a knife from his pocket, cut a long splinter from the
rail, and began to whittle it in patient and meditative silence.
But when recess was declared, and the relieved feelings of the
little flock had vent in the clearing around the schoolhouse, the
few who rushed to the spot found that Uncle Ben had already
disappeared. Whether the appearance of the children was too
inconsistent with his ghostly mission, or whether his heart failed
him at the last moment, the master could not determine. Yet,
distasteful as the impending interview promised to be, the master
was vaguely and irritatingly disappointed.
A few hours later, when school was being dismissed, the master
found Octavia Dean lingering near his desk. Looking into the
girl's mischievous eyes, he good-humoredly answered their
expectation by referring to her morning's news. "I thought Miss
McKinstry had been married by this time," he said carelessly.
Octavia, swinging her satchel like a censer, as if she were
performing some act of thurification over her completed tasks,
replied demurely: "Oh no! dear no--not THAT."
"So it would seem," said the master.
"I reckon she never kalkilated to, either," continued Octavia,
slyly looking up from the corner of her lashes.
"Indeed!"
"No--she was just funning with Seth Davis--that's all."
"Funning with him?"
"Yes, sir. Kinder foolin' him, you know."
"Kinder foolin' him!"
For an instant the master felt it his professional duty to protest
against this most unmaidenly and frivolous treatment of the
matrimonial engagement, but a second glance at the significant face
of his youthful auditor made him conclude that her instinctive
knowledge of her own sex could be better trusted than his imperfect
theories. He turned towards his desk without speaking. Octavia
gave an extra swing to her satchel, tossing it over her shoulder
with a certain small coquettishness and moved towards the door. As
she did so the infant Filgee from the safe vantage of the porch
where he had lingered was suddenly impelled to a crowning audacity!
As if struck with an original idea, but apparently addressing
himself to space, he cried out, "Crethy M'Kinthry likth teacher,"
and instantly vanished.
Putting these incidents sternly aside, the master addressed himself
to the task of setting a few copies for the next day as the voices
of his departing flock faded from the porch. Presently a silence
fell upon the little school-house. Through the open door a cool,
restful breath stole gently as if nature were again stealthily
taking possession of her own. A squirrel boldly came across the
porch, a few twittering birds charging in stopped, beat the air
hesitatingly for a moment with their wings, and fell back with
bashfully protesting breasts aslant against the open door and the
unlooked-for spectacle of the silent occupant. Then there was
another movement of intrusion, but this time human, and the master
looked up angrily to behold Uncle Ben.
He entered with a slow exasperating step, lifting his large boots
very high and putting them down again softly as if he were afraid
of some insecurity in the floor, or figuratively recognized the
fact that the pathways of knowledge were thorny and difficult.
Reaching the master's desk and the ministering presence above it,
he stopped awkwardly, and with the rim of his soft felt hat
endeavored to wipe from his face the meek smile it had worn when he
entered. It chanced also that he had halted before the minute
stool of the infant Filgee, and his large figure instantly assumed
such Brobdingnagian proportions in contrast that he became more
embarrassed than ever. The master made no attempt to relieve him,
but regarded him with cold interrogation.
"I reckoned," he began, leaning one hand on the master's desk with
affected ease, as he dusted his leg with his hat with the other, "I
reckoned--that is--I allowed--I orter say--that I'd find ye alone
at this time. Ye gin'rally are, ye know. It's a nice, soothin',
restful, stoodious time, when a man kin, so to speak, run back on
his eddication and think of all he ever knowed. Ye're jist like
me, and ye see I sorter spotted your ways to onct."
"Then why did you come here this morning and disturb the school?"
demanded the master sharply.
"That's so, I sorter slipped up thar, didn't I?" said Uncle Ben
with a smile of rueful assent. "You see I didn't allow to COME IN
then, but on'y to hang round a leetle and kinder get used to it,
and it to me."
"Used to what?" said the master impatiently, albeit with a slight
softening at his intruder's penitent expression.
Uncle Ben did not reply immediately, but looked around as if for a
seat, tried one or two benches and a desk with his large hand as if
testing their security, and finally abandoning the idea as
dangerous, seated himself on the raised platform beside the
master's chair, having previously dusted it with the flap of his
hat. Finding, however, that the attitude was not conducive to
explanation, he presently rose again, and picking up one of the
school-books from the master's desk eyed it unskilfully upside
down, and then said hesitatingly,--
"I reckon ye ain't usin' Dobell's 'Rithmetic here?"
"No," said the master.
"That's bad. 'Pears to be played out--that Dobell feller. I was
brought up on Dobell. And Parsings' Grammar? Ye don't seem to be
a using Parsings' Grammar either?"
"No," said the master, relenting still more as he glanced at Uncle
Ben's perplexed face with a faint smile.
"And I reckon you'd be saying the same of Jones' 'Stronomy and
Algebry? Things hev changed. You've got all the new style here,"
he continued, with affected carelessness, but studiously avoiding
the master's eye. "For a man ez wos brought up on Parsings,
Dobell, and Jones, thar don't appear to be much show nowadays."
The master did not reply. Observing several shades of color chase
each other on Uncle Ben's face, he bent his own gravely over his
books. The act appeared to relieve his companion, who with his
eyes still turned towards the window went on:
"Ef you'd had them books--which you haven't--I had it in my mind to
ask you suthen'. I had an idea of--of--sort of reviewing my
eddication. Kinder going over the old books agin--jist to pass the
time. Sorter running in yer arter school hours and doin' a little
practisin', eh? You looking on me as an extry scholar--and I
payin' ye as sich--but keepin' it 'twixt ourselves, you know--just
for a pastime, eh?"
As the master smilingly raised his head, he became suddenly and
ostentatiously attracted to the window.
"Them jay birds out there is mighty peart, coming right up to the
school-house! I reckon they think it sort o' restful too."
"But if you really mean it, couldn't you use these books, Uncle
Ben?" said the master cheerfully. "I dare say there's little
difference--the principle is the same, you know."
Uncle Ben's face, which had suddenly brightened, as suddenly fell.
He took the book from the master's hand without meeting his eyes,
held it at arm's length, turned it over and then laid it softly
down upon the desk as if it were some excessively fragile article.
"Certingly," he murmured, with assumed reflective ease. "Certingly.
The principle's all there." Nevertheless he was quite breathless
and a few beads of perspiration stood out upon his smooth, blank
forehead.
"And as to writing, for instance," continued the master with
increasing heartiness as he took notice of these phenomena, "you
know ANY copy-book will do."
He handed his pen carelessly to Uncle Ben. The large hand that
took it timidly not only trembled but grasped it with such fatal
and hopeless unfamiliarity that the master was fain to walk to the
window and observe the birds also.
"They're mighty bold--them jays," said Uncle Ben, laying down the
pen with scrupulous exactitude beside the book and gazing at his
fingers as if he had achieved a miracle of delicate manipulation.
"They don't seem to be afeared of nothing, do they?"
There was another pause. The master suddenly turned from the
window. "I tell you what, Uncle Ben," he said with prompt decision
and unshaken gravity, "the only thing for you to do is to just
throw over Dobell and Parsons and Jones and the old quill pen that
I see you're accustomed to, and start in fresh as if you'd never
known them. Forget 'em all, you know. It will be mighty hard of
course to do that," he continued, looking out of the window, "but
you must do it."
He turned back, the brightness that transfigured Uncle Ben's face
at that moment brought a slight moisture into his own eyes. The
humble seeker of knowledge said hurriedly that he would try.
"And begin again at the beginning," continued the master cheerfully.
"Exactly like one of those--in fact, as if you REALLY were a child
again."
"That's so," said Uncle Ben, rubbing his hands delightedly, "that's
me! Why, that's jest what I was sayin' to Roop"--
"Then you've already been talking about it?" intercepted the master
in some surprise. "I thought you wanted it kept secret?"
"Well, yes," responded Uncle Ben dubiously. "But you see I sorter
agreed with Roop Filgee that if you took to my ideas and didn't
object, I'd give him two bits* every time he'd kem here and help me
of an arternoon when you was away and kinder stand guard around the
school-house, you know, so as to keep the fellows off. And Roop's
mighty sharp for a boy, ye know."
* Two bits, i. e., twenty-five cents.
The master reflected a moment and concluded that Uncle Ben was
probably right. Rupert Filgee, who was a handsome boy of fourteen,
was also a strongly original character whose youthful cynicism and
blunt, honest temper had always attracted him. He was a fair
scholar, with a possibility of being a better one, and the proposed
arrangement with Uncle Ben would not interfere with the discipline
of school hours and might help them both. Nevertheless he asked
good-humoredly, "But couldn't you do this more securely and easily
in your own house? I might lend you the books, you know, and come
to you twice a week."
Uncle Ben's radiant face suddenly clouded. "It wouldn't be exactly
the same kind o' game to me an' Roop," he said hesitatingly. "You
see thar's the idea o' the school-house, ye know, and the
restfulness and the quiet, and the gen'ral air o' study. And the
boys around town ez wouldn't think nothin' o' trapsen' into my
cabin if they spotted what I was up to thar, would never dream o'
hunting me here."
"Very well," said the master, "let it be here then." Observing
that his companion seemed to be struggling with an inarticulate
gratitude and an apparently inextricable buckskin purse in his
pocket, he added quietly, "I'll set you a few copies to commence
with," and began to lay out a few unfinished examples of Master
Johnny Filgee's scholastic achievements.
"After thanking YOU, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben, faintly, "ef you'll
jest kinder signify, you know, what you consider a fair"--
Mr. Ford turned quickly and dexterously offered his hand to his
companion in such a manner that he was obliged to withdraw his own
from his pocket to grasp it in return. "You're very welcome," said
the master, "and as I can only permit this sort of thing
gratuitously, you'd better NOT let me know that you propose giving
anything even to Rupert." He shook Uncle Ben's perplexed hand
again, briefly explained what he had to do, and saying that he
would now leave him alone a few minutes, he took his hat and walked
towards the door.
"Then you reckon," said Uncle Ben slowly, regarding the work before
him, "that I'd better jest chuck them Dobell fellers overboard?"
"I certainly should," responded the master with infinite gravity.
"And sorter waltz in fresh, like one them children?"
"Like a child," nodded the master as he left the porch.
A few moments later, as he was finishing his cigar in the clearing,
he paused to glance in at the school-room window. Uncle Ben,
stripped of his coat and waistcoat, with his shirt-sleeves rolled
up on his powerful arms, had evidently cast Dobell and all
misleading extraneous aid aside, and with the perspiration standing
out on his foolish forehead, and his perplexed face close to the
master's desk, was painfully groping along towards the light in the
tottering and devious tracks of Master Johnny Filgee, like a very
child indeed!
CHAPTER II.
As the children were slowly straggling to their places the next
morning, the master waited for an opportunity to speak to Rupert.
That beautiful but scarcely amiable youth was, as usual, surrounded
and impeded by a group of his small female admirers, for whom, it
is but just to add, he had a supreme contempt. Possibly it was
this healthy quality that inclined the master towards him, and it
was consequently with some satisfaction that he overheard fragments
of his openly disparaging comments upon his worshippers.
"There!" to Clarinda Jones, "don't flop! And don't YOU," to
Octavia Dean, "go on breathing over my head like that. If there's
anything I hate it's having a girl breathing round me. Yes, you
were! I felt it in my hair. And YOU too--you're always snoopin'
and snoodgin'. Oh, yes, you want to know WHY I've got an extry
copy-book and another 'Rithmetic, Miss Curiosity. Well, what would
you give to know? Want to see if they're PRETTY" (with infinite
scorn at the adjective). "No, they ain't PRETTY. That's all you
girls think about--what's PRETTY and what's curious! Quit now!
Come! Don't ye see teacher lookin' at you? Ain't you ashamed?"
He caught the master's beckoning eye and came forward, slightly
abashed, with a flush of irritation still on his handsome face, and
his chestnut curls slightly rumpled. One, which Octavia had
covertly accented by twisting round her forefinger, stood up like a
crest on his head.
"I've told Uncle Ben that you might help him here after school
hours," said the master, taking him aside. "You may therefore omit
your writing exercise in the morning and do it in the afternoon."
The boy's dark eyes sparkled. "And if it would be all the same to
you, sir," he added earnestly, "you might sorter give out in school
that I was to be kept in."
"I'm afraid that would hardly do," said the master, much amused.
"But why?"
Rupert's color deepened. "So ez to keep them darned girls from
foolin' round me and followin' me back here."
"We will attend to that," said the master smiling; a moment after
he added more seriously, "I suppose your father knows that you are
to receive money for this? And he doesn't object?"
"He! Oh no!" returned Rupert with a slight look of astonishment,
and the same general suggestion of patronizing his progenitor that
he had previously shown to his younger brother. "You needn't mind
HIM." In reality Filgee pere, a widower of two years' standing,
had tacitly allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon
Rupert. Remembering this, the master could only say, "Very well,"
and good-naturedly dismiss the pupil to his seat and the subject
from his mind. The last laggard had just slipped in, the master
had glanced over the occupied benches with his hand upon his
warning bell, when there was a quick step on the gravel, a flutter
of skirts like the sound of alighting birds, and a young woman
lightly entered.
In the rounded, untouched, and untroubled freshness of her cheek
and chin, and the forward droop of her slender neck, she appeared a
girl of fifteen; in her developed figure and the maturer drapery of
her full skirts she seemed a woman; in her combination of naive
recklessness and perfect understanding of her person she was both.
In spite of a few school-books that jauntily swung from a strap in
her gloved hand, she bore no resemblance to a pupil; in her pretty
gown of dotted muslin with bows of blue ribbon on the skirt and
corsage, and a cluster of roses in her belt, she was as inconsistent
and incongruous to the others as a fashion-plate would have been in
the dry and dog-eared pages before them. Yet she carried it off
with a demure mingling of the naivete of youth and the aplomb of a
woman, and as she swept down the narrow aisle, burying a few small
wondering heads in the overflow of her flounces, there was no doubt
of her reception in the arch smile that dimpled her cheek. Dropping
a half curtsey to the master, the only suggestion of her equality
with the others, she took her place at one of the larger desks, and
resting her elbow on the lid began to quietly remove her gloves. It
was Cressy McKinstry.
Irritated and disturbed at the girl's unceremonious entrance, the
master for the moment recognized her salutation coldly, and
affected to ignore her elaborate appearance. The situation was
embarrassing. He could not decline to receive her as she was no
longer accompanied by her lover, nor could he plead entire
ignorance of her broken engagement; while to point out the glaring
inappropriateness of costume would be a fresh interference he knew
Indian Spring would scarcely tolerate. He could only accept such
explanation as she might choose to give. He rang his bell as much
to avert the directed eyes of the children as to bring the scene to
a climax.
She had removed her gloves and was standing up.
"I reckon I can go on where I left off?" she said lazily, pointing
to the books she had brought with her.
"For the present," said the master dryly.
The first class was called. Later, when his duty brought him to
her side, he was surprised to find that she was evidently already
prepared with consecutive lessons, as if she were serenely
unconscious of any doubt of her return, and as coolly as if she had
only left school the day before. Her studies were still quite
elementary, for Cressy McKinstry had never been a brilliant
scholar, but he perceived, with a cynical doubt of its permanency,
that she had bestowed unusual care upon her present performance.
There was moreover a certain defiance in it, as if she had resolved
to stop any objection to her return on the score of deficiencies.
He was obliged in self-defence to take particular note of some
rings she wore, and a large bracelet that ostentatiously glittered
on her white arm--which had already attracted the attention of her
companions, and prompted the audible comment from Johnny Filgee
that it was "truly gold." Without meeting her eyes he contented
himself with severely restraining the glances of the children that
wandered in her direction. She had never been quite popular with
the school in her previous role of fiancee, and only Octavia Dean
and one or two older girls appreciated its mysterious fascination;
while the beautiful Rupert, secure in his avowed predilection for
the middle-aged wife of the proprietor of the Indian Spring hotel,
looked upon her as a precocious chit with more than the usual
propensity to objectionable "breathing." Nevertheless the master
was irritatingly conscious of her presence--a presence which now
had all the absurdity of her ridiculous love-experiences superadded
to it. He tried to reason with himself that it was only a phase of
frontier life, which ought to have amused him. But it did not.
The intrusion of this preposterous girl seemed to disarrange the
discipline of his life as well as of his school. The usual vague,
far-off dreams in which he was in the habit of indulging during
school-hours, dreams that were perhaps superinduced by the
remoteness of his retreat and a certain restful sympathy in his
little auditors, which had made him--the grown-up dreamer--
acceptable to them in his gentle understanding of their needs and
weaknesses, now seemed to have vanished forever.
At recess, Octavia Dean, who had drawn near Cressy and reached up
to place her arm round the older girl's waist, glanced at her with
a patronizing smile born of some rapid free-masonry, and laughingly
retired with the others. The master at his desk, and Cressy who
had halted in the aisle were left alone.
"I have had no intimation yet from your father or mother that you
were coming back to school again," he began. "But I suppose THEY
have decided upon your return?"
An uneasy suspicion of some arrangement with her former lover had
prompted the emphasis.
The young girl looked at him with languid astonishment. "I reckon
paw and maw ain't no objection," she said with the same easy
ignoring of parental authority that had characterized Rupert
Filgee, and which seemed to be a local peculiarity. "Maw DID offer
to come yer and see you, but I told her she needn't bother."
She rested her two hands behind her on the edge of a desk, and
leaned against it, looking down upon the toe of her smart little
shoe which was describing a small semicircle beyond the hem of her
gown. Her attitude, which was half-defiant, half-indolent, brought
out the pretty curves of her waist and shoulders. The master
noticed it and became a trifle more austere.
"Then I am to understand that this is a permanent thing?" he asked
coldly.
"What's that?" said Cressy interrogatively.
"Am I to understand that you intend coming regularly to school?"
repeated the master curtly, "or is this merely an arrangement for a
few days--until"--
"Oh," said Cressy comprehendingly, lifting her unabashed blue eyes
to his, "you mean THAT. Oh, THAT'S broke off. Yes," she added
contemptuously, making a larger semicircle with her foot, "that's
over--three weeks ago."
"And Seth Davis--does HE intend returning too?"
"He!" She broke into a light girlish laugh. "I reckon not much!
S'long's I'm here, at least." She had just lifted herself to a
sitting posture on the desk, so that her little feet swung clear of
the floor in their saucy dance. Suddenly she brought her heels
together and alighted. "So that's all?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Kin I go now?"
"Yes."
She laid her books one on the top of the other and lingered an
instant.
"Been quite well?" she asked with indolent politeness.
"Yes--thank you."
"You're lookin' right peart."
She walked with a Southern girl's undulating languor to the door,
opened it, then charged suddenly upon Octavia Dean, twirled her
round in a wild waltz and bore her away; appearing a moment after
on the playground demurely walking with her arm around her
companion's waist in an ostentatious confidence at once lofty,
exclusive, and exasperating to the smaller children.
When school was dismissed that afternoon and the master had
remained to show Rupert Filgee how to prepare Uncle Ben's tasks,
and had given his final instructions to his youthful vicegerent,
that irascible Adonis unburdened himself querulously:
"Is Cressy McKinstry comin' reg'lar, Mr. Ford?"
"She is," said the master dryly. After a pause he asked, "Why?"
Rupert's curls had descended on his eyebrows in heavy discontent.
"It's mighty rough, jest ez a feller reckons he's got quit of her
and her jackass bo', to hev her prancin' back inter school agin,
and rigged out like ez if she'd been to a fire in a milliner's
shop."
"You shouldn't allow your personal dislikes, Rupert, to provoke you
to speak of a fellow-scholar in that way--and a young lady, too,"
corrected the master dryly.
"The woods is full o' sich feller-scholars and sich young ladies,
if yer keer to go a gunning for 'em," said Rupert with dark and
slangy significance. "Ef I'd known she was comin' back I'd"--he
stopped and brought his sunburnt fist against the seam of his
trousers with a boyish gesture, "I'd hev jist"--
"What?" said the master sharply.
"I'd hev played hookey till she left school agin! It moutn't hev
bin so long, neither," he added with a mysterious chuckle.
"That will do," said the master peremptorily. "For the present
you'll attend to your duty and try to make Uncle Ben see you're
something more than a foolish, prejudiced school-boy, or," he added
significantly, "he and I may both repent our agreement. Let me
have a good account of you both when I return."
He took his hat from its peg on the wall, and in obedience to a
suddenly formed resolution left the school-room to call upon the
parents of Cressy McKinstry. He was not quite certain what he
should say, but, after his habit, would trust to the inspiration of
the moment. At the worst he could resign a situation that now
appeared to require more tact and delicacy than seemed consistent
with his position, and he was obliged to confess to himself that he
had lately suspected that his present occupation--the temporary
expedient of a poor but clever young man of twenty--was scarcely
bringing him nearer a realization of his daily dreams. For Mr.
Jack Ford was a youthful pilgrim who had sought his fortune in
California so lightly equipped that even in the matter of kin and
advisers he was deficient. That prospective fortune had already
eluded him in San Francisco, had apparently not waited for him in
Sacramento, and now seemed never to have been at Indian Spring.
Nevertheless, when he was once out of sight of the school-house he
lit a cigar, put his hands in his pockets, and strode on with the
cheerfulness of that youth to which all things are possible.
The children had already dispersed as mysteriously and completely
as they had arrived. Between him and the straggling hamlet of
Indian Spring the landscape seemed to be without sound or motion.
The wooded upland or ridge on which the schoolhouse stood, half a
mile further on, began to slope gradually towards the river, on
whose banks, seen from that distance, the town appeared to have
been scattered irregularly or thrown together hastily, as if cast
ashore by some overflow--the Cosmopolitan Hotel drifting into the
Baptist church, and dragging in its tail of wreckage two saloons
and a blacksmith's shop; while the County Court-house was stranded
in solitary grandeur in a waste of gravel half a mile away. The
intervening flat was still gashed and furrowed by the remorseless
engines of earlier gold-seekers.
Mr. Ford was in little sympathy with this unsuccessful record of
frontier endeavor--the fortune HE had sought did not seem to lie in
that direction--and his eye glanced quickly beyond it to the pine-
crested hills across the river, whose primeval security was so near
and yet so inviolable, or back again to the trail he was pursuing
along the ridge. The latter prospect still retained its semi-
savage character in spite of the occasional suburban cottages of
residents, and the few outlying farms or ranches of the locality.
The grounds of the cottages were yet uncleared of underbrush; bear
and catamount still prowled around the rude fences of the ranches;
the late alleged experience of the infant Snyder was by no means
improbable or unprecedented.
A light breeze was seeking the heated flat and river, and thrilling
the leaves around him with the strong vitality of the forest. The
vibrating cross-lights and tremulous chequers of shade cast by the
stirred foliage seemed to weave a fantastic net around him as he
walked. The quaint odors of certain woodland herbs known to his
scholars, and religiously kept in their desks, or left like votive
offerings on the threshold of the school-house, recalled all the
primitive simplicity and delicious wildness of the little temple he
had left. Even in the mischievous glances of evasive squirrels and
the moist eyes of the contemplative rabbits there were faint
suggestions of some of his own truants. The woods were trembling
with gentle memories of the independence he had always known here--
of that sweet and grave retreat now so ridiculously invaded.
He began to hesitate, with one of those revulsions of sentiment
characteristic of his nature: Why should he bother himself about
this girl after all? Why not make up his mind to accept her as his
predecessor had done? Why was it necessary for him to find her
inconsistent with his ideas of duty to his little flock and his
mission to them? Was he not assuming a sense of decorum that was
open to misconception? The absurdity of her school costume, and
any responsibility it incurred, rested not with him but with her
parents. What right had he to point it out to them, and above all
how was he to do it? He halted irresolutely at what he believed
was his sober second thought, but which, like most reflections that
take that flattering title, was only a reaction as impulsive and
illogical as the emotion that preceded it.
Mr. McKinstry's "snake rail" fence was already discernible in the
lighter opening of the woods, not far from where he had halted. As
he stood there in hesitation, the pretty figure and bright gown of
Cressy McKinstry suddenly emerged from a more secluded trail that
intersected his own at an acute angle a few rods ahead of him. She
was not alone, but was accompanied by a male figure whose arm she
had evidently just dislodged from her waist. He was still trying
to resume his lost vantage; she was as resolutely evading him with
a certain nymph-like agility, while the sound of her half-laughing,
half-irate protest could be faintly heard. Without being able to
identify the face or figure of her companion at that distance, he
could see that it was NOT her former betrothed, Seth Davis.
A superior smile crossed his face; he no longer hesitated, but at
once resumed his former path. For some time Cressy and her
companion moved on quietly before him. Then on reaching the rail-
fence they turned abruptly to the right, were lost for an instant
in the intervening thicket, and the next moment Cressy appeared
alone, crossing the meadow in a shorter cut towards the house,
having either scaled the fence or slipped through some familiar
gap. Her companion had disappeared. Whether they had noticed that
they were observed he could not determine. He kept steadily along
the trail that followed the line of fence to the lane that led
directly to the farm-building, and pushed open the front gate as
Cressy's light dress vanished round an angle at the rear of the
house.
The house of the McKinstrys rose, or rather stretched, itself
before him, in all the lazy ungainliness of Southwestern
architecture. A collection of temporary make-shifts of boards, of
logs, of canvas, prematurely decayed, and in some instances
abandoned for a newer erection, or degraded to mere outhouses--it
presented with singular frankness the nomadic and tentative
disposition of its founder. It had been repaired without being
improved; its additions had seemed only to extend its primitive
ugliness over a larger space. Its roofs were roughly shingled or
rudely boarded and battened, and the rafters of some of its "lean-
to's" were simply covered with tarred canvas. As if to settle any
doubt of the impossibility of this heterogeneous mass ever taking
upon itself any picturesque combination, a small building of
corrugated iron, transported in sections from some remoter
locality, had been set up in its centre. The McKinstry ranch had
long been an eyesore to the master: even that morning he had been
mutely wondering from what convolution of that hideous chrysalis
the bright butterfly Cressy had emerged. It was with a renewal of
this curiosity that he had just seen her flutter back to it again.
A yellow dog who had observed him hesitating in doubt where he
should enter, here yawned, rose from the sunlight where he had been
blinking, approached the master with languid politeness, and then
turned towards the iron building as if showing him the way. Mr.
Ford followed him cautiously, painfully conscious that his
hypocritical canine introducer was only availing himself of an
opportunity to gain ingress into the house, and was leading him as
a responsible accomplice to probable exposure and disgrace. His
expectation was quickly realized: a lazily querulous, feminine
outcry, with the words, "Yer's that darned hound agin!" came from
an adjacent room, and his exposed and abashed companion swiftly
retreated past him into the road again. Mr. Ford found himself
alone in a plainly-furnished sitting-room confronting the open door
leading to another apartment at which the figure of a woman,
preceded hastily by a thrown dishcloth, had just appeared. It was
Mrs. McKinstry; her sleeves were rolled up over her red but still
shapely arms, and as she stood there wiping them on her apron, with
her elbows advanced, and her closed hands raised alternately in the
air, there was an odd pugilistic suggestion in her attitude. It
was not lessened on her sudden discovery of the master by her
retreating backwards with her hands up and her elbows still well
forward as if warily retiring to an imaginary "corner."
Mr. Ford at once tactfully stepped back from the doorway. "I beg
your pardon," he said, delicately addressing the opposite wall,
"but I found the door open and I followed the dog."
"That's just one of his pizenous tricks," responded Mrs. McKinstry
dolefully from within. "On'y last week he let in a Chinaman, and
in the nat'ral hustlin' that follered he managed to help himself
outer the pork bar'l. There ain't no shade o' cussedness that
or'nary hound ain't up to." Yet notwithstanding this ominous
comparison she presently made her appearance with her sleeves
turned down, her black woollen dress "tidied," and a smile of
fatigued but not unkindly welcome and protection on her face.
Dusting a chair with her apron and placing it before the master,
she continued maternally, "Now that you're here, set ye right down
and make yourself to home. My men folks are all out o' door, but
some of 'em's sure to happen in soon for suthin'; that day ain't
yet created that they don't come huntin' up Mammy McKinstry every
five minutes for this thing or that."
The glow of a certain hard pride burned through the careworn
languor of her brown cheek. What she had said was strangely true.
This raw-boned woman before him, although scarcely middle-aged, had
for years occupied a self-imposed maternal and protecting relation,
not only to her husband and brothers, but to the three or four men,
who as partners, or hired hands, lived at the ranch. An inherited
and trained sympathy with what she called her "boys's" and her "men
folk," and their needs had partly unsexed her. She was a fair type
of a class not uncommon on the Southwestern frontier; women who
were ruder helpmeets of their rude husbands and brothers, who had
shared their privations and sufferings with surly, masculine
endurance, rather than feminine patience; women who had sent their
loved ones to hopeless adventure or terrible vendetta as a matter
of course, or with partisan fury; who had devotedly nursed the
wounded to keep alive the feud, or had received back their dead
dry-eyed and revengeful. Small wonder that Cressy McKinstry had
developed strangely under this sexless relationship. Looking at
the mother, albeit not without a certain respect, Mr. Ford found
himself contrasting her with the daughter's graceful femininity,
and wondering where in Cressy's youthful contour the possibility of
the grim figure before him was even now hidden.
"Hiram allowed to go over to the schoolhouse and see you this
mornin'," said Mrs. McKinstry, after a pause; "but I reckon ez how
he had to look up stock on the river. The cattle are that wild
this time o' year, huntin' water, and hangin' round the tules, that
my men are nigh worrited out o' their butes with 'em. Hank and Jim
ain't been off their mustangs since sun up, and Hiram, what with
partrollen' the West Boundary all night, watchin' stakes whar them
low down Harrisons hev been trespassin'--hasn't put his feet to the
ground in fourteen hours. Mebbee you noticed Hiram ez you kem
along? Ef so, ye didn't remember what kind o' shootin' irons he
had with him? I see his rifle over yon. Like ez not he'z only got
his six-shooter, and them Harrisons are mean enough to lay for him
at long range. But," she added, returning to the less important
topic, "I s'pose Cressy came all right."
"Yes," said the master hopelessly.
"I reckon she looked so," continued Mrs. McKinstry, with tolerant
abstraction. "She allowed to do herself credit in one of them new
store gownds that she got at Sacramento. At least that's what some
of our men said. Late years, I ain't kept tech with the fashions
myself." She passed her fingers explanatorily down the folds of
her own coarse gown, but without regret or apology.
"She seemed well prepared in her lessons," said the master,
abandoning for the moment that criticism of his pupil's dress,
which he saw was utterly futile, "but am I to understand that she
is coming regularly to school--that she is now perfectly free to
give her entire attention to her studies--that--that--her--
engagement is broken off?"
"Why, didn't she tell ye?" echoed Mrs. McKinstry in languid
surprise.
"SHE certainly did," said the master with slight embarrassment,
"but"--
"Ef SHE said so," interrupted Mrs. McKinstry abstractedly, "she
oughter know, and you kin tie to what she says."
"But as I'm responsible to PARENTS and not to scholars for the
discipline of my school," returned the young man a little stiffly,
"I thought it my duty to hear it from YOU."
"That's so," said Mrs. McKinstry meditatively; "then I reckon you'd
better see Hiram. That ar' Seth Davis engagement was a matter of
hern and her father's, and not in MY line. I 'spose that Hiram
nat'rally allows to set the thing square to you and inquirin'
friends."
"I hope you understand," said the master, slightly resenting the
classification, "that my reason for inquiring about the permanency
of your daughter's attendance was simply because it might be
necessary to arrange her studies in a way more suitable to her
years; perhaps even to suggest to you that a young ladies' seminary
might be more satisfactory"--
"Sartain, sartain," interrupted Mrs. McKinstry hurriedly, but
whether from evasion of annoying suggestion or weariness of the
topic, the master could not determine. "You'd better speak to
Hiram about it. On'y," she hesitated slightly, "ez he's got now
sorter set and pinted towards your school, and is a trifle worrited
with stock and them Harrisons, ye might tech it lightly. He
oughter be along yer now. I can't think what keeps him." Her eye
wandered again with troubled preoccupation to the corner where her
husband's Sharps' rifle stood. Suddenly she raised her voice as if
forgetful of Mr. Ford's presence.
"O Cressy!"
"O Maw!"
The response came from the inner room. The next moment Cressy
appeared at the door with an odd half-lazy defiance in her manner,
which the master could not understand except upon the hypothesis
that she had been listening. She had already changed her elaborate
toilet for a long clinging, coarse blue gown, that accented the
graceful curves of her slight, petticoat-less figure. Nodding her
head towards the master, she said, "Howdy?" and turned to her
mother, who practically ignored their personal acquaintance.
"Cressy," she said, "Dad's gone and left his Sharps' yer, d'ye mind
takin' it along to meet him, afore he passes the Boundary corner.
Ye might tell him the teacher's yer, wantin' to see him."
"One moment," said the master, as the young girl carelessly stepped
to the corner and lifted the weapon. "Let ME take it. It's all on
my way back to school and I'll meet him."
Mrs. McKinstry looked perturbed. Cressy opened her clear eyes on
the master with evident surprise. "No, Mr. Ford," said Mrs.
McKinstry, with her former maternal manner. "Ye'd better not mix
yourself up with these yer doin's. Ye've no call to do it, and
Cressy has; it's all in the family. But it's outer YOUR line, and
them Harrison whelps go to your school. Fancy the teacher takin'
weppins betwixt and between!"
"It's fitter work for the teacher than for one of his scholars, and
a young lady at that," said Mr. Ford gravely, as he took the rifle
from the hands of the half-amused, half-reluctant girl. "It's
quite safe with me, and I promise I shall deliver it into Mr.
McKinstry's hands and none other."
"Perhaps it wouldn't be ez likely to be gin'rally noticed ez it
would if one of US carried it," murmured Mrs. McKinstry in
confidential abstraction, gazing at her daughter sublimely
unconscious of the presence of a third party.
"You're quite right," said the master composedly, throwing the
rifle over his shoulder and turning towards the door. "So I'll say
good-afternoon, and try and find your husband."
Mrs. McKinstry constrainedly plucked at the folds of her coarse
gown. "Ye'll like a drink afore ye go," she said, in an ill-
concealed tone of relief. "I clean forgot my manners. Cressy,
fetch out that demijohn."
"Not for me, thank you," returned Mr. Ford smiling.
"Oh, I see--you're temperance, nat'rally," said Mrs. McKinstry with
a tolerant sigh.
"Hardly that," returned the master, "I follow no rule, I drink
sometimes--but not to-day."
Mrs. McKinstry's dark face contracted. "Don't you see, Maw,"
struck in Cressy quickly. "Teacher drinks sometimes, but he don't
USE whiskey. That's all."
Her mother's face relaxed. Cressy slipped out of the door before
the master, and preceded him to the gate. When she had reached it
she turned and looked into his face.
"What did Maw say to yer about seein' me just now?"
"I don't understand you."
"To your seein' me and Joe Masters on the trail?"
"She said nothing."
"Humph," said Cressy meditatively. "What was it you told her about
it?"
"Nothing."
"Then you DIDN'T see us?"
"I saw you with some one--I don't know whom."
"And you didn't tell Maw?"
"I did not. It was none of my business."
He instantly saw the utter inconsistency of this speech in
connection with the reason he believed he had in coming. But it
was too late to recall it, and she was looking at him with a bright
but singular expression.
"That Joe Masters is the conceitedest fellow goin'. I told him you
could see his foolishness."
"Ah, indeed."
Mr. Ford pushed open the gate. As the girl still lingered he was
obliged to hold it a moment before passing through.
"Maw couldn't quite hitch on to your not drinkin'. She reckons
you're like everybody else about yer. That's where she slips up on
you. And everybody else, I kalkilate."
"I suppose she's somewhat anxious about your father, and I dare say
is expecting me to hurry," returned the master pointedly.
"Oh, dad's all right," said Cressy mischievously. "You'll come
across him over yon, in the clearing. But you're looking right
purty with that gun. It kinder sets you off. You oughter wear
one."
The master smiled slightly, said "Good-by," and took leave of the
girl, but not of her eyes, which were still following him. Even
when he had reached the end of the lane and glanced back at the
rambling dwelling, she was still leaning on the gate with one foot
on the lower rail and her chin cupped in the hollow of her hand.
She made a slight gesture, not clearly intelligible at that
distance; it might have been a mischievous imitation of the way he
had thrown the gun over his shoulder, it might have been a wafted
kiss.
The master however continued his way in no very self-satisfied
mood. Although he did not regret having taken the place of Cressy
as the purveyor of lethal weapons between the belligerent parties,
he knew he was tacitly mingling in the feud between people for whom
he cared little or nothing. It was true that the Harrisons sent
their children to his school, and that in the fierce partisanship
of the locality this simple courtesy was open to misconstruction.
But he was more uneasily conscious that this mission, so far as
Mrs. McKinstry was concerned, was a miserable failure. The strange
relations of the mother and daughter perhaps explained much of the
girl's conduct, but it offered no hope of future amelioration.
Would the father, "worrited by stock" and boundary quarrels--a man
in the habit of cutting Gordian knots with a bowie knife--prove
more reasonable? Was there any nearer sympathy between father and
daughter? But she had said he would meet McKinstry in the
clearing: she was right, for here he was coming forward at a
gallop!
CHAPTER III.
When within a dozen paces of the master, McKinstry, scarcely
checking his mustang, threw himself from the saddle, and with a
sharp cut of his riata on the animal's haunches sent him still
galloping towards the distant house. Then, with both hands deeply
thrust in the side pockets of his long, loose linen coat, he slowly
lounged with clanking spurs towards the young man. He was thick-
set, of medium height, densely and reddishly bearded, with heavy-
lidded pale blue eyes that wore a look of drowsy pain, and after
their first wearied glance at the master, seemed to rest anywhere
but on him.
"Your wife was sending you your rifle by Cressy," said the master,
"but I offered to bring it myself, as I thought it scarcely a
proper errand for a young lady. Here it is. I hope you didn't
miss it before and don't require it now," he added quietly.
Mr. McKinstry took it in one hand with an air of slightly
embarrassed surprise, rested it against his shoulder, and then with
the same hand and without removing the other from his pocket, took
off his soft felt hat, showed a bullet-hole in its rim, and
returned lazily, "It's about half an hour late, but them Harrisons
reckoned I was fixed for 'em and war too narvous to draw a clear
bead on me."
The moment was evidently not a felicitous one for the master's
purpose, but he was determined to go on. He hesitated an instant,
when his companion, who seemed to be equally but more sluggishly
embarrassed, in a moment of preoccupied perplexity withdrew from
his pocket his right hand swathed in a blood-stained bandage, and
following some instinctive habit, attempted, as if reflectively, to
scratch his head with two stiffened fingers.
"You are hurt," said the master, genuinely shocked, "and here I am
detaining you."
"I had my hand up--so," explained McKinstry, with heavy deliberation,
"and the ball raked off my little finger after it went through my
hat. But that ain't what I wanted to say when I stopped ye. I
ain't just kam enough yet," he apologized in the calmest manner,
"and I clean forgit myself," he added with perfect self-possession.
"But I was kalkilatin' to ask you"--he laid his bandaged hand
familiarly on the master's shoulder--"if Cressy kem all right?"
"Perfectly," said the master. "But shan't I walk on home with you,
and we can talk together after your wound is attended to?"
"And she looked purty?" continued McKinstry without moving.
"Very."
"And you thought them new store gownds of hers right peart?"
"Yes," said the master. "Perhaps a little too fine for the school,
you know," he added insinuatingly, "and"--
"Not for her--not for her," interrupted McKinstry. "I reckon
thar's more whar that cam from! Ye needn't fear but that she kin
keep up that gait ez long ez Hiram McKinstry hez the runnin' of
her."
Mr. Ford gazed hopelessly at the hideous ranch in the distance, at
the sky, and the trail before him; then his glance fell upon the
hand still upon his shoulder, and he struggled with a final effort.
"At another time I'd like to have a long talk with you about your
daughter, Mr. McKinstry."
"Talk on," said McKinstry, putting his wounded hand through the
master's arm. "I admire to hear you. You're that kam, it does me
good."
Nevertheless the master was conscious that his own arm was scarcely
as firm as his companion's. It was however useless to draw back
now, and with as much tact as he could command he relieved his mind
of its purpose. Addressing the obtruding bandage before him, he
dwelt upon Cressy's previous attitude in the school, the danger of
any relapse, the necessity of her having a more clearly defined
position as a scholar, and even the advisability of her being
transferred to a more advanced school with a more mature teacher of
her own sex. "This is what I wished to say to Mrs. McKinstry to-
day," he concluded, "but she referred me to you."
"In course, in course," said McKinstry, nodding complacently.
"She's a good woman in and around the ranch, and in any doin's o'
this kind," he lightly waved his wounded arm in the air, "there
ain't a better, tho' I say it. She was Blair Rawlins' darter; she
and her brother Clay bein' the only ones that kem out safe arter
their twenty years' fight with the McEntees in West Kaintuck. But
she don't understand gals ez you and me do. Not that I'm much, ez
I orter be more kam. And the old woman jest sized the hull thing
when she said SHE hadn't any hand in Cressy's engagement. No more
she had! And ez far ez that goes, no more did me, nor Seth Davis,
nor Cressy." He paused, and lifting his heavy-lidded eyes to the
master for the second time, said reflectively, "Ye mustn't mind my
tellin' ye--ez betwixt man and man--that THE one ez is most
responsible for the makin' and breakin' o' that engagement is YOU!"
"Me!" said the master in utter bewilderment.
"You!" repeated McKinstry quietly, reinstalling the hand Ford had
attempted to withdraw. "I ain't sayin' ye either know'd it or
kalkilated on it. But it war so. Ef ye'd hark to me, and meander
on a little, I'll tell ye HOW it war. I don't mind walkin' a piece
YOUR way, for if we go towards the ranch, and the hounds see me,
they'll set up a racket and bring out the old woman, and then good-
by to any confidential talk betwixt you and me. And I'm, somehow,
kammer out yer."
He moved slowly down the trail, still holding Ford's arm
confidentially, although, owing to his large protecting manner, he
seemed to offer a ridiculous suggestion of supporting HIM with his
wounded member.
"When you first kem to Injin Spring," he began, "Seth and Cressy
was goin' to school, boy and girl like, and nothin' more. They'd
known each other from babies--the Davises bein' our neighbors in
Kaintuck, and emigraten' with us from St. Joe. Seth mout hev
cottoned to Cress, and Cress to him, in course o' time, and there
wasn't anythin' betwixt the families to hev kept 'em from marryin'
when they wanted. But there never war any words passed, and no
engagement."
"But," interrupted Ford hastily, "my predecessor, Mr. Martin,
distinctly told me that there was, and that it was with YOUR
permission."
"That's only because you noticed suthin' the first day you looked
over the school with Martin. 'Dad,' sez Cress to me, 'that new
teacher's very peart; and he's that keen about noticin' me and Seth
that I reckon you'd better giv out that we're engaged.' 'But are
you?' sez I. 'It'll come to that in the end,' sez Cress, 'and if
that yer teacher hez come here with Northern ideas o' society, it's
just ez well to let him see Injin Spring ain't entirely in the
woods about them things either.' So I agreed, and Martin told you
it was all right; Cress and Seth was an engaged couple, and you was
to take no notice. And then YOU ups and objects to the hull thing,
and allows that courtin' in school, even among engaged pupils,
ain't proper."
The master turned his eyes with some uneasiness to the face of
Cressy's father. It was heavy but impassive.
"I don't mind tellin' you, now that it's over, what happened. The
trouble with me, Mr. Ford, is--I ain't kam! and YOU air, and that's
what got me. For when I heard what you'd said, I got on that
mustang and started for the school-house to clean you out and giv'
you five minutes to leave Injin Spring. I don't know ez you
remember that day. I'd kalkilated my time so ez to ketch ye comin'
out o' school, but I was too airly. I hung around out o' sight,
and then hitched my hoss to a buckeye and peeped inter the winder
to hev a good look at ye. It was very quiet and kam. There was
squirrels over the roof, yellow-jackets and bees dronin' away, and
kinder sleeping-like all around in the air, and jay-birds
twitterin' in the shingles, and they never minded me. You were
movin' up and down among them little gals and boys, liftin' up
their heads and talkin' to 'em softly and quiet like, ez if you was
one of them yourself. And they looked contented and kam. And
onct--I don't know if YOU remember it--you kem close up to the
winder with your hands behind you, and looked out so kam and quiet
and so far off, ez if everybody else outside the school was miles
away from you. It kem to me then that I'd given a heap to hev had
the old woman see you thar. It kem to me, Mr. Ford, that there
wasn't any place for ME thar; and it kem to me, too--and a little
rough like--that mebbee there wasn't any place there for MY Cress
either! So I rode away without disturbin' you nor the birds nor
the squirrels. Talkin' with Cress that night, she said ez how it
was a fair sample of what happened every day, and that you'd always
treated her fair like the others. So she allowed that she'd go
down to Sacramento, and get some things agin her and Seth bein'
married next month, and she reckoned she wouldn't trouble you nor
the school agin. Hark till I've done, Mr. Ford," he continued, as
the young man made a slight movement of deprecation. "Well, I
agreed. But arter she got to Sacramento and bought some fancy
fixin's, she wrote to me and sez ez how she'd been thinkin' the
hull thing over, and she reckoned that she and Seth were too young
to marry, and the engagement had better be broke. And I broke it
for her."
"But how?" asked the bewildered master.
"Gin'rally with this gun," returned McKinstry with slow gravity,
indicating the rifle he was carrying, "for I ain't kam. I let on
to Seth's father that if I ever found Seth and Cressy together
again, I'd shoot him. It made a sort o' coolness betwixt the
families, and hez given some comfort to them low-down Harrisons;
but even the law, I reckon, recognizes a father's rights. And ez
Cress sez, now ez Seth's out o' the way, thar ain't no reason why
she can't go back to school and finish her eddication. And I
reckoned she was right. And we both agreed that ez she'd left
school to git them store clothes, it was only fair that she'd give
the school the benefit of 'em."
The case seemed more hopeless than ever. The master knew that the
man beside him might hardly prove as lenient to a second objection
at his hand. But that very reason, perhaps, impelled him, now that
he knew his danger, to consider it more strongly as a duty, and his
pride revolted from a possible threat underlying McKinstry's
confidences. Nevertheless he began gently:
"But you are quite sure you won't regret that you didn't avail
yourself of this broken engagement, and your daughter's outfit--to
send her to some larger boarding-school in Sacramento or San
Francisco? Don't you think she may find it dull, and soon tire of
the company of mere children when she has already known the
excitement of"--he was about to say "a lover," but checked himself,
and added, "a young girl's freedom?"
"Mr. Ford," returned McKinstry, with the slow and fatuous
misconception of a one-ideaed man, "when I said just now that,
lookin' inter that kam, peaceful school of yours, I didn't find a
place for Cress, it warn't because I didn't think she OUGHTER hev a
place thar. Thar was that thar wot she never had ez a little girl
with me and the old woman, and that she couldn't find ez a grownd
up girl in any boarding-school--the home of a child; that kind o'
innocent foolishness that I sometimes reckon must hev slipped outer
our emigrant wagon comin' across the plains, or got left behind at
St. Joe. She was a grownd girl fit to marry afore she was a child.
She had young fellers a-sparkin' her afore she ever played with 'em
ez boy and girl. I don't mind tellin' you that it wern't in the
natur of Blair Rawlins' darter to teach her own darter any better,
for all she's been a mighty help to me. So if it's all the same to
you, Mr. Ford, we won't talk about a grownd up school; I'd rather
Cress be a little girl again among them other children. I should
be a powerful sight more kam if I knowed that when I was away
huntin' stock or fightin' stakes with them Harrisons, that she was
a settin' there with them and the birds and the bees, and listenin'
to them and to you. Mebbee there's been a little too many
scrimmages goin' on round the ranch sence she's been a child;
mebbee she orter know suthin' more of a man than a feller who
sparks her and fights for her."
The master was silent. Had this dull, narrow-minded partisan
stumbled upon a truth that had never dawned upon his own broader
comprehension? Had this selfish savage and literally red-handed
frontier brawler been moved by some dumb instinct of the power of
gentleness to understand his daughter's needs better than he? For
a moment he was staggered. Then he thought of Cressy's later
flirtations with Joe Masters, and her concealment of their meeting
from her mother. Had she deceived her father also? Or was not the
father deceiving him with this alternate suggestion of threat and
of kindliness--of power and weakness. He had heard of this cruel
phase of Southwestern cunning before. With the feeble sophistry of
the cynic he mistrusted the good his scepticism could not
understand. Howbeit, glancing sideways at the slumbering savagery
of the man beside him, and his wounded hand, he did not care to
show his lack of confidence. He contented himself with that
equally feeble resource of weak humanity in such cases--good-
natured indifference. "All right," he said carelessly; "I'll see
what can be done. But are you quite sure you are fit to go home
alone? Shall I accompany you?" As McKinstry waived the suggestion
with a gesture, he added lightly, as if to conclude the interview,
"I'll report progress to you from time to time, if you like."
"To ME," emphasized McKinstry; "not over THAR," indicating the
ranch. "But p'rhaps you wouldn't mind my ridin' by and lookin' in
at the school-room winder onct in a while? Ah--you WOULD," he
added, with the first deepening of color he had shown. "Well,
never mind."
"You see it might distract the children from their lessons,"
explained the master gently, who had however contemplated with some
concern the infinite delight which a glimpse of McKinstry's fiery
and fatuous face at the window would awaken in Johnny Filgee's
infant breast.
"Well, no matter!" returned McKinstry slowly. "Ye don't keer, I
s'pose, to come over to the hotel and take suthin'? A julep or a
smash?"
"I shouldn't think of keeping you a moment longer from Mrs.
McKinstry," said the master, looking at his companion's wounded
hand. "Thank you all the same. Good-by."
They shook hands, McKinstry transferring his rifle to the hollow of
his elbow to offer his unwounded left. The master watched him
slowly resume his way towards the ranch. Then with a half uneasy
and half pleasurable sense that he had taken some step whose
consequences were more important than he would at present
understand, he turned in the opposite direction to the school-
house. He was so preoccupied that it was not until he had nearly
reached it that he remembered Uncle Ben. With an odd recollection
of McKinstry's previous performance, he approached the school from
the thicket in the rear and slipped noiselessly to the open window
with the intention of looking in. But the school-house, far from
exhibiting that "kam" and studious abstraction which had so touched
the savage breast of McKinstry, was filled with the accents of
youthful and unrestrained vituperation. The voice of Rupert Filgee
came sharply to the master's astonished ears.
"You needn't try to play off Dobell or Mitchell on ME--you hear!
Much YOU know of either, don't you? Look at that copy. If Johnny
couldn't do better than that, I'd lick him. Of course it's the
pen--it ain't your stodgy fingers--oh, no! P'r'aps you'd like to
hev a few more boxes o' quills and gold pens and Gillott's best
thrown in, for two bits a lesson? I tell you what! I'll throw up
the contract in another minit! There goes another quill busted!
Look here, what YOU want ain't a pen, but a clothes-pin and a split
nail! That'll about jibe with your dilikit gait."
The master at once stepped to the window and, unobserved, took a
quick survey of the interior. Following some ingenious idea of his
own regarding fitness, the beautiful Filgee had induced Uncle Ben
to seat himself on the floor before one of the smallest desks,
presumably his brother's, in an attitude which, while it certainly
gave him considerable elbow-room for those contortions common to
immature penmanship, offered his youthful instructor a superior
eminence, from which he hovered, occasionally swooping down upon
his grown-up pupil like a mischievous but graceful jay. But Mr.
Ford's most distinct impression was that, far from resenting the
derogatory position and the abuse that accompanied it, Uncle Ben
not only beamed upon his persecutor with unquenchable good humor,
but with undisguised admiration, and showed not the slightest
inclination to accept his proposed resignation.
"Go slow, Roop," he said cheerfully. "You was onct a boy yourself.
Nat'rally I kalkilate to stand all the damages. You've got ter
waste some powder over a blast like this yer, way down to the bed
rock. Next time I'll bring my own pens."
"Do. Some from the Dobell school you uster go to," suggested the
darkly ironical Rupert. "They was iron-clad injin-rubber, warn't
they?"
"Never you mind wot they were," said Uncle Ben good-humoredly.
"Look at that string of 'C's' in that line. There's nothing mean
about THEM."
He put his pen between his teeth, raised himself slowly on his
legs, and shading his eyes with his hand from the severe
perspective of six feet, gazed admiringly down upon his work.
Rupert, with his hands in his pockets and his back to the window,
cynically assisted at the inspection.
"Wot's that sick worm at the bottom of the page?" he asked.
"Wot might you think it wos?" said Uncle Ben beamingly.
"Looks like one o' them snake roots you dig up with a little mud
stuck to it," returned Rupert critically.
"That's my name."
They both stood looking at it with their heads very much on one
side. "It ain't so bad as the rest you've done. It MIGHT be your
name. That ez, it don't look like anythin' else," suggested
Rupert, struck with a new idea that it was perhaps more professional
occasionally to encourage his pupil. "You might get on in course o'
time. But what are you doin' all this for?" he asked suddenly.
"Doin' what?"
"This yer comin' to school when you ain't sent, and you ain't got
no call to go--you, a grown-up man!"
The color deepened in Uncle Ben's face to the back of his ears. "Wot
would you giv' to know, Roop? S'pose I reckoned some day to make a
strike and sorter drop inter saciety easy--eh? S'pose I wanted to
be ready to keep up my end with the other fellers, when the time
kem? To be able to sling po'try and read novels and sich--eh?"
An expression of infinite and unutterable scorn dawned in the eyes
of Rupert. "You do? Well," he repeated with slow and cutting
deliberation, "I'll tell you what you're comin' here for, and the
only thing that makes you come."
"What?"
"It's--some--girl!"
Uncle Ben broke into a boisterous laugh that made the roof shake,
stamping about and slapping his legs till the crazy floor trembled.
But at that moment the master stepped to the perch and made a quiet
but discomposing entrance.
CHAPTER IV.
The return of Miss Cressida McKinstry to Indian Spring and her
interrupted studies was an event whose effects were not entirely
confined to the school. The broken engagement itself seemed of
little moment in the general estimation compared to her resumption
of her old footing as a scholar. A few ill-natured elders of her
own sex, and naturally exempt from the discriminating retort of Mr.
McKinstry's "shot-gun," alleged that the Seminary at Sacramento had
declined to receive her, but the majority accepted her return with
local pride as a practical compliment to the educational facilities
of Indian Spring. The Tuolumne "Star," with a breadth and eloquence
touchingly disproportionate to its actual size and quality of type
and paper, referred to the possible "growth of a grove of Academus
at Indian Spring, under whose cloistered boughs future sages and
statesmen were now meditating," in a way that made the master feel
exceedingly uncomfortable. For some days the trail between the
McKinstrys' ranch and the school-house was lightly patrolled by
reliefs of susceptible young men, to whom the enfranchised Cressida,
relieved from the dangerous supervision of the Davis-McKinstry
clique, was an object of ambitious admiration. The young girl
herself, who, in spite of the master's annoyance, seemed to be
following some conscientious duty in consecutively arraying herself
in the different dresses she had bought, however she may have
tantalized her admirers by this revelation of bridal finery, did not
venture to bring them near the limits of the play-ground. It
struck the master with some surprise that Indian Spring did not seem
to trouble itself in regard to his own privileged relations with its
rustic enchantress; the young men clearly were not jealous of him;
no matron had suggested any indecorum in a young girl of Cressy's
years and antecedents being intrusted to the teachings of a young
man scarcely her senior. Notwithstanding the attitude which Mr.
Ford had been pleased to assume towards her, this implied compliment
to his supposed monastic vocations affected him almost as
uncomfortably as the "Star's" extravagant eulogium. He was obliged
to recall certain foolish experiences of his own to enable him to
rise superior to this presumption of his asceticism.
In pursuance of his promise to McKinstry, he had procured a few
elementary books of study suitable to Cressy's new position,
without, however, taking her out of the smaller classes or the
discipline of the school. In a few weeks he was enabled to further
improve her attitude by making her a "monitor" over the smaller
girls, thereby dividing certain functions with Rupert Filgee, whose
ministrations to the deceitful and "silly" sex had been characterized
by perhaps more vigilant scorn and disparagement than was necessary.
Cressy had accepted it as she had accepted her new studies, with an
indolent good-humor, and at times a frankly supreme ignorance of
their abstract or moral purpose that was discouraging. "What's the
good of that?" she would ask, lifting her eyes abruptly to the
master. Mr. Ford, somewhat embarrassed by her look, which always,
sooner or later, frankly confessed itself an excuse for a perfectly
irrelevant examination of his features in detail, would end in
giving her some severely practical answer. Yet, if the subject
appealed to any particular idiosyncrasy of her own, she would
speedily master the study. A passing predilection for botany was
provoked by a single incident. The master deeming this study a
harmless young-lady-like occupation, had one day introduced the
topic at recess, and was met by the usual answer. "But suppose," he
continued artfully, "somebody sent you anonymously some flowers."
"Her ho!" suggested Johnny Filgee hoarsely, with bold bad
recklessness. Ignoring the remark and the kick with which Rupert
had resented it on the person of his brother, the master continued:
"And if you couldn't find out who sent them, you would want at
least to know what they were and where they grew."
"Ef they grew anywhere 'bout yer we could tell her that," said a
chorus of small voices.
The master hesitated. He was conscious of being on delicate
ground. He was surrounded by a dozen pairs of little keen eyes
from whom Nature had never yet succeeded in hiding her secrets--
eyes that had waited for and knew the coming up of the earliest
flowers; little fingers that had never turned the pages of a text-
book, but knew where to scrape away the dead leaves above the first
anemone, or had groped painfully among the lifeless branches in
forgotten hollows for the shy dog-rose; unguided little feet that
had instinctively made their way to remote southern slopes for the
first mariposas, or had unerringly threaded the tule-hidden banks
of the river for flower-de-luce. Convinced that he could not hold
his own on their level, he shamelessly struck at once above it.
"Suppose that one of those flowers," he continued, "was not like
the rest; that its stalks and leaves, instead of being green and
soft, were white and stringy like flannel as if to protect it from
cold, wouldn't it be nice to be able to say at once that it had
lived only in the snow, and that some one must have gone all that
way up there above the snow line to pick it?" The children, taken
aback by this unfair introduction of a floral stranger, were
silent. Cressy thoughtfully accepted botany on those possibilities.
A week later she laid on the master's desk a limp-looking plant
with a stalk like heavy frayed worsted yarn. "It ain't much to look
at after all, is it?" she said. "I reckon I could cut a better one
with scissors outer an old cloth jacket of mine."
"And you found it here?" asked the master in surprise.
"I got Masters to look for it when he was on the Summit. I described
it to him. I didn't allow he had the gumption to get it. But
he did."
Although botany languished slightly after this vicarious effort, it
kept Cressy in fresh bouquets, and extending its gentle influence
to her friends and acquaintances became slightly confounded with
horticulture, led to the planting of one or two gardens, and was
accepted in school as an implied concession to berries, apples, and
nuts. In reading and writing Cressy greatly improved, with a
marked decrease in grammatical solecisms, although she still
retained certain characteristic words, and always her own slow
Southwestern, half musical intonation. This languid deliberation
was particularly noticeable in her reading aloud, and gave the
studied and measured rhetoric a charm of which her careless
colloquial speech was incapable. Even the "Fifth Reader," with its
imposing passages from the English classics carefully selected with
a view of paralyzing small, hesitating, or hurried voices, in
Cressy's hands became no longer an unintelligible incantation. She
had quietly mastered the difficulties of pronunciation by some
instinctive sense of euphony if not of comprehension. The master
with his eyes closed hardly recognized his pupil. Whether or not
she understood what she read he hesitated to inquire; no doubt, as
with her other studies, she knew what attracted her. Rupert
Filgee, a sympathetic if not always a correct reader, who boldly
took four and five syllabled fences flying only to come to grief
perhaps in the ditch of some rhetorical pause beyond, alone
expressed his scorn of her performance. Octavia Dean, torn between
her hopeless affection for this beautiful but inaccessible boy, and
her soul-friendship for this bigger but many-frocked girl, studied
the master's face with watchful anxiety.
It is needless to say that Hiram McKinstry was, in the intervals of
stake-driving and stock-hunting, heavily contented with this latest
evidence of his daughter's progress. He even intimated to the
master that her reading being an accomplishment that could be
exercised at home was conducive to that "kam" in which he was so
deficient. It was also rumored that Cressy's oral rendering of
Addison's "Reflections in Westminster Abbey" and Burke's
"Indictment of Warren Hastings," had beguiled him one evening from
improving an opportunity to "plug" one of Harrison's boundary
"raiders."
The master shared in Cressy's glory in the public eye. But
although Mrs. McKinstry did not materially change her attitude of
tolerant good-nature towards him, he was painfully conscious that
she looked upon her daughter's studies and her husband's interests
in them as a weakness that might in course of time produce
infirmity of homicidal purpose and become enervating of eye and
trigger-finger. And when Mr. McKinstry got himself appointed as
school-trustee, and was thereby obliged to mingle with certain
Eastern settlers,--colleagues on the Board,--this possible
weakening of the old sharply drawn sectional line between "Yanks"
and themselves gave her grave doubts of Hiram's physical stamina.
"The old man's worrits hev sorter shook out a little of his sand,"
she had explained. On those evenings when he attended the Board,
she sought higher consolation in prayer meeting at the Southern
Baptist Church, in whose exercises her Northern and Eastern
neighbors, thinly disguised as "Baal" and "Astaroth," were
generally overthrown and their temples made desolate.
If Uncle Ben's progress was slower, it was no less satisfactory.
Without imagination and even without enthusiasm, he kept on with a
dull laborious persistency. When the irascible impatience of
Rupert Filgee at last succumbed to the obdurate slowness of his
pupil, the master himself, touched by Uncle Ben's perspiring
forehead and perplexed eyebrows, often devoted the rest of the
afternoon to a gentle elucidation of the mysteries before him,
setting copies for his heavy hand, or even guiding it with his own,
like a child's, across the paper. At times the appalling
uselessness of Uncle Ben's endeavors reminded him of Rupert's
taunting charge. Was he really doing this from a genuine thirst
for knowledge? It was inconsistent with all that Indian Spring
knew of his antecedents and his present ambitions; he was a simple
miner without scientific or technical knowledge; his already slight
acquaintance with arithmetic and the scrawl that served for his
signature were more than sufficient for his needs. Yet it was with
this latter sign-manual that he seemed to take infinite pains. The
master, one afternoon, thought fit to correct the apparent vanity
of this performance.
"If you took as much care in trying to form your letters according
to copy, you'd do better. Your signature is fair enough as it is."
"But it don't look right, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben, eying it
distrustfully; "somehow it ain't all there."
"Why, certainly it is. Look, D A B N E Y--not very plain, it's
true, but there are all the letters."
"That's just it, Mr. Ford; them AIN'T all the letters that ORTER be
there. I've allowed to write it D A B N E Y to save time and ink,
but it orter read DAUBIGNY," said Uncle Ben, with painful
distinctness.
"But that spells d'Aubigny!"
"It are."
"Is that your name?"
"I reckon."
The master looked at Uncle Ben doubtfully. Was this only another
form of the Dobell illusion? "Was your father a Frenchman?" he
asked finally.
Uncle Ben paused as if to recall the trifling circumstances of his
father's nationality. "No."
"Your grandfather?"
"I reckon not. At least ye couldn't prove it by me."
"Was your father or grandfather a voyageur or trapper, or
Canadian?"
"They were from Pike County, Mizzoori."
The master regarded Uncle Ben still dubiously. "But you call
yourself Dabney. What makes you think your real name is d'Aubigny?"
"That's the way it uster be writ in letters to me in the States.
Hold on. I'll show ye." He deliberately began to feel in his
pockets, finally extracting his old purse from which he produced a
crumpled envelope, and carefully smoothing it out, compared it with
his signature.
"Thar, you see. It's the same--d'Aubigny."
The master hesitated. After all, it was not impossible. He
recalled other instances of the singular transformation of names in
the Californian emigration. Yet he could not help saying, "Then
you concluded d'Aubigny was a better name than Dabney?"
"Do YOU think it's better?"
"Women might. I dare say your wife would prefer to be called Mrs.
d'Aubigny rather than Dabney."
The chance shot told. Uncle Ben suddenly flushed to his ears.
"I didn't think o' that," he said hurriedly. "I had another idee.
I reckoned that on the matter o' holdin' property and passin' in
money it would be better to hev your name put on the square, and to
sorter go down to bed rock for it, eh? If I wanted to take a hand
in them lots or Ditch shares, for instance--it would be only law to
hev it made out in the name o' d'Aubigny."
Mr. Ford listened with certain impatient contempt. It was bad
enough for Uncle Ben to have exposed his weakness in inventing
fictions about his early education, but to invest himself now with
a contingency of capital for the sake of another childish vanity,
was pitiable as it was preposterous. There was no doubt that he
had lied about his school experiences; it was barely probable that
his name was really d'Aubigny, and it was quite consistent with all
this--even setting apart the fact that he was perfectly well known
to be only a poor miner--that he should lie again. Like most
logical reasoners Mr. Ford forgot that humanity might be illogical
and inconsistent without being insincere. He turned away without
speaking as if indicating a wish to hear no more.
"Some o' these days," said Uncle Ben, with dull persistency, "I'll
tell ye suthen'."
"I'd advise you just now to drop it and stick to your lessons,"
said the master sharply.
"That's so," said Uncle Ben hurriedly, hiding himself as it were in
an all-encompassing blush. "In course lessons first, boys, that's
the motto." He again took up his pen and assumed his old laborious
attitude. But after a few moments it became evident that either
the master's curt dismissal of his subject or his own preoccupation
with it, had somewhat unsettled him. He cleaned his pen
obtrusively, going to the window for a better light, and whistling
from time to time with a demonstrative carelessness and a
depressing gayety. He once broke into a murmuring, meditative
chant evidently referring to the previous conversation, in its--
"That's so--Yer we go--Lessons the first, boys, Yo, heave O." The
rollicking marine character of this refrain, despite its utter
incongruousness, apparently struck him favorably, for he repeated
it softly, occasionally glancing behind him at the master who was
coldly absorbed at his desk. Presently he arose, carefully put his
books away, symmetrically piling them in a pyramid beside Mr.
Ford's motionless elbow, and then lifting his feet with high but
gentle steps went to the peg where his coat and hat were hanging.
As he was about to put them on he appeared suddenly struck with a
sense of indecorousness in dressing himself in the school, and
taking them on his arm to the porch resumed them outside. Then
saying, "I clean disremembered I'd got to see a man. So long, till
to-morrow," he disappeared whistling softly.
The old woodland hush fell back upon the school. It seemed very
quiet and empty. A faint sense of remorse stole over the master.
Yet he remembered that Uncle Ben had accepted without reproach and
as a good joke much more direct accusations from Rupert Filgee, and
that he himself had acted from a conscientious sense of duty
towards the man. But a conscientious sense of duty to inflict pain
upon a fellow-mortal for his own good does not always bring perfect
serenity to the inflicter--possibly because, in the defective
machinery of human compensation, pain is the only quality that is
apt to appear in the illustration. Mr. Ford felt uncomfortable,
and being so, was naturally vexed at the innocent cause. Why
should Uncle Ben be offended because he had simply declined to
follow his weak fabrications any further? This was his return for
having tolerated it at first! It would be a lesson to him
henceforth. Nevertheless he got up and went to the door. The
figure of Uncle Ben was already indistinct among the leaves, but
from the motion of his shoulders he seemed to be still stepping
high and softly as if not yet clear of insecure and engulfing
ground.
The silence still continuing, the master began mechanically to look
over the desks for forgotten or mislaid articles, and to rearrange
the pupils' books and copies. A few heartsease gathered by the
devoted Octavia Dean, neatly tied with a black thread and regularly
left in the inkstand cavity of Rupert's desk, were still lying on
the floor where they had been always hurled with equal regularity
by that disdainful Adonis. Picking up a slate from under a bench,
his attention was attracted by a forgotten cartoon on the reverse
side. Mr. Ford at once recognized it as the work of that youthful
but eminent caricaturist, Johnny Filgee. Broad in treatment,
comprehensive in subject, liberal in detail and slate-pencil--it
represented Uncle Ben lying on the floor with a book in his hand,
tyrannized over by Rupert Filgee and regarded in a striking profile
of two features by Cressy McKinstry. The daring realism of
introducing the names of each character on their legs--perhaps
ideally enlarged for that purpose--left no doubt of their identity.
Equally daring but no less effective was the rendering of a limited
but dramatic conversation between the parties by the aid of
emotional balloons attached to their mouths like a visible gulp
bearing the respective legends: "I luv you," "O my," and "You git!"
The master was for a moment startled at this unlooked-for but
graphic testimony to the fact that Uncle Ben's visits to the school
were not only known but commented upon. The small eyes of those
youthful observers had been keener than his own. He had again been
stupidly deceived, in spite of his efforts. Love, albeit deficient
in features and wearing an improperly short bell-shaped frock, had
boldly re-entered the peaceful school, and disturbing complications
on abnormal legs were following at its heels.
CHAPTER V.
While this simple pastoral life was centred around the school-house
in the clearing, broken only by an occasional warning pistol-shot
in the direction of the Harrison-McKinstry boundaries, the more
business part of Indian Spring was overtaken by one of those spasms
of enterprise peculiar to all Californian mining settlements. The
opening of the Eureka Ditch and the extension of stagecoach
communication from Big Bluff were events of no small importance,
and were celebrated on the same day. The double occasion
overtaxing even the fluent rhetoric of the editor of the "Star"
left him struggling in the metaphorical difficulties of a Pactolian
Spring, which he had rashly turned into the Ditch, and obliged him
to transfer the onerous duty of writing the editorial on the Big
Bluff Extension to the hands of the Honorable Abner Dean,
Assemblyman from Angel's. The loss of the Honorable Mr. Dean's
right eye in an early pioneer fracas did not prevent him from
looking into the dim vista of the future and discovering with that
single unaided optic enough to fill three columns of the "Star."
"It is not too extravagant to say," he remarked with charming
deprecation, "that Indian Spring, through its own perfectly
organized system of inland transportation, the confluence of its
North Fork with the Sacramento River, and their combined effluence
into the illimitable Pacific, is thus put not only into direct
communication with far Cathay but even remoter Antipodean markets.
The citizen of Indian Spring taking the 9 A. M. Pioneer Coach and
arriving at Big Bluff at 2.40 is enabled to connect with the
through express to Sacramento the same evening, reaching San
Francisco per the Steam Navigation Company's palatial steamers in
time to take the Pacific Mail Steamer to Yokohama on the following
day at 8.30 P. M." Although no citizen of Indian Spring appeared
to avail himself of this admirable opportunity, nor did it appear
at all likely that any would, everybody vaguely felt that an
inestimable boon lay in the suggestion, and even the master
professionally intrusting the reading aloud of the editorial to
Rupert Filgee with ulterior designs of practice in the pronunciation
of five-syllable words, was somewhat affected by it. Johnny Filgee
and Jimmy Snyder accepting it as a mysterious something that made
Desert Islands accessible at a moment's notice and a trifling
outlay, were round-eyed and attentive. And the culminating
information from the master that this event would be commemorated by
a half-holiday, combined to make the occasion as exciting to the
simple school-house in the clearing as it was to the gilded saloon
in the main street.
And so the momentous day arrived, with its two new coaches from Big
Bluff containing the specially invited speakers--always specially
invited to those occasions, and yet strangely enough never before
feeling the extreme "importance and privilege" of it as they did
then. Then there were the firing of two anvils, the strains of a
brass band, the hoisting of a new flag on the liberty-pole, and
later the ceremony of the Ditch opening, when a distinguished
speaker in a most unworkman-like tall hat, black frock coat, and
white cravat, which gave him the general air of a festive grave-
digger, took a spade from the hands of an apparently hilarious
chief mourner and threw out the first sods. There were anvils,
brass bands, and a "collation" at the hotel. But everywhere--
overriding the most extravagant expectation and even the laughter
it provoked--the spirit of indomitable youth and resistless
enterprise intoxicated the air. It was the spirit that had made
California possible; that had sown a thousand such ventures
broadcast through its wilderness; that had enabled the sower to
stand half-humorously among his scant or ruined harvests without
fear and without repining, and turn his undaunted and ever hopeful
face to further fields. What mattered it that Indian Spring had
always before its eyes the abandoned trenches and ruined outworks
of its earlier pioneers? What mattered it that the eloquent
eulogist of the Eureka Ditch had but a few years before as
prodigally scattered his adjectives and his fortune on the useless
tunnel that confronted him on the opposite side of the river? The
sublime forgetfulness of youth ignored its warning or recognized it
as a joke. The master, fresh from his little flock and prematurely
aged by their contact, felt a stirring of something like envy as he
wandered among these scarcely older enthusiasts.
Especially memorable was the exciting day to Johnny Filgee, not
only for the delightfully bewildering clamor of the brass band, in
which, between the trombone and the bass drum, he had got
inextricably mixed; not only for the half-frightening explosions of
the anvils and the maddening smell of the gunpowder which had
exalted his infant soul to sudden and irrelevant whoopings, but for
a singular occurrence that whetted his always keen perceptions.
Having been shamelessly abandoned on the veranda of the Eureka
Hotel while his brother Rupert paid bashful court to the pretty
proprietress by assisting her in her duties, Johnny gave himself up
to unlimited observation. The rosettes of the six horses, the new
harness, the length of the driver's whiplash, his enormous buckskin
gloves and the way he held his reins; the fascinating odor of
shining varnish on the coach, the gold-headed cane of the Honorable
Abner Dean: all these were stored away in the secret recesses of
Johnny's memory, even as the unconsidered trifles he had picked up
en route were distending his capacious pockets. But when a young
man had alighted from the second or "Truly" coach among the REAL
passengers, and strolled carelessly and easily in the veranda as if
the novelty and the occasion were nothing to him, Johnny, with a
gulp of satisfaction, knew that he had seen a prince! Beautifully
dressed in a white duck suit, with a diamond ring on his finger, a
gold chain swinging from his fob, and a Panama hat with a broad
black ribbon jauntily resting on his curled and scented hair,
Johnny's eyes had never rested on a more resplendent vision. He
was more romantic than Yuba Bill, more imposing and less impossible
than the Honorable Abner Dean, more eloquent than the master--far
more beautiful than any colored print that he had ever seen. Had
he brushed him in passing Johnny would have felt a thrill; had he
spoken to him he knew he would have been speechless to reply.
Judge then of his utter stupefaction when he saw Uncle Ben--
actually Uncle Ben!--approach this paragon of perfection, albeit
with some embarrassment, and after a word or two of unintelligible
conversation walk away with him! Need it be wondered that Johnny,
forgetful at once of his brother, the horses, and even the
collation with its possible "goodies," instantly followed.
The two men turned into the side street, which, after a few hundred
yards, opened upon the deserted mining flat, crossed and broken by
the burrows and mounds made by the forgotten engines of the early
gold-seekers. Johnny, at times hidden by these irregularities,
kept closely in their rear, sauntering whenever he came within the
range of their eyes in that sidelong, spasmodic and generally
diagonal fashion peculiar to small boys, but ready at any moment to
assume utter unconsciousness and the appearance of going somewhere
else or of searching for something on the ground. In this way
appearing, if noticed at all, each time in some different position
to the right or left of them, Johnny followed them to the fringe of
woodland which enabled him to draw closer to their heels.
Utterly oblivious of this artistic "shadowing" in the insignificant
person of the small boy who once or twice even crossed their path
with affected timidity, they continued an apparently confidential
previous interview. The words "stocks" and "shares" were alone
intelligible. Johnny had heard them during the day, but he was
struck by the fact that Uncle Ben seemed to be seeking information
from the paragon and was perfectly submissive and humble. But the
boy was considerably mystified when after a tramp of half an hour
they arrived upon the debatable ground of the Harrison-McKinstry
boundary. Having been especially warned never to go there, Johnny
as a matter of course was perfectly familiar with it. But what was
the incomprehensible stranger doing there? Was he brought by Uncle
Ben with a view of paralyzing both of the combatants with the
spectacle of his perfections? Was he a youthful sheriff, a young
judge, or maybe the son of the Governor of California? Or was it
that Uncle Ben was "silly" and didn't know the locality? Here was
an opportunity for him, Johnny, to introduce himself, and explain
and even magnify the danger, with perhaps a slight allusion to his
own fearless familiarity with it. Unfortunately, as he was making
up his small mind behind a tree, the paragon turned and with the
easy disdain that so well became him, said:
"Well, I wouldn't offer a dollar an acre for the whole ranch. But
if YOU choose to give a fancy price--that's your lookout."
To Johnny's already prejudiced mind, Uncle Ben received this just
contempt submissively, as he ought, but nevertheless he muttered
something "silly" in reply, which Johnny was really too disgusted
to listen to. Ought he not to step forward and inform the paragon
that he was wasting his time on a man who couldn't even spell
"ba-ker," and who was taught his letters by his, Johnny's, brother?
The paragon continued:
"And of course you know that merely your buying the title to the
land don't give you possession. You'll have to fight these
squatters and jumpers just the same. It'll be three instead of two
fighting--that's all!"
Uncle Ben's imbecile reply did not trouble Johnny. He had ears now
only for the superior intellect before him. IT continued coolly:
"Now let's take a look at that yield of yours. I haven't much time
to give you, as I expect some men to be looking for me here--and I
suppose you want this thing still kept a secret. I don't see how
you've managed to do it so far. Is your claim near? You live on
it--I think you said?"
But that the little listener was so preoccupied with the stranger,
this suggestion of Uncle Ben's having a claim worth the attention
of that distinguished presence would have set him thinking; the
little that he understood he set down to Uncle Ben's "gassin'." As
the two men moved forward again, he followed them until Uncle Ben's
house was reached.
It was a rude shanty of boards and rough boulders, half burrowing
in one of the largest mounds of earth and gravel, which had once
represented the tailings or refuse of the abandoned Indian Spring
Placer. In fact it was casually alleged by some that Uncle Ben
eked out the scanty "grub wages," he made by actual mining, in
reworking and sifting the tailings at odd times--a degrading work
hitherto practised only by Chinese, and unworthy the Caucasian
ambition. The mining code of honor held that a man might accept
the smallest results of his daily labor, as long as he was
sustained by the prospect of a larger "strike," but condemned his
contentment with a modest certainty. Nevertheless a little of
this suspicion encompassed his dwelling and contributed to its
loneliness, even as a long ditch, the former tail-race of the
claim, separated him from his neighbors. Prudently halting at the
edge of the wood, Johnny saw his resplendent vision cross the strip
of barren flat, and enter the cabin with Uncle Ben like any other
mortal. He sat down on a stump and awaited its return, which he
fondly hoped might be alone! At the end of half an hour he made a
short excursion to examine the condition of a blackberry bramble,
and returned to his post of observation. But there was neither
sound nor motion in the direction of the cabin. When another ten
minutes had elapsed, the door opened and to Johnny's intense
discomfiture, Uncle Ben appeared alone and walked leisurely towards
the woods. Burning with anxiety Johnny threw himself in Uncle
Ben's way. But here occurred one of those surprising inconsistencies
known only to children. As Uncle Ben turned his small gray eyes
upon him in a half astonished, half questioning manner, the potent
spirit of childish secretiveness suddenly took possession of the
boy. Wild horses could not now have torn from him that question
which only a moment before was on his lips.
"Hullo, Johnny! What are ye doin' here?" said Uncle Ben kindly.
"Nothin'." After a pause, in which he walked all round Uncle Ben's
large figure, gazing up at him as if he were a monument, he added,
"Huntin' blackberrieth."
"Why ain't you over at the collation?"
"Ruperth there," he answered promptly.
The idea of being thus vicariously present in the person of his
brother seemed a sufficient excuse. He leap-frogged over the stump
on which he had been sitting as an easy unembarrassing pause for
the next question. But Uncle Ben was apparently perfectly
satisfied with Johnny's reply, and nodding to him, walked away.
When his figure had disappeared in the bushes, Johnny cautiously
approached the cabin. At a certain distance he picked up a stone
and threw it against the door, immediately taking to his heels and
the friendly copse again. No one appearing he repeated the
experiment twice and even thrice with a larger stone and at a
nearer distance. Then he boldly skirted the cabin and dropped into
the race-way at its side. Following it a few hundred yards he came
upon a long disused shaft opening into it, which had been covered
with a rough trap of old planks, as if to protect incautious
wayfarers from falling in. Here a sudden and inexplicable fear
overtook Johnny, and he ran away. When he reached the hotel, almost
the first sight that met his astounded eyes was the spectacle of the
paragon, apparently still in undisturbed possession of all his
perfections--driving coolly off in a buggy with a fresh companion.
Meantime Mr. Ford, however touched by the sentimental significance
of the celebration, became slightly wearied of its details. As his
own room in the Eureka Hotel was actually thrilled by the brass
band without and the eloquence of speakers below, and had become
redolent of gunpowder and champagne exploded around it, he
determined to return to the school-house and avail himself of its
woodland quiet to write a few letters.
The change was grateful, the distant murmur of the excited
settlement came only as the soothing sound of wind among the
leaves. The pure air of the pines that filled every cranny of the
quiet school-room, and seemed to disperse all taint of human
tenancy, made the far-off celebrations as unreal as a dream. The
only reality of his life was here.
He took from his pocket a few letters one of which was worn and
soiled with frequent handling. He re-read it in a half methodical,
half patient way, as if he were waiting for some revelation it
inspired, which was slow that afternoon in coming. At other times
it had called up a youthful enthusiasm which was wont to transfigure
his grave and prematurely reserved face with a new expression.
To-day the revelation and expression were both wanting. He put the
letter back with a slight sigh, that sounded so preposterous in the
silent room that he could not forego an embarrassed smile. But the
next moment he set himself seriously to work on his correspondence.
Presently he stopped; once or twice he had been overtaken by a
vague undefinable sense of pleasure, even to the dreamy halting of
his pen. It was a sensation in no way connected with the subject
of his correspondence, or even his previous reflections--it was
partly physical, and yet it was in some sense suggestive. It must
be the intoxicating effect of the woodland air. He even fancied he
had noticed it before, at the same hour when the sun was declining
and the fresh odors of the undergrowth were rising. It certainly
was a perfume. He raised his eyes. There lay the cause on the
desk before him--a little nosegay of wild Californian myrtle
encircling a rose-bud which had escaped his notice.
There was nothing unusual in the circumstance. The children were
in the habit of making their offerings generally without particular
reference to time or occasion, and it might have been overlooked by
him during school-hours. He felt a pity for the forgotten posy
already beginning to grow limp in its neglected solitude. He
remembered that in some folk-lore of the children's, perhaps a
tradition of the old association of the myrtle with Venus, it was
believed to be emblematic of the affections. He remembered also
that he had even told them of this probable origin of their
superstition. He was still holding it in his hand when he was
conscious of a silken sensation that sent a magnetic thrill through
his fingers. Looking at it more closely he saw that the sprigs
were bound together, not by thread or ribbon, but by long filaments
of soft brown hair tightly wound around them. He unwound a single
hair and held it to the light. Its length, color, texture, and
above all a certain inexplicable instinct, told him it was Cressy
McKinstry's. He laid it down quickly, as if he had, in that act,
familiarly touched her person.
He finished his letter, but presently found himself again looking
at the myrtle and thinking about it. From the position in which it
had been placed it was evidently intended for him; the fancy of
binding it with hair was also intentional and not a necessity, as
he knew his feminine scholars were usually well provided with bits
of thread, silk, or ribbon. If it had been some new absurdity of
childish fashion introduced in the school, he would have noticed it
ere this. For it was this obtrusion of a personality that vaguely
troubled him. He remembered Cressy's hair; it was certainly very
beautiful, in spite of her occasional vagaries of coiffure. He
recalled how, one afternoon, it had come down when she was romping
with Octavia in the play-ground, and was surprised to find what a
vivid picture he retained of her lingering in the porch to put it
up; her rounded arms held above her head, her pretty shoulders,
full throat, and glowing face thrown back, and a wisp of the very
hair between her white teeth! He began another letter.
When it was finished the shadow of the pine-branch before the
window, thrown by the nearly level sun across his paper, had begun
slowly to reach the opposite wall. He put his work away, lingered
for a moment in hesitation over the myrtle sprays, and then locked
them in his desk with an odd feeling that he had secured in some
vague way a hold upon Cressy's future vagaries; then reflecting
that Uncle Ben, whom he had seen in town, would probably keep
holiday with the others, he resolved to wait no longer, but
strolled back to the hotel. The act however had not recalled Uncle
Ben to him by any association of ideas, for since his discovery of
Johnny Filgee's caricature he had failed to detect anything to
corroborate the caricaturist's satire, and had dismissed the
subject from his mind.
On entering his room at the hotel he found Rupert Filgee standing
moodily by the window, while his brother Johnny, overcome by a
repletion of excitement and collation, was asleep on the single
arm-chair. Their presence was not unusual, as Mr. Ford, touched by
the loneliness of these motherless boys, had often invited them to
come to his rooms to look over his books and illustrated papers.
"Well?" he said cheerfully.
Rupert did not reply or change his position. Mr. Ford, glancing at
him sharply, saw a familiar angry light in the boy's beautiful
eyes, slightly dimmed by a tear. Laying his hand gently on
Rupert's shoulder he said, "What's the matter, Rupert?"
"Nothin'," said the boy doggedly, with his eyes still fixed on the
pane.
"Has--has--Mrs. Tripp" (the fair proprietress) "been unkind?" he
went on lightly.
No reply.
"You know, Rupe," continued Mr. Ford demurely, "she must show SOME
reserve before company--like to-day. It won't do to make a
scandal."
Rupert maintained an indignant silence. But the dimple (which he
usually despised as a feminine blot) on the cheek nearer the master
became slightly accented. Only for a moment; the dark eyes clouded
again.
"I wish I was dead, Mr. Ford."
"Hallo!"
"Or--doin' suthin'."
"That's better. What do you want to do?"
"To work--make a livin' myself. Quit toten' wood and water at
home; quit cookin' and makin' beds, like a yaller Chinaman; quit
nussin' babies and dressin' 'em and undressin' 'em, like a girl.
Look at HIM now," pointing to the sweetly unconscious Johnny, "look
at him there. Do you know what that means? It means I've got to
pack him home through the town jist ez he is thar, and then make a
fire and bile his food for him, and wash him and undress him and
put him to bed, and 'Now I lay me down to sleep' him, and tuck him
up; and Dad all the while 'scootin' round town with other idjits,
jawin' about 'progress' and the 'future of Injin Spring.' Much
future we've got over our own house, Mr. Ford. Much future he's
got laid up for me!"
The master, to whom those occasional outbreaks from Rupert were not
unfamiliar, smiled, albeit with serious eyes that belied his lips,
and consoled the boy as he had often done before. But he was
anxious to know the cause of this recent attack and its probable
relations to the fascinating Mrs. Tripp.
"I thought we talked all that over some time ago, Rupe. In a few
months you'll be able to leave school, and I'll advise your father
about putting you into something to give you a chance for yourself.
Patience, old fellow; you're doing very well. Consider--there's
your pupil, Uncle Ben."
"Oh, yes! That's another big baby to tot round in school when I
ain't niggerin' at home."
"And I don't see exactly what else you could do at Indian Spring,"
continued Mr. Ford.
"No," said Rupert gloomily, "but I could get away to Sacramento.
Yuba Bill says they take boys no bigger nor me in thar express
offices or banks--and in a year or two they're as good ez anybody
and get paid as big. Why, there was a fellow here, just now, no
older than you, Mr. Ford, and not half your learnin', and he
dressed to death with jewelry, and everybody bowin' and scrapin' to
him, that it was perfectly sickenin'."
Mr. Ford lifted his eyebrows. "Oh, you mean the young man of
Benham and Co., who was talking to Mrs. Tripp?" he said.
A quick flush of angry consciousness crossed Rupert's face.
"Maybe; he has just cheek enough for anythin'."
"And you want to be like him?" said Mr. Ford.
"You know what I mean, Mr. Ford. Not LIKE him. Why YOU'RE as good
as he is, any day," continued Rupert with relentless naivete; "but
if a jay-bird like that can get on, why couldn't I?"
There was no doubt that the master here pointed out the defectiveness
of Rupert's logic and the beneficence of patience and study, as
became their relations of master and pupil, but with the addition of
a certain fellow sympathy and some amusing recital of his own boyish
experiences, that had the effect of calling Rupert's dimples into
action again. At the end of half an hour the boy had become quite
tractable, and, getting ready to depart, approached his sleeping
brother with something like resignation. But Johnny's nap seemed to
have had the effect of transforming him into an inert jelly-like
mass. It required the joint exertions of both the master and Rupert
to transfer him bodily into the latter's arms, where, with a single
limp elbow encircling his brother's neck, he lay with his unfinished
slumber still visibly distending his cheeks, his eyelids, and even
lifting his curls from his moist forehead. The master bade Rupert
"good-night," and returned to his room as the boy descended the
stairs with his burden.
But here Providence, with, I fear, its occasional disregard of mere
human morality, rewarded Rupert after his own foolish desires.
Mrs. Tripp was at the foot of the stairs as Rupert came slowly
down. He saw her, and was covered with shame; she saw him and his
burden, and was touched with kindliness. Whether or not she was
also mischievously aware of Rupert's admiration, and was not
altogether displeased with it, I cannot say. In a voice that
thrilled him, she said:--
"What! Rupert, are you going so soon?"
"Yes, ma'am---on account of Johnny."
"But let me take him--I can keep him here to-night."
It was a great temptation, but Rupert had strength to refuse,
albeit with his hat pulled over his downcast eyes.
"Poor dear, how tired he looks."
She approached her still fresh and pretty face close to Rupert and
laid her lips on Johnny's cheek. Then she lifted her audacious
eyes to his brother, and pushing back his well-worn chip hat from
his clustering curls, she kissed him squarely on the forehead.
"Good-night, dear."
The boy stumbled, and then staggered blindly forward into the outer
darkness. But with a gentleman's delicacy he turned almost
instantly into a side street, as if to keep this consecration of
himself from vulgar eyes. The path he had chosen was rough and
weary, the night was dark, and Johnny was ridiculously heavy, but
he kept steadily on, the woman's kiss in the fancy of the foolish
boy shining on his forehead and lighting him onward like a star.
CHAPTER VI.
When the door closed on Rupert the master pulled down the blind,
and, trimming his lamp, tried to compose himself by reading.
Outside, the "Great Day for Indian Spring" was slowly evaporating
in pale mists from the river, and the celebration itself
spasmodically taking flight here and there in Roman candles and
rockets. An occasional outbreak from revellers in the bar-room
below, a stumbling straggler along the planked sidewalk before the
hotel, only seemed to intensify the rustic stillness. For the
future of Indian Spring was still so remote that Nature insensibly
re-invested its boundaries on the slightest relaxation of civic
influence, and Mr. Ford lifted his head from the glowing columns
of the "Star" to listen to the far-off yelp of a coyote on the
opposite shore.
He was also conscious of the recurrence of that vague, pleasurable
recollection, so indefinite that, when he sought to identify it
with anything--even the finding of the myrtle sprays on his desk--
it evaded him. He tried to work, with the same interruption. Then
an uneasy sensation that he had not been sufficiently kind to
Rupert in his foolish love-troubles remorsefully seized him. A
half pathetic, half humorous picture of the miserable Rupert
staggering under the double burden of his sleeping brother and a
misplaced affection, or possibly abandoning the one or both in the
nearest ditch in a reckless access of boyish frenzy and fleeing his
home forever, rose before his eyes. He seized his hat with the
intention of seeking him--or forgetting him in some other occupation
by the way. For Mr. Ford had the sensitive conscience of many
imaginative people; an unfailing monitor, it was always calling his
whole moral being into play to evade it.
As he crossed the passage he came upon Mrs. Tripp hooded and
elaborately attired in a white ball dress, which however did not,
to his own fancy, become her as well as her ordinary costume. He
was passing her with a bow, when she said, with complacent
consciousness of her appearance, "Aren't you going to the ball to-
night?"
He remembered then that "an opening ball" at the Court-house was a
part of the celebration. "No," he said smiling; "but it is a pity
that Rupert couldn't have seen you in your charming array."
"Rupert," said the lady, with a slightly coquettish laugh; "you
have made him as much a woman-hater as yourself. I offered to take
him in our party, and he ran away to you." She paused, and giving
him a furtive critical glance said, with an easy mingling of
confidence and audacity, "Why don't YOU go? Nobody'll hurt you."
"I'm not so sure of that," replied Mr. Ford gallantly. "There's
the melancholy example of Rupert always before me."
Mrs. Tripp tossed her chignon and descended a step of the stairs.
"You'd better go," she continued, looking up over the balusters.
"You can look on if you can't dance."
Now Mr. Ford COULD dance, and it so chanced, rather well, too.
With this consciousness he remained standing in half indignant
hesitation on the landing as she disappeared. Why shouldn't he go?
It was true, he had half tacitly acquiesced in the reserve with
which he had been treated, and had never mingled socially in the
gatherings of either sex at Indian Spring--but that was no reason.
He could at least dress himself, walk to the Court-house and--look
on.
Any black coat and white shirt was sufficiently de rigueur for
Indian Spring. Mr. Ford added the superfluous elegance of a
forgotten white waistcoat. When he reached the sidewalk it was
only nine o'clock, but the windows of the Court-house were already
flaring like a stranded steamer on the barren bank where it had
struck. On the way thither he was once or twice tempted to change
his mind, and hesitated even at the very door. But the fear that
his hesitation would be noticed by the few loungers before it, and
the fact that some of them were already hesitating through
bashfulness, determined him to enter.
The clerks' office and judges' chambers on the lower floor had been
invaded by wraps, shawls, and refreshments, but the dancing was
reserved for the upper floor or courtroom, still unfinished.
Flags, laurel-wreaths, and appropriate floral inscriptions hid its
bare walls; but the coat of arms of the State, already placed over
the judges' dais with its illimitable golden sunset, its triumphant
goddess, and its implacable grizzly, seemed figuratively to typify
the occasion better than the inscriptions. The room was close and
crowded. The flickering candles in tin sconces against the walls,
or depending in rude chandeliers of barrel-hoops from the ceiling,
lit up the most astounding diversity of female costume the master
had ever seen. Gowns of bygone fashions, creased and stained with
packing and disuse, toilets of forgotten festivity revised with
modern additions; garments in and out of season--a fur-trimmed
jacket and a tulle skirt, a velvet robe under a pique sacque; fresh
young faces beneath faded head-dresses, and mature and buxom charms
in virgin' white. The small space cleared for the dancers was
continually invaded by the lookers-on, who in files of three deep
lined the room.
As the master pushed his way to the front, a young girl, who had
been standing in the sides of a quadrille, suddenly darted with a
nymph-like quickness among the crowd and was for an instant hidden.
Without distinguishing either face or figure, Mr. Ford recognized
in the quick, impetuous action a characteristic movement of
Cressy's; with an embarrassing instinct that he could not account
for, he knew she had seen him, and that, for some inexplicable
reason, he was the cause of her sudden disappearance.
But it was only for a moment. Even while he was vaguely scanning
the crowd she reappeared and took her place beside her mystified
partner--the fascinating stranger of Johnny's devotion and Rupert's
dislike. She was pale; he had never seen her so beautiful. All
that he had thought distasteful and incongruous in her were but
accessories of her loveliness at that moment, in that light, in
that atmosphere, in that strange assembly. Even her full pink
gauze dress, from which her fair young shoulders slipped as from a
sunset cloud, seemed only the perfection of virginal simplicity;
her girlish length of limb and the long curves of her neck and back
were now the outlines of thorough breeding. The absence of color
in her usually fresh face had been replaced by a faint magnetic
aurora that seemed to him half spiritual. He could not take his
eyes from her; he could not believe what he saw. Yet that was
Cressy McKinstry--his pupil! Had he ever really seen her? Did he
know her now? Small wonder that all eyes were bent upon her, that
a murmur of unspoken admiration, or still more intense hush of
silence moved the people around him. He glanced hurriedly at them,
and was oddly relieved by this evident participation in his
emotions.
She was dancing now, and with that same pale restraint and curious
quiet that had affected him so strongly. She had not even looked
in his direction, yet he was aware by the same instinct that had at
first possessed him that she knew he was present. His desire to
catch her eye was becoming mingled with a certain dread, as if in a
single interchange of glances the illusions of the moment would
either vanish utterly or become irrevocably fixed. He forced
himself, when the set was finished, to turn away, partly to avoid
contact with some acquaintances who had drifted before him, and
whom politeness would have obliged him to ask to dance, and partly
to collect his thoughts. He determined to make a tour of the rooms
and then go quietly home. Those who recognized him made way for
him with passive curiosity; the middle-aged and older adding a
confidential sympathy and equality that positively irritated him.
For an instant he had an idea of seeking out Mrs. Tripp and
claiming her as a partner, merely to show her that he danced.
He had nearly made the circuit of the room when he was surprised by
the first strains of a waltz. Waltzing was not a strong feature of
Indian Spring festivity, partly that the Church people had serious
doubts if David's saltatory performances before the Ark included
"round dances," and partly that the young had not yet mastered its
difficulties. When he yielded to his impulse to look again at the
dancers he found that only three or four couples had been bold
enough to take the floor. Cressy McKinstry and her former partner
were one of them. In his present exaltation he was not astonished
to find that she had evidently picked up the art in her late visit,
and was now waltzing with quiet grace and precision, but he was
surprised that her partner was far from being equally perfect, and
that after a few turns she stopped and smilingly disengaged her
waist from his arm. As she stepped back she turned with unerring
instinct to that part of the room where the master stood, and raised
her eyes through the multitude of admiring faces to his. Their eyes
met in an isolation as supreme as if they had been alone. It was an
attraction the more dangerous because unformulated--a possession
without previous pledge, promise, or even intention--a love that did
not require to be "made."
He approached her quietly and even more coolly than he thought
possible. "Will you allow me a trial?" he asked.
She looked in his face, and as if she had not heard the question
but was following her own thought, said, "I knew you would come; I
saw you when you first came in." Without another word she put her
hand in his, and as if it were part of an instinctive action of
drawing closer to him, caught with her advancing foot the accent of
the waltz, and the next moment the room seemed to slip away from
them into whirling space.
The whole thing had passed so rapidly from the moment he approached
her to the first graceful swing of her full skirt at his side, that
it seemed to him almost like the embrace of a lovers' meeting. He
had often been as near her before, had stood at her side at school,
and even leaned over her desk, but always with an irritated
instinct of reserve that had equally affected her, and which he now
understood. With her conscious but pale face so near his own, with
the faint odor of her hair clinging to her, and with the sweet
confusion of the half lingering, half withheld contact of her hand
and arm, all had changed. He did not dare to reflect that he could
never again approach her except with this feeling. He did not dare
to think of anything; he abandoned himself to the sense that had
begun with the invasion of her hair-bound myrtle in the silent
school-room, and seemed to have at last led her to his arms. They
were moving now in such perfect rhythm and unison that they seemed
scarcely conscious of motion. Once when they neared the open
window he caught a glimpse of the round moon rising above the
solemn heights of the opposite shore, and felt the cool breath of
mountain and river sweep his cheek and mingle a few escaped threads
of her fair hair with his own. With that glimpse and that
sensation the vulgarity and the tawdriness of their surroundings,
the guttering candles in their sconces, the bizarre figures, the
unmeaning faces seemed to be whirled far into distant space. They
were alone with night and nature; it was they who were still; all
else had receded in a vanishing perspective of dull reality, in
which they had no part.
Play on, O waltz of Strauss! Whirl on, O love and youth! For you
cannot whirl so swiftly but that this receding world will return
again with narrowing circle to hem you in. Faster, O cracked
clarionet! Louder, O too brazen bassoon! Keep back, O dull and
earthy environment, till master and pupil have dreamed their
foolish dream!
They are in fancy alone on the river-bank, only the round moon
above them and their linked shadows faintly fluttering in the
stream. They have drawn so closely together now that her arm is
encircling his neck, her soft eyes uplifted like the moon's
reflection and drowning into his; closer and closer till their
hearts stop beating and their lips have met in a first kiss.
Faster, O little feet! swing clear, O Cressy's skirt and keep the
narrowing circle back! . . . They are again alone; the judges'
dais and the emblazoning of the State caught in a single whirling
flash of consciousness are changed to an altar, seen dimly through
the bridal veil that covers her fair head. There is the murmur of
voices mingling two lives in one. They turn and pass proudly down
between the aisles of wondering festal faces. Ah! the circle is
drawing closer. One more quick whirl to keep them back, O flying
skirt and dainty-winged feet! Too late! The music stops. The
tawdry walls shut in again, the vulgar crowds return, they stand
pale and quiet, the centre of a ring of breathless admiring,
frightened, or forbidding faces. Her arms fold like wings at her
side. The waltz is over.
A shrill feminine chorus assail her with praises, struck here and
there with a metallic ring of envy; a dozen all-daring cavaliers,
made reckless by her grace and beauty, clamor for her hand in the
next waltz. She replies, not to them, but to him, "Not again," and
slips away in the crowd with that strange new shyness that of all
her transformations seems the most delicious. Yet so conscious are
they of their mutual passion that they do not miss each other, and
he turns away as if their next meeting were already an appointed
tryst. A few congratulate him on his skill. Johnny's paragon
looks after him curiously; certain elders shake hands with him
perplexedly, as if not quite sure of the professional consistency
of his performance. Those charming tide-waiters on social success,
the fair, artfully mingling expectation with compliment, only
extract from him the laughing statement that this one waltz was the
single exception allowed him from the rule of his professional
conduct, and he refers them to his elder critics. A single face,
loutish, looming, and vindictive, stands on among the crowd--the
face of Seth Davis. He had not seen him since he left the school;
he had forgotten his existence; even now he only remembered his
successor, Joe Masters, and he looked curiously around to see if
that later suitor of Cressy's was present. It was not until he
reached the door that he began to think seriously of Seth Davis's
jealous face, and was roused to a singular indignation. "Why
hadn't this great fool vented his jealousy on the openly
compromising Masters," he thought. He even turned and walked back
with some vaguely aggressive instinct, but the young man had
disappeared. With this incident still in his mind he came upon
Uncle Ben and Hiram McKinstry standing among the spectators in the
doorway. Why might not Uncle Ben be jealous too? and if his single
waltz had really appeared so compromising why should not Cressy's
father object? But both men--albeit, McKinstry usually exhibited a
vague unreasoning contempt for Uncle Ben--were unanimous in their
congratulations and outspoken admiration.
"When I see'd you sail in, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben, with abstract
reflectiveness, "I sez to the fellers, 'lie low, boys, and you'll
see style.' And when you put on them first steps, I sez, 'that's
French--the latest high-toned French style--outer the best masters,
and--and outer the best books. For why?' sez I. 'It's the same
long, sliding stroke you see in his copies. There's that long up
sweep, and that easy curve to the right with no hitch. That's the
sorter swing he hez in readin' po'try too. That's why it's called
the po'try of motion,' sez I. 'And you ken bet your boots, boys,
it's all in the trainin' o' education.'"
"Mr. Ford," said Mr. McKinstry gravely, slightly waving a lavender-
colored kid glove, with which he had elected to conceal his maimed
hand, and at the same moment indicate a festal occasion: "I hev to
thank ye for the way you took out that child o' mine, like ez she
woz an ontried filly, and put her through her paces. I don't dance
myself, partikly in that gait--which I take to be suthin' betwixt a
lope and a canter and I don't get to see much dancin' nowadays on
account o' bein' worrited by stock, but seein' you two together
just now, suthin' came over me, and I don't think I ever felt so
kam in my life."
The blood rushed to the master's cheek with an unexpected
consciousness of guilt and shame. "But," he stammered awkwardly,
"your daughter dances beautifully herself; she has certainly had
practice."
"That," said McKinstry, laying his gloved hand impressively on the
master's shoulder, with the empty little finger still more
emphasized by being turned backward in the net; "that may be ez it
ez, but I wanted to say that it was the simple, easy, fammily touch
that you gev it, that took me. Toward the end, when you kinder
gathered her up and she sorter dropped her head into your breast-
pocket, and seemed to go to sleep, like ez ef she was still a
little girl, it so reminded me of the times when I used to tote her
myself walkin' by the waggin at Platt River, that it made me wish
the old woman was here to see it."
Still coloring, the master cast a rapid, sidelong glance at
McKinstry's dark red face and beard, but in the slow satisfaction
of his features there was no trace of that irony which the master's
self-consciousness knew.
"Then your wife is not here?" said Mr. Ford abstractedly.
"She war at church. She reckoned that I'd do to look arter Cressy--
she bein', so to speak, under conviction. D'ye mind walkin' this
way a bit; I want to speak a word with ye?" He put his maimed hand
through the master's arm, after his former fashion, and led him to
a corner.
"Did ye happen to see Seth Davis about yer?"
"I believe I saw him a moment ago," returned Mr. Ford half
contemptuously.
"Did he get off anythin' rough on ye?"
"Certainly not," said the master haughtily. "Why should he dare?"
"That's so," said McKinstry meditatively. "You had better keep
right on in that line. That's your gait, remember. Leave him--or
his father--it's the same thing--to ME. Don't YOU let yourself be
roped in to this yer row betwixt me and the Davises. You ain't got
no call to do it. It's already been on my mind your bringin' that
gun to me in the Harrison row. The old woman hadn't oughter let
you--nor Cress either. Hark to me, Mr. Ford! I reckon to stand
between you and both the Davises till the cows come home--only--
mind YOU give him the go-by when he happens to meander along
towards you."
"I'm very much obliged to you," said Ford with disproportionately
sudden choler; "but I don't propose to alter my habits for a
ridiculous school-boy whom I have dismissed." The unjust and
boyish petulance of his speech instantly flashed upon him, and he
felt his cheek burn again.
McKinstry regarded him with dull, red, slumbrous eyes. "Don't you
go to lose your best holt, Mr. Ford--and that's kam. Keep your
kam--and you've allus got the dead wood on Injin Springs. I ain't
got it," he continued, in his slowest, most passionless manner,
"and a row more or less ain't much account to me--but YOU, you keep
your kam." He paused, stepped back, and regarding the master, with
a slight wave of his crippled hand over his whole person, as if
indicating some personal adornment, said, "It sets you off!"
He nodded, turned, and re-entered the ball-room. Mr. Ford, without
trusting himself to further speech, elbowed his way through the
crowded staircase to the street. But even there his strange anger,
as well as the equally strange remorse, which had seized him in
McKinstry's presence, seemed to evaporate in the clear moonlight
and soft summer air. There was the river-bank, with the tremulous
river glancing through the dreamy mist, as they had seen it from
the window together. He even turned to look back on the lighted
ball-room, as if SHE might have been looking out, too. But he knew
he should see her again to-morrow, and he hurriedly put aside all
reserve, all thought of the future, all examination of his conduct,
to walk home enwrapped in the vaguer pleasure of the past. Rupert
Filgee, to whom he had never given a second thought, now peacefully
slumbering beside his baby brother, had not gone home in more
foolish or more dangerous company.
When he reached the hotel, he was surprised to find it only eleven
o'clock. No one had returned, the building was deserted by all but
the bar-keeper and a flirting chambermaid, who regarded him with
aggrieved astonishment. He began to feel very foolish, and half
regretted that he had not stayed to dance with Mrs. Tripp; or, at
least, remained as a quiet onlooker apart from the others. With a
hasty excuse about returning to write letters for the morning's
post, he took a candle and slowly remounted the stairs to his room.
But on entering he found himself unprepared for that singular lack
of sympathy with which familiar haunts always greet our new
experiences; he could hardly believe that he had left that room
only two hours before; it seemed so uncongenial and strange to the
sensation that was still possessing him. Yet there were his table,
his books, his arm-chair, his bed as he had left them; even a
sticky fragment of gingerbread that had fallen from Johnny's
pocket. He had not yet reached that stage of absorbing passion
where he was able to put the loved one in his own surroundings; she
as yet had no place in this quiet room; he could scarcely think of
her here, and he MUST think of her, if he had to go elsewhere. An
extravagant idea of walking the street until his restless dream was
over seized him, but even in his folly the lackadaisical, moonstruck
quality of such a performance was too obvious. The school-house!
He would go there; it was only a pleasant walk, the night was
lovely, and he could bring the myrtle-spray from his desk. It was
too significant now--if not too precious--to be kept there. Perhaps
he had not examined it closely, nor the place where it had lain;
there might be an additional sign, word, or token he had overlooked.
The thought thrilled him, even while he was calmly arguing to
himself that it was an instinct of caution.
The air was quieter and warmer than usual, though still
characteristic of the locality in its dry, dewless clarity. The
grass was yet warm from the day-long sun, and when he entered the
pines that surrounded the schoolhouse, they had scarcely yet lost
their spicy heat. The moon, riding high, filled the dark aisles
with a delicious twilight that lent itself to his waking dreams.
It was not long before to-morrow; he could easily manage to bring
her here in the grove at recess, and would speak with her there.
It did not occur to him what he should say, or why he should say
it; it did not occur to him that he had no other provocation than
her eyes, her conscious manner, her eloquent silence, and her
admission that she had expected him. It did not occur to him that
all this was inconsistent with what he knew of her antecedents, her
character, and her habits. It was this very inconsistency that
charmed and convinced him. We are always on the lookout for these
miracles of passion. We may doubt the genuineness of an affection
that is first-hand, but never of one that is transferred.
He approached the school-house and unlocking the door closed it
behind him, not so much to keep out human intrusion as the invasion
of bats and squirrels. The nearly vertical moon, while it
perfectly lit the playground and openings in the pines around the
house, left the interior in darkness, except the reflection upon
the ceiling from the shining gravel without. Partly from a sense
of precaution and partly because he was familiar with the position
of the benches, he did not strike a light, and reached his own desk
unerringly, drew his chair before it and unlocked it, groped in its
dark recess for the myrtle spray, felt its soft silken binding with
an electrical thrill, drew it out, and in the security of the
darkness, raised it to his lips.
To make room for it in his breast pocket he was obliged to take out
his letters--among them the well-worn one he had tried to read that
morning. A mingling of pleasure and remorse came over him as he
felt that it was already of the past, and as he dropped it
carelessly into the empty desk it fell with a faint, hollow sound
as if it were ashes to ashes.
What was that?
The noise of steps upon the gravel, light laughter, the moving of
two or three shadows on the ceiling, the sound of voices, a man's,
a child's, and HERS!
Could it be possible? Was not he mistaken? No! the man's voice
was Masters'; the child's, Octavia's; the woman's, HERS.
He remained silent in the shadow. The school-room was not far from
the trail where she would have had to pass going home from the
ball. But why had she come there? had they seen him arrive? and
were mischievously watching him? The sound of Cressy's voice and
the lifting of the unprotected window near the door convinced him
to the contrary.
"There, that'll do. Now you two can step aside. 'Tave, take him
over to yon fence, and keep him there till I get in. No--thank
you, sir--I can assist myself. I've done it before. It ain't the
first time I've been through this window, is it, 'Tave?"
Ford's heart stopped beating. There was a moment of laughing
expostulation, the sound of retreating voices, the sudden darkening
of the window, the billowy sweep of a skirt, the faint quick flash
of a little ankle, and Cressy McKinstry swung herself into the room
and dropped lightly on the floor.
She advanced eagerly up the moonlit passage between the two rows of
benches. Suddenly she stopped; the master rose at the same moment
with outstretched warning hand to check the cry of terror he felt
sure would rise to her lips. But he did not know the lazy nerves
of the girl before him. She uttered no outcry. And even in the
faint dim light he could see only the same expression of conscious
understanding come over her face that he had seen in the ball-room,
mingled with a vague joy that parted her breathless lips. As he
moved quickly forward their hands met; she caught his with a quick
significant pressure and darted back to the window.
"Oh, 'Tave!" (very languidly.)
"Yes."
"You two had better wait for me at the edge of the trail yonder,
and keep a lookout for folks going by. Don't let them see you
hanging round so near. Do you hear? I'm all right."
With her hand still meaningly lifted, she stood gazing at the two
figures until they slowly receded towards the distant trail. Then
she turned as he approached her, the reflection of the moonlit road
striking up into her shining eyes and eager waiting face. A dozen
questions were upon his lips, a dozen replies were ready upon hers.
But they were never uttered, for the next moment her eyes half
closed, she leaned forward and fell--into a kiss.
She was the first to recover, holding his face in her hands, turned
towards the moonlight, her own in passionate shadow. "Listen," she
said quickly. "They think I came here to look for something I left
in my desk. They thought it high fun to come with me--these two.
I did come to look for something--not in my desk, but yours."
"Was it this?" he whispered, taking the myrtle from his breast.
She seized it with a light cry, putting it first to her lips and
then to his. Then clasping his face again between her soft palms,
she turned it to the window and said: "Look at them and not at me."
He did so--seeing the two figures slowly walking in the trail. And
holding her there firmly against his breast, it seemed a blasphemy
to ask the question that had been upon his lips.
"That's not all," she murmured, moving his face backwards and
forwards to her lips as if it were something to which she was
giving breath. "When we came to the woods I felt that you would be
here."
"And feeling that, you brought HIM?" said Ford, drawing back.
"Why not?" she replied indolently. "Even if he had seen you, I
could have managed to have you walk home with me."
"But do you think it's quite fair? Would he like it?"
"Would HE like it?" she echoed lazily.
"Cressy," said the young man earnestly, gazing into her shadowed
face. "Have you given him any right to object? Do you understand
me?"
She stopped as if thinking. "Do you want me to call him in?" she
said quietly, but without the least trace of archness or coquetry.
"Would you rather he were here--or shall we go out now and meet
him? I'll say you just came as I was going out."
What should he say? "Cressy," he asked almost curtly, "do you love
me?"
It seemed such a ridiculous thing to ask, holding her thus in his
arms, if it were true; it seemed such a villainous question, if it
were not.
"I think I loved you when you first came," she said slowly. "It
must have been that that made me engage myself to him," she added
simply. "I knew I loved you, and thought only of you when I was
away. I came back because I loved you. I loved you the day you
came to see Maw--even when I thought you came to tell her of
Masters, and to say that you couldn't take me back."
"But you don't ask me if I love you?"
"But you do--you couldn't help it now," she said confidently.
What could he do but reply as illogically with a closer embrace,
albeit a slight tremor as if a cold wind had blown across the open
window, passed over him. She may have felt it too, for she
presently said, "Kiss me and let me go."
"But we must have a longer talk, darling--when--when--others are
not waiting."
"Do you know the far barn near the boundary?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I used to take your books there, afternoons to--to--be with you,"
she whispered, "and Paw gave orders that no one was to come nigh it
while I was there. Come to-morrow, just before sundown."
A long embrace followed, in which all that they had not said
seemed, to them at least, to become articulate on their tremulous
and clinging lips. Then they separated, he unlocking the door
softly to give her egress that way. She caught up a book from a
desk in passing, and then slipped like a rosy shaft of the coming
dawn across the fading moonlight, and a moment after her slow
voice, without a tremor of excitement, was heard calling to her
companions.
CHAPTER VII.
The conversation which Johnny Filgee had overheard between Uncle
Ben and the gorgeous stranger, although unintelligible to his
infant mind, was fraught with some significance to the adult
settlers of Indian Spring. The town itself, like most interior
settlements, was originally a mining encampment, and as such its
founders and settlers derived their possession of the soil under
the mining laws that took precedence of all other titles. But
although that title was held to be good even after the abandonment
of their original occupation, and the establishment of shops,
offices, and dwellings on the site of the deserted places, the
suburbs of the town and outlying districts were more precariously
held by squatters, under the presumption of their being public land
open to preemption, or the settlement of school-land warrants upon
them. Few of the squatters had taken the trouble to perfect even
these easy titles, merely holding "possession" for agricultural or
domiciliary purposes, and subject only to the invasion of
"jumpers," a class of adventurers who, in the abeyance of
recognized legal title, "jumped" or forcibly seized such portions
of a squatter's domains as were not protected by fencing or
superior force. It was therefore with some excitement that Indian
Spring received the news that a Mexican grant of three square
leagues, which covered the whole district, had been lately
confirmed by the Government, and that action would be taken to
recover possession. It was understood that it would not affect the
adverse possessions held by the town under the mining laws, but it
would compel the adjacent squatters like McKinstry, Davis, Masters,
and Filgee, and jumpers like the Harrisons, to buy the legal title,
or defend a slow but losing lawsuit. The holders of the grant--
rich capitalists of San Francisco--were open to compromise to those
in actual possession, and in the benefits of this compromise the
unscrupulous "jumper," who had neither sown nor reaped, but simply
dispossessed the squatter who had done both, shared equally with
him.
A diversity of opinion as to the effect of the new claim naturally
obtained; the older settlers still clung to their experiences of an
easy aboriginal holding of the soil, and were sceptical both as to
the validity and justice of these revived alien grants; but the
newer arrivals hailed this certain tenure of legal titles as a
guarantee to capital and an incentive to improvement. There was
also a growing and influential party of Eastern and Northern men,
who were not sorry to see a fruitful source of dissension and
bloodshed removed. The feuds of the McKinstrys and Harrisons, kept
alive over a boundary to which neither had any legal claim, would
seem to bring them hereafter within the statute law regarding
ordinary assaults without any ethical mystification. On the other
hand McKinstry and Harrison would each be able to arrange any
compromise with the new title holders for the lands they possessed,
or make over that "actual possession" for a consideration. It was
feared that both men, being naturally lawless, would unite to
render any legal eviction a long and dangerous process, and that
they would either be left undisturbed till the last, or would force
a profitable concession. But a greater excitement followed when it
was known that a section of the land had already been sold by the
owners of the grant, that this section exactly covered the
debatable land of the McKinstry-Harrison boundaries, and that the
new landlord would at once attempt its legal possession. The
inspiration of genius that had thus effected a division of the
Harrison-McKinstry combination at its one weak spot excited even
the admiration of the sceptics. No one in Indian Spring knew its
real author, for the suit was ostensibly laid in the name of a San
Francisco banker. But the intelligent reader of Johnny Filgee's
late experience during the celebration will have already recognized
Uncle Ben as the man, and it becomes a part of this veracious
chronicle at this moment to allow him to explain, not only his
intentions, but the means by which he carried them out, in his own
words.
It was one afternoon at the end of his usual solitary lesson, and
the master and Uncle Ben were awaiting the arrival of Rupert.
Uncle Ben's educational progress lately, through dint of slow
tenacity, had somewhat improved, and he had just completed from
certain forms and examples in a book before him a "Letter to a
Consignee" informing him that he, Uncle Ben, had just shipped "2
cwt. Ivory Elephant Tusks, 80 peculs of rice and 400bbls. prime
mess pork from Indian Spring;" and another beginning "Honored
Madam," and conveying in admirably artificial phraseology the
"lamented decease" of the lady's husband from yellow fever,
contracted on the Gold Coast, and Uncle Ben was surveying his work
with critical satisfaction when the master, somewhat impatiently,
consulted his watch. Uncle Ben looked up.
"I oughter told ye that Rupe didn't kalkilate to come to day."
"Indeed--why not?"
"I reckon because I told him he needn't. I allowed to--to hev a
little private talk with ye, Mr. Ford, if ye didn't mind."
Mr. Ford's face did not shine with invitation. "Very well," he
said, "only remember I have an engagement this afternoon."
"But that ain't until about sundown, said Uncle Ben quietly. "I
won't keep ye ez long ez that."
Mr. Ford glanced quickly at Uncle Ben with a rising color. "What
do you know of my engagements?" he said sharply.
"Nothin', Mr. Ford," returned Uncle Ben simply; "but hevin' bin
layin' round, lookin' for ye here and at the hotel for four or five
days allus about that time and not findin' you, I rather kalkilated
you might hev suthin' reg'lar on hand."
There was certainly nothing in his face or manner to indicate the
least evasion or deceit, or indeed anything but his usual naivete,
perhaps a little perturbed and preoccupied by what he was going to
say. "I had an idea of writin' you a letter," he continued,
"kinder combinin' practice and confidential information, you know.
To be square with you, Mr. Ford, in pint o' fact, I've got it HERE.
But ez it don't seem to entirely gibe with the facts, and leaves a
heap o' things onsaid and onseen, perhaps it's jest ez wall ez I
read it to you myself--putten' in a word here and there, and
explainin' it gin'rally. Do you sabe?"
The master nodded, and Uncle Ben drew from his desk a rude
portfolio made from the two covers of a dilapidated atlas, and took
from between them a piece of blotting-paper, which through
inordinate application had acquired the color and consistency of a
slate, and a few pages of copy-book paper, that to the casual
glance looked like sheets of exceedingly difficult music.
Surveying them with a blending of chirographic pride, orthographic
doubt, and the bashful consciousness of a literary amateur, he
traced each line with a forefinger inked to the second joint, and
slowly read aloud as follows:--
"'Mr. Ford, Teacher.
"'DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 12th rec'd and contents noted.'" ("I
did'nt," explained Uncle Ben parenthetically, "receive any letter
of yours, but I thought I might heave in that beginning from copy
for practice. The rest is ME.") "'In refference to my having
munney,"' continued Uncle Ben reading and pointing each word as he
read, "'and being able to buy Ditch Stocks an' Land'"--
"One moment," said Mr. Ford interrupting, "I thought you were going
to leave out copy. Come to what you have to say."
"But I HEV--this is all real now. Hold on and you'll see," said
Uncle Ben. He resumed with triumphant emphasis:--
"'When it were gin'rally allowed that I haddent a red cent, I want
to explain to you Mister Ford for the first time a secret. This
here is how it was done. When I first came to Injian Spring, I
settled down into the old Palmetto claim, near a heap of old
taillings. Knowin' it were against rools, and reg'lar Chinyman's
bizness to work them I diddn't let on to enyboddy what I did--witch
wos to turn over some of the quarts what I thought was likely and
Orrifferus. Doing this I kem uppon some pay ore which them
Palmetto fellers had overlookt, or more likely had kaved in uppon
them from the bank onknown. Workin' at it in od times by and
large, sometimes afore sun up and sometimes after sundown, and all
the time keeping up a day's work on the clame for a show to the
boys, I emassed a honist fortun in 2 years of 50,000 dolers and
still am. But it will be askd by the incredjulos Reeder How did
you never let out anything to Injian Spring, and How did you get
rid of your yeald? Mister Ford, the Anser is I took it twist a
month on hoss back over to La Port and sent it by express to a bank
in Sacramento, givin' the name of Daubigny, witch no one in La Port
took for me. The Ditch Stok and the Land was all took in the same
name, hens the secret was onreviled to the General Eye--stop a
minit,'" he interrupted himself quickly as the master in an
accession of impatient scepticism was about to break in upon him,
"it ain't all." Then dropping his voice to a tremulous and almost
funereal climax, he went on:--
"'Thus we see that pashent indurstry is Rewarded in Spite of Mining
Rools and Reggylashuns, and Predgudisses agin Furrin Labor is
played out and fleeth like a shad-or contenueyeth not long in One
Spot, and that a Man may apear to be off no Account and yet Emass
that witch is far abov rubles and Fadith not Away.
"'Hoppin' for a continneyance
"'of your fevors I remain,
"'Yours to command,
"'BENJ D'AUBIGNY."'
The gloomy satisfaction with which Uncle Ben regarded this
peroration--a satisfaction that actually appeared to be equal to
the revelation itself--only corroborated the master's indignant
doubts.
"Come," he said, impulsively taking the paper from Uncle Ben's
reluctant hand, "how much of this is a concoction of yours and
Rupe's--and how much is a true story? Do you really mean?"--
"Hold on, Mr. Ford!" interrupted Uncle Ben, suddenly fumbling in
the breast-pocket of his red shirt, "I reckoned on your being a
little hard with me, remembering our first talk 'bout these things--
so I allowed I'd bring you some proof." Slowly extracting a long
legal envelope from his pocket, he opened it, and drew out two or
three crisp certificates of stock, and handed them to the master.
"Ther's one hundred shares made out to Benj Daubigny. I'd hev
brought you over the deed of the land too, but ez it's rather hard
to read off-hand, on account of the law palaver, I've left it up at
the shanty to tackle at odd times by way of practising. But ef you
like we'll go up thar, and I'll show it to you."
Still haunted by his belief in Uncle Ben's small duplicities, Mr.
Ford hesitated. These were certainly bona fide certificates of
stock made out to "Daubigny." But he had never actually accepted
Uncle Ben's statement of his identity with that person, and now it
was offered as a corroboration of a still more improbable story.
He looked at Uncle Ben's simple face slightly deepening in color
under his scrutiny--perhaps with conscious guilt.
"Have you made anybody your confidant? Rupe, for instance?" he
asked significantly.
"In course not," replied Uncle Ben with a slight stiffening of
wounded pride. "On'y yourself, Mr. Ford, and the young feller
Stacey from the bank--ez was obligated to know it. In fact, I wos
kalkilatin' to ask you to help me talk to him about that yer
boundary land."
Mr. Ford's scepticism was at last staggered. Any practical joke or
foolish complicity between the agent of the bank and a man like
Uncle Ben was out of the question, and if the story were his own
sole invention, he would have scarcely dared to risk so accessible
and uncompromising a denial as the agent had it in his power to
give.
He held out his hand to Uncle Ben. "Let me congratulate you," he
said heartily, "and forgive me if your story really sounded so
wonderful I couldn't quite grasp it. Now let me ask you something
more. Have you had any reason for keeping this a secret, other
than your fear of confessing that you violated a few bigoted and
idiotic mining rules--which, after all, are binding only upon
sentiment--and which your success has proved to be utterly
impractical?"
"There WAS another reason, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben, wiping away
an embarrassed smile with the back of his hand, "that is, to be
square with you, WHY I thought of consultin' you. I didn't keer to
have McKinstry, and"--he added hurriedly, "in course Harrison, too,
know that I bought up the title to thur boundary."
"I understand," nodded the master. "I shouldn't think you would."
"Why shouldn't ye?" asked Uncle Ben quickly.
"Well--I don't suppose you care to quarrel with two passionate
men."
Uncle Ben's face changed. Presently, however, with his hand to his
face, he managed to manipulate another smile, only it appeared for
the purpose of being as awkwardly wiped away.
"Say ONE passionate man, Mr. Ford."
"Well, one if you like," returned the master cheerfully. "But for
the matter of that, why any? Come--do you mind telling me why you
bought the land at all? You know it's of little value to any but
McKinstry and Harrison."
"Soppose," said Uncle Ben slowly, with a great affectation of
wiping his ink-spotted desk with his sleeve, "soppose that I had
got kinder tired of seein' McKinstry and Harrison allus fightin'
and scrimmagin' over their boundary line. Soppose I kalkilated
that it warn't the sort o' thing to induce folks to settle here.
Soppose I reckoned that by gettin' the real title in my hands I'd
have the deadwood on both o' them, and settle the thing my own way,
eh?"
"That certainly was a very laudable intention," returned Mr. Ford,
observing Uncle Ben curiously, "and from what you said just now
about one passionate man, I suppose you have determined already WHO
to favor. I hope your public spirit will be appreciated by Indian
Spring at least--if it isn't by those two men."
"You lay low and keep dark and you'll see," returned his companion
with a hopefulness of speech which his somewhat anxious eagerness
however did not quite bear out. "But you're not goin' yet,
surely," he added, as the master again absently consulted his
watch. "It's on'y half past four. It's true thar ain't any more
to tell," he added simply, "but I had an idea that you might hev
took to this yer little story of mine more than you 'pear to be,
and might be askin' questions and kinder bedevlin' me with jokes ez
to what I was goin' to do--and all that. But p'raps it don't seem
so wonderful to you arter all. Come to think of it--squarely now,"
he said, with a singular despondency, "I'm rather sick of it
myself--eh?"
"My dear old boy," said Ford, grasping both his hands, with a swift
revulsion of shame at his own utterly selfish abstraction, "I am
overjoyed at your good luck. More than that, I can say honestly,
old fellow, that it couldn't have fallen in more worthy hands, or
to any one whose good fortune would have pleased me more. There!
And if I've been slow and stupid in taking it in, it is because
it's so wonderful, so like a fairy tale of virtue rewarded--as if
you were a kind of male Cinderella, old man!" He had no intention
of lying--he had no belief that he was: he had only forgotten that
his previous impressions and hesitations had arisen from the very
fact that he DID doubt the consistency of the story with his belief
in Uncle Ben's weakness. But he thought himself now so sincere
that the generous reader, who no doubt is ready to hail the perfect
equity of his neighbor's good luck, will readily forgive him.
In the plenitude of this sincerity, Ford threw himself at full
length on one of the long benches, and with a gesture invited Uncle
Ben to make himself equally at his ease. "Come," he said with
boyish gayety, "let's hear your plans, old man. To begin with,
who's to share them with you? Of course there are 'the old folks
at home' first; then you have brothers--and perhaps sisters?" He
stopped and glanced with a smile at Uncle Ben; the idea of there
being a possible female of his species struck his fancy.
Uncle Ben, who had hitherto always exercised a severe restraint--
partly from respect and partly from caution--over his long limbs in
the school-house, here slowly lifted one leg over another bench,
and sat himself astride of it, leaning forward on his elbow, his
chin resting between his hands.
"As far as the old folks goes, Mr. Ford, I'm a kind of an orphan."
"A KIND of orphan?" echoed Ford.
"Yes," said Uncle Ben, leaning heavily on his chin, so that the
action of his jaws with the enunciation of each word slightly
jerked his head forward as if he were imparting confidential
information to the bench before him. "Yes, that is, you see, I'm
all right ez far as the old man goes--HE'S dead; died way back in
Mizzouri. But ez to my mother, it's sorter betwixt and between--
kinder unsartain. You see, Mr. Ford, she went off with a city
feller--an entire stranger to me--afore the old man died, and
that's wot broke up my schoolin'. Now whether she's here, there,
or yon, can't be found out, though Squire Tompkins allowed--and he
were a lawyer--that the old man could get a divorce if he wanted,
and that you see would make me a whole orphan, ef I keerd to prove
title, ez the lawyers say. Well--thut sorter lets the old folks
out. Then my brother was onc't drowned in the North Platt, and I
never had any sisters. That don't leave much family for plannin'
about--does it?"
"No," said the master reflectively, gazing at Uncle Ben, "unless
you avail yourself of your advantages now and have one of your own.
I suppose now that you are rich, you'll marry."
Uncle Ben slightly changed his position, and then with his finger
and thumb began to apparently feed himself with certain crumbs
which had escaped from the children's luncheon-baskets and were
still lying on the bench. Intent on this occupation and without
raising his eyes to the master, he returned slowly, "Well, you see,
I'm sorter married already."
The master sat up quickly.
"What, YOU married--now?"
"Well, perhaps that's a question. It's a good deal like my beein'
an orphan--oncertain and onsettled." He paused to pursue an
evasive crumb to the end of the bench and having captured it, went
on: "It was when I was younger than you be, and she warn't very old
neither. But she knew a heap more than I did; and ez to readin'
and writin', she was thar, I tell you, every time. You'd hev
admired to see her, Mr. Ford." As he paused here as if he had
exhausted the subject, the master said impatiently, "Well, where is
she now?"
Uncle Ben shook his head slowly. "I ain't seen her sens I left
Mizzouri, goin' on five years ago."
"But why haven't you? What was the matter?" persisted the master.
"Well--you see--I runned away. Not SHE, you know, but I--I
scooted, skedaddled out here."
"But what for?" asked the master, regarding Uncle Ben with hopeless
wonder. "Something must have happened. What was it? Was she"--
"She WAS a good schollard," said Uncle Ben gravely, "and allowed to
be sech, by all. She stood about so high," he continued, indicating
with his hand a medium height. "War little and dark complected."
"But you must have had some reason for leaving her?"
"I've sometimes had an idea," said Uncle Ben cautiously, "that
mebbee runnin' away ran in some fam'lies. Now, there war my mother
run off with an entire stranger, and yer's me ez run off by myself.
And what makes it the more one-like is that jest as dad allus
allowed he could get a devorce agin mother, so my wife could hev
got one agin me for leavin' her. And it's almost an evenhanded
game that she hez. It's there where the oncertainty comes in."
"But are you satisfied to remain in this doubt? or do you propose,
now that you are able, to institute a thorough search for her?"
"I was kalkilatin' to look around a little," said Uncle Ben simply.
"And return to her if you find her?" continued the master.
"I didn't say that, Mr. Ford."
"But if she hasn't got a divorce from you that's what you'll have
to do, and what you ought to do--if I understand your story. For
by your own showing, a more causeless, heartless, and utterly
inexcusable desertion than yours, I never heard of."
"Do you think so?" said Uncle Ben with exasperating simplicity.
"Do I think so?" repeated Mr. Ford, indignantly. "Everybody'll
think so. They can't think otherwise. You say you deserted her,
and you admit she did nothing to provoke it."
"No," returned Uncle Ben quickly, "nothin'. Did I tell you, Mr.
Ford, that she could play the pianner and sing?"
"No," said Mr. Ford, curtly, rising impatiently and crossing the
room. He was more than half convinced that Uncle Ben was deceiving
him. Either under the veil of his hide-bound simplicity he was an
utterly selfish, heartless, secretive man, or else he was telling
an idiotic falsehood.
"I'm sorry I can neither congratulate you nor condole with you on
what you have just told me. I cannot see that you have the least
excuse for delaying a single moment to search for your wife and
make amends for your conduct. And if you want my opinion it
strikes me as being a much more honorable way of employing your new
riches than mediating in your neighbors' squabbles. But it's
getting late and I'm afraid we must bring our talk to an end. I
hope you'll think this over before we meet again--and think
differently."
Nevertheless, as they both left the schoolhouse, Mr. Ford lingered
over the locking of the door to give Uncle Ben a final chance for
further explanation. But none came. The new capitalist of Indian
Spring regarded him with an intensification of his usual half sad,
half embarrassed smile, and only said: "You understand this yer's a
secret, Mr. Ford?"
"Certainly," said Ford with ill-concealed irritation.
"'Bout my bein' sorter married?"
"Don't be alarmed," he responded dryly; "it's not a taking story."
They separated; Uncle Ben, more than ever involved in his usual
unsatisfactory purposes, wending his way towards his riches; the
master lingering to observe his departure before he plunged, in
virtuous superiority, into the woods that fringed the Harrison and
McKinstry boundaries.
CHAPTER VIII.
The religious attitude which Mrs. McKinstry had assumed towards her
husband's weak civilized tendencies was not entirely free from
human rancor. That strong loyal nature which had unsexed itself
in the one idea of duty, now that duty seemed to be no longer
appreciated took refuge in her forgotten womanhood and in the
infinitesimally small arguments, resources, and manoeuvres at its
command. She had conceived a singular jealousy of this daughter
who had changed her husband's nature, and who had supplanted the
traditions of the household life; she had acquired an exaggerated
depreciation of those feminine charms which had never been a factor
in her own domestic happiness. She saw in her husband's desire to
mitigate the savage austerities of their habits only a weak
concession to the powers of beauty and adornment--degrading
vanities she had never known in their life-long struggle for
frontier supremacy--that had never brought them victorious out of
that struggle. "Frizzles," "furblows," and "fancy fixin's" had
never helped them in their exodus across the plains; had never
taken the place of swift eyes, quick ears, strong hands, and
endurance; had never nursed the sick or bandaged the wounded. When
envy or jealousy invades the female heart after forty it is apt to
bring a bitterness which knows no attenuating compensation in that
coquetry, emulation, passionate appeal, or innocent tenderness,
which makes tolerable the jealous caprices of the younger woman.
The struggle for rivalry is felt to be hopeless, the power of
imitation is gone. Of her forgotten womanhood Mrs. McKinstry
revived only a capacity to suffer meanly and inflict mean suffering
upon others. In the ruined castle of her youth, and the falling in
of banqueting hall and bower, the dungeon and torture-chamber
appeared to have been left, or, to use her own metaphor, she had
querulously complained to the parson that, "Accordin' to some
folks, she mout hev bin the barren fig-tree e-lected to bear
persimmums."
Her methods were not entirely different from those employed by her
suffering sisterhood in like emergencies. The unlucky Hiram,
"worrited by stock," was hardly placated or consoled by learning
from her that it was only the result of his own weakness, acting
upon the 'cussedness of the stock-dispersing Harrisons; the
perplexity into which he was thrown by the news of the new legal
claim to his land was not soothed by the suggestion that it was a
trick of that Yankee civilization to which he was meanly succumbing.
She who had always been a rough but devoted nurse in sickness was
now herself overtaken by vague irregular disorders which involved
the greatest care and the absence of all exciting causes. The
attendance of McKinstry and Cressy at a "crazy quilting party" had
brought on "blind chills;" the importation of a melodeon for Cressy
to play on had superinduced an "innerd rash," and a threatened
attack of "palsy creeps" had only been warded off by the timely
postponement of an evening party suggested by her daughter. The old
nomadic instinct, morbidly excited by her discontent, caused her to
lay artful plans for a further emigration. She knew she had the
germs of "mash fever" caught from the adjacent river; she related
mysterious information, gathered in "class meeting," of the superior
facilities for stock raising on the higher foot-hills; she
resuscitated her dead and gone Missouri relations in her daily
speech, to a manifest invidious comparison with the living; she
revived even the incidents of her early married life with the same
baleful intent. The acquisition of a few "biled shirts" by Hiram
for festive appearances with Cressy painfully reminded her that he
had married her in "hickory;" she further accented the change by
herself appearing in her oldest clothes, on the hypothesis that it
was necessary for some one to keep up the traditions of the past.
Her attitude towards Cressy would have been more decided had she
ever possessed the slightest influence over her, or had even
understood her with the intuitive sympathies of the maternal
relations. Yet she went so far as to even openly regret the
breaking off of the match with Seth Davis, whose family, at least,
still retained the habits and traditions she revered; but she was
promptly silenced by her husband informing her that words "that had
to be tuk back" had already passed between him and Seth's father,
and that, according to those same traditions, blood was more likely
to be spilled than mingled. Whether she was only withheld from
attempting a reconciliation herself through lack of tact and
opportunity remains to be seen. For the present she encouraged
Masters's attentions under a new and vague idea that a flirtation
which distracted Cressy from her studies was displeasing to
McKinstry and inimical to his plans. Blindly ignorant of Mr.
Ford's possible relations to her daughter, and suspecting nothing,
she felt towards him only a dull aversion as being the senseless
pivot of her troubles. Seeing no one, and habitually closing her
ears to any family allusion to Cressy's social triumphs, she was
unaware of even the popular admiration their memorable waltz had
excited.
On the morning of the day that Uncle Ben had confided to the master
his ingenious plan for settling the boundary disputes, the barking
of McKinstry's yellow dog announced the approach of a stranger to
the ranch. It proved to be Mr. Stacey--not only as dazzlingly
arrayed as when he first rose above Johnny Filgee's horizon, but
wearing, in addition to his jaunty business air, a look of
complacent expectation of the pretty girl whom he had met at the
ball. He had not seen her for a month. It was a happy inspiration
of his own that enabled him to present himself that morning in the
twin functions of a victorious Mercury and Apollo.
McKinstry had to be summoned from an adjacent meadow, while Cressy,
in the mean time, undertook to entertain the gallant stranger.
This was easily done. It was part of her fascinations that,
disdaining the ordinary real or assumed ignorance of the ingenue of
her class, she generally exhibited to her admirers (with perhaps
the single exception of the master) a laughing consciousness of the
state of mind into which her charms had thrown them. She understood
their passion if she could not accept it. This to a bashful rustic
community was helpful, but in the main unsatisfactory; with advances
so promptly unmasked, the most strategic retreat was apt to become
an utter rout. Leaning against the lintel of the door, her curved
hand shading the sparkling depths of her eyes, and the sunlight
striking down upon the pretty curves of her languid figure, she
awaited the attack.
"I haven't seen you, Miss Cressy, since we danced together--a month
ago."
"That was mighty rough papers," said Cressy, who was purposely
dialectical to strangers, "considering that you trapsed up and down
the lane, past the house, twice yesterday."
"Then you saw me?" said the young man, with a slightly discomfited
laugh.
"I did. And so did the hound, and so, I reckon, did Joe Masters
and the hired man. And when you pranced back on the home stretch,
there was the hound, Masters, the hired man, and Maw all on your
trail, and Paw bringin' up the rear with a shot-gun. There was
about a half a mile of you altogether." She removed her hand from
her eyes to indicate with a lazily graceful sweep this somewhat
imaginative procession, and laughed.
"You are certainly well guarded," said Stacey hesitatingly; "and
looking at you, Miss Cressy," he added boldly, "I don't wonder at
it."
"Well, it IS reckoned that next to Paw's boundaries I'm pretty well
protected from squatters and jumpers."
Forceful and quaint as her language was, the lazy sweetness of her
intonation, and the delicate refinement of her face, more than
atoned for it. It was unconventional and picturesque as her
gestures. So at least thought Mr. Stacey, and it emboldened him to
further gallantry.
"Well, Miss Cressy, as my business with your father to-day was to
try to effect a compromise of his boundary claims, perhaps you
might accept my services in your own behalf."
"Which means," responded the young lady pertly, "the same thing to
ME as to Paw. No trespassers but yourself. Thank you, sir." She
twirled lightly on her heel and dropped him that exaggerated
curtsey known to the school-children as a "cheese." It permitted
in its progress the glimpse of a pretty little slipper which
completed his subjugation.
"Well, if it's only a fair compromise," he began laughingly.
"Compromise means somebody giving up. Who is it?" she asked.
The infatuated Stacey had reached the point of thinking this
repartee if possible more killing than his own.
"Ha! That's for Miss Cressy to say."
But the young lady leaning back against the lintel with the
comfortable ease of being irresponsibly diverted, sagely pointed
out that that was the function of the arbitrator.
"Ah well, suppose we begin by giving up Seth Davis, eh? You see
that I'm pretty well posted, Miss Cressy."
"You alarm me," said Cressy sweetly. "But I reckon he HAD given
up."
"He was in the running that night at the ball. Looked half savage
while I was dancing with you. Wanted to eat me."
"Poor Seth! And he used to be SO particular in his food," said the
witty Cressy.
Mr. Stacey was convulsed. "And there's Mr. Dabney--Uncle Ben," he
continued, "eh? Very quiet but very sly. A dark horse, eh?
Pretends to take lessons for the sake of being near some one, eh?
Would he were a boy again because somebody else is a girl?"
"I should be frightened of you if you lived here always," returned
Cressy with invincible naivete; "but perhaps then you wouldn't know
so much."
Stacey simply accepted this as a compliment. "And there's
Masters," he said insinuatingly.
"Not Joe?" said Cressy with a low laugh, turning her eyes to the
door.
"Yes," said Stacey with a quick, uneasy smile. "Ah! I see we
mustn't drop HIM. Is he out THERE?" he added, trying to follow the
direction of her eyes.
But the young girl kept her face studiously averted. "Is that
all?" she asked after a pause.
"Well--there's that solemn school-master, who cut me out of the
waltz with you--that Mr. Ford."
Had he been a perfectly cool and impartial observer he would have
seen the slight tremor cross Cressy's soft eyelids even in profile,
followed by that momentary arrest of her whole face, mouth,
dimples, and eyes, which had overtaken it the night the master
entered the ball-room. But he was neither, and it passed quickly
and unnoticed. Her usual lithe but languid play of expression and
color came back, and she turned her head lazily towards the
speaker. "There's Paw coming. I suppose you wouldn't mind giving
me a sample of your style of arbitrating with him, before you try
it on me?"
"Certainly not," said Stacey, by no means displeased at the
prospect of having so pretty and intelligent a witness in the
daughter of what he believed would form an attractive display of
his diplomatic skill and graciousness to the father. "Don't go
away. I've got nothing to say Miss Cressy could not understand and
answer."
The jingling of spurs, and the shadow of McKinstry and his shot-gun
falling at this moment between the speaker and Cressy, spared her
the necessity of a reply. McKinstry cast an uneasy glance around
the apartment, and not seeing Mrs. McKinstry looked relieved, and
even the deep traces of the loss of a valuable steer that morning
partly faded from his Indian-red complexion. He placed his shot-
gun carefully in the corner, took his soft felt hat from his head,
folded it and put it in one of the capacious pockets of his jacket,
turned to his daughter, and laying his maimed hand familiarly on
her shoulder, said gravely, without looking at Stacey, "What might
the stranger be wantin', Cress?"
"Perhaps I'd better answer that myself," said Stacey briskly. "I'm
acting for Benham and Co., of San Francisco, who have bought the
Spanish title to part of this property. I"--
"Stop there!" said McKinstry, in a voice dull but distinct. He
took his hat from his pocket, put it on, walked to the corner and
took up his gun, looked at Stacey for the first time with narcotic
eyes that seemed to drowsily absorb his slight figure, then put the
gun back half contemptuously, and with a wave of his hand towards
the door, said: "We'll settle this yer outside. Cress, you stop in
here. There's man's talk goin' on."
"But, Paw," said Cressy, laying her hand languidly on her father's
sleeve without the least change of color or amused expression.
"This gentleman has come over here on a compromise."
"On a--WHICH?" said McKinstry, glancing scornfully out of the door
for some rare species of mustang vaguely suggested to him in that
unfamiliar word.
"To see if we couldn't come to some fair settlement," said Stacey.
"I've no objection to going outside with you, but I think we can
discuss this matter here just as well." His fine feathers had not
made him a coward, although his heart had beaten a little faster at
this sudden recollection of the dangerous reputation of his host.
"Go on," said McKinstry.
"The plain facts of the case are these," continued Stacey, with
more confidence. "We have sold a strip of this property covering
the land in dispute between you and Harrison. We are bound to put
our purchaser in peaceable possession. Now to save time we are
willing to buy that possession of any man who can give it. We are
told that you can."
"Well, considerin' that for the last four years I've been fightin'
night and day agin them low-down Harrisons for it, I reckon you've
been lied to," said McKinstry deliberately. "Why--except the
clearing on the north side, whar I put up a barn, thar ain't an
acre of it as hasn't been shifted first this side and then that as
fast ez I druv boundary stakes and fences, and the Harrisons pulled
'em up agin. Thar ain't more than fifty acres ez I've hed a clear
hold on, and I wouldn't hev had that ef it hadn't bin for the barn,
the raisin' alone o' which cost me a man, two horses, and this yer
little finger."
"Put us in possession of even that fifty acres, and WE'LL undertake
to hold the rest and eject those Harrisons from it," returned
Stacey complacently. "You understand that the moment we've made a
peaceable entrance to even a foothold on your side, the Harrisons
are only trespassers, and with the title to back us we can call on
the whole sheriff's posse to put them off. That's the law."
"That ar the law?" repeated McKinstry meditatively.
"Yes," said Stacey. "So," he continued, with a self-satisfied
smile to Cressy, "far from being hard on you, Mr. McKinstry, we're
rather inclined to put you on velvet. We offer you a fair price
for the only thing you can give us--actual possession; and we help
you with your old grudge against the Harrisons. We not only clear
them out, but we pay YOU for even the part they held adversely to
you."
Mr. McKinstry passed his three whole fingers over his forehead and
eyes as if troubled by a drowsy aching. "Then you don't reckon to
hev anythin' to say to them Harrisons?"
"We don't propose to recognize them in the matter at all," returned
Stacey.
"Nor allow 'em anythin'?"
"Not a cent! So you see, Mr. McKinstry," he continued magnanimously,
yet with a mischievous smile to Cressy, "there is nothing in this
amicable discussion that requires to be settled outside."
"Ain't there?" said McKinstry, in a dull, deliberate voice, raising
his eyes for the second time to Stacey. They were bloodshot, with
a heavy, hanging furtiveness, not unlike one of his own hunted
steers. "But I ain't kam enuff in yer." He moved to the door with
a beckoning of his fateful hand. "Outside a minit--EF you please."
Stacey started, shrugged his shoulders, and half defiantly stepped
beyond the threshold. Cressy, unchanged in color or expression,
lazily followed to the door.
"Wot," said McKinstry, slowly facing Stacey; "wot ef I refoose?
Wot ef I say I don't allow any man, or any bank, or any compromise,
to take up my quo'r'lls? Wot ef I say that low-down and mean as
them Harrisons is, they don't begin to be ez mean, ez low-down, ez
underhanded, ez sneakin' ez that yer compromise? Wot ef I say that
ef that's the kind o' hogwash that law and snivelization offers me
for peace and quietness, I'll take the fightin', and the law-
breakin', and the sheriff, and all h-ll for his posse instead? Wot
ef I say that?"
"It will only be my duty to repeat it," said Stacey, with an
affected carelessness which, however, did not conceal his surprise
and his discomfiture. "It's no affair of mine."
"Unless," said Cressy, assuming her old position against the lintel
of the door, and smoothing the worn bear-skin that served as a mat
with the toe of her slipper, "unless you've mixed it up with your
other arbitration, you know."
"Wot other arbitration?" asked McKinstry suddenly, with murky eyes.
Stacey cast a rapid, half indignant glance at the young girl, who
received it with her hands tucked behind her back, her lovely head
bent submissively forward, and a prolonged little laugh.
"Oh nothing, Paw," she said, "only a little private foolishness
betwixt me and the gentleman. You'd admire to hear him talk, Paw--
about other things than business. He's just that chipper and gay."
Nevertheless, as with a muttered "Good-morning" the young fellow
turned away, she quietly brushed past her father, and followed him--
with her hands still penitently behind her, and the rosy palms
turned upward--as far as the gate. Her single long Marguerite
braid of hair trailing down her back nearly to the hem of her
skirt, appeared to accent her demure reserve. At the gate she
shaded her eyes with her hand, and glanced upward.
"It don't seem to be a good day for arbitrating. A trifle early in
the season, ain't it?"
"Good-morning, Miss McKinstry."
She held out her hand. He took it with an affected ease but
cautiously, as if it had been the velvet paw of a young panther who
had scratched him. After all, what was she but the cub of the
untamed beast, McKinstry? He was well out of it! He was not
revengeful--but business was business, and he had given them the
first chance.
As his figure disappeared behind the buckeyes of the lane, Cressy
cast a glance at the declining sun. She re-entered the house, and
went directly to her room. As she passed the window, she could see
her father already remounted galloping towards the tules, as if in
search of that riparian "kam" his late interview had disturbed. A
few straggling bits of color in the sloping meadows were the
children coming home from school. She hastily tied a girlish sun-
bonnet under her chin, and slipping out of the back door, swept
like a lissom shadow along the line of fence until she seemed to
melt into the umbrage of the woods that fringed the distant north
boundary.
CHAPTER IX.
Meanwhile, unaware of her husband's sudden relapse to her old
border principles and of the visit that had induced it, Mrs.
McKinstry was slowly returning from a lugubrious recital of her
moods and feelings at the parson's. As she crossed the barren flat
and reached the wooded upland midway between the school-house and
the ranch, she saw before her the old familiar figure of Seth Davis
lounging on the trail. In her habitual loyalty to her husband's
feuds she would probably have stalked defiantly past him,
notwithstanding her late regrets of the broken engagement, but Seth
began to advance awkwardly towards her. In fact, he had noticed
the tall, gaunt, plaid-shawled and holland-bonneted figure
approaching, and had waited for it.
As he seemed intent upon getting in her way she stopped and raised
her right hand warningly before her. In spite of the shawl and the
sun-bonnet, suffering had implanted a rude Runic dignity to her
attitude. "Words that hev to be took back, Seth Davis," she said
hastily, "hev passed between you and my man. Out of my way, then,
that I may pass, too."
"Not much betwixt you and me, Aunt Rachel," he said with slouching
deprecation, using the old household title by which he had
familiarly known her. "I've nothin agin you--and I kin prove it by
wot I'm yer to say. And I ain't trucklin' to yer for myself, for
ez far ez me and your'n ez concerned," he continued, with a
malevolent glance, "thar ain't gold enough in Caleforny to mak the
weddin' ring that could hitch me and Cress together. I want to
tell you that you're bein' played; that you're bein' befooled and
bamboozled and honey-fogled. Thet while you're groanin' at class-
meetin' and Hiram's quo'llin' with Dad, and Joe Masters waitin'
round to pick up any bone that's throwed him, that sneakin',
hypocritical Yankee school-master is draggin' your daughter to h-ll
with him on the sly."
"Quit that, Seth Davis," said Mrs. McKinstry sternly, "or be man
enough to tell it to a man. That's Hiram's business to know."
"And what if he knows it well enough and winks at it? What if he's
willin' enough to truckle to it, to curry favor with them sneakin'
Yanks?" said Seth malignantly.
A spasm of savage conviction seized Mrs. McKinstry. But it was
more from her jealous fears of her husband's disloyalty than
concern for her daughter's transgression. Nevertheless, she said
desperately, "It's a lie. Where are your proofs?"
"Proofs?" returned Seth. "Who is it sneaks around the school-house
to have private talks with the school-master, and edges him on with
Cressy afore folks? Your husband. Who goes sneakin' off every
arternoon with that same cantin' hound of a school-master? Your
daughter. Who's been carryin' on together, and hidin' thick enough
to be ridden out on a rail together? Your daughter and the school-
master. Proofs?--ask anybody. Ask the children. Look yar--you,
Johnny--come here."
He had suddenly directed his voice to a blackberry bush near the
trail, from which the curly head of Johnny Filgee had just
appeared. That home-returning infant painfully disengaged himself,
his slate, his books, and his small dinner-pail half filled with
fruit as immature as himself, and came towards them sideways.
"Yer's a dime, Johnny, to git some candy," said Seth, endeavoring
to distort his passion-set face into a smile.
Johnny Filgee's small, berry-stained palm promptly closed over the
coin.
"Now, don't lie. Where's Cressy?"
"Kithin' her bo."
"Good boy. What bo?"
Johnny hesitated. He had once seen the school-master and Cressy
together; he had heard it whispered by the other children that they
loved each other. But looking at Seth and Mrs. McKinstry he felt
that something more tremendous than this stupid fact was required
of him for grown-up people, and being honest and imaginative, he
determined that it should be worth the money.
"Speak up, Johnny, don't be afeard to tell."
Johnny was not "afeard"--he was only thinking. He had it! He
remembered that he had just seen his paragon, the brilliant Stacey,
coming from the boundary woods. What more poetical and startlingly
effective than to connect him with Cressy? He replied promptly:--
"Mithter Thtathy. He gived her a watch and ring of truly gold.
Goin' to be married at Thacramento."
"You lyin' limb," said Seth, seizing him roughly. But Mrs.
McKinstry interposed.
"Let that brat go," she said with gleaming eyes. "I want to talk
to you." Seth released Johnny. "It's a trick,' he said, "he's bin
put up to it by that Ford."
But Johnny, after securing a safe vantage behind the blackberry
bush, determined to give them another trial--with facts.
"I know mor'n that," he called out.
"Git--you measly pup," said Seth savagely.
"I know Theriff Briggth, he rid over the boundary with a lot o' men
and horthes," said Johnny, with that hurried delivery with which he
was able to estop interruption. "Theed 'em go by. Maur Harrithon
theth his dad's goin' to chuck out ole McKinthtry. Hooray!"
Mrs. McKinstry turned her dark face sharply on Seth. "What's that
he sez?"
"Nothin' but children's gassin'," he answered, meeting her eyes
with an evil consciousness half loutish, half defiant, "and ef it
war true, it would only sarve Hiram McKinstry right."
She laid her hand upon his shoulder with swift suspicion. "Out o'
my way, Seth Davis," she said suddenly, pushing him aside. "Ef
this ez any underhanded work of yours, you'll pay for it."
She strode past him in the direction of Johnny, but at the approach
of the tall woman with the angry eyes, the boy flew. She hesitated
a moment, turned again with a threatening wave of the hand to Seth,
and started off rapidly in the direction of the boundary.
She had not placed so much faith in the boy's story as in the vague
revelation of evil in Davis's manner. If there was any "cussedness"
afoot, Seth, convinced of Cressy's unfaithfulness, and with no
further hope of any mediation from the parents, would know it.
Unless Hiram had been warned, he was still lulled in his fatuous
dream of civilization. At that time he and his men were in the
tules with the stock; to be satisfied, she herself must go to the
boundary.
She reached the ridge of the cottonwoods and sycamores, and a few
hundred yards further brought her to the edge of that gentle
southern slope which at last sank into the broad meadow of the
debatable ground. In spite of Stacey's invidious criticism of its
intrinsic value, this theatre of savage dissension, violence, and
bloodshed was by some irony of nature a pastoral landscape of
singular and peaceful repose. The soft glacis stretching before
her was in spring cerulean with lupins, and later starred with
mariposas. The meadow was transversely crossed by a curving line
of alders that indicated a rare water-course, of which in the dry
season only a single pool remained to flash back the unvarying sky.
There had been no attempt at cultivation of this broad expanse;
wild oats, mustard, and rank grasses left it a tossing sea of
turbulent and variegated color whose waves rode high enough to
engulf horse and rider in their choking depths. Even the traces of
human struggle, the uprooted stakes, scattered fence-rails, and
empty post-holes were forever hidden under these billows of
verdure. Midway of the field and near the water-course arose
McKinstry's barn--the solitary human structure whose rude,
misshapen, bulging sides and swallow-haunted eaves bursting with
hay from the neighboring pasture, seemed however only an
extravagant growth of the prolific soil. Mrs. McKinstry gazed at
it anxiously. There was no sign of life or movement near or around
it; it stood as it had always stood, deserted and solitary. But
turning her eyes to the right, beyond the water-course, she could
see a slight regular undulation of the grassy sea and what appeared
to be the drifting on its surface of half a dozen slouched hats in
the direction of the alders. There was no longer any doubt; a
party from the other side was approaching the border.
A shout and the quick galloping of hoofs behind her sent a thrill
of relief to her heart. She had barely time to draw aside as her
husband and his followers swept past her down the slope. But it
needed not his furious cry, "The Harrisons hev sold us out," to
tell her that the crisis had come.
She held her breath as the cavalcade diverged, and in open order
furiously approached the water-course, and she could see a sudden
check and hesitation in the movement in the meadow at that
unlooked-for onset. Then she thought of the barn. It would be a
rallying-point for them if driven back--a tower of defence if
besieged. There were arms secreted beneath the hay for such an
emergency. She would run there, swing-to its open doors, and get
ready to barricade them.
She ran crouchingly, seeking the higher grasses and brambles of the
ridge to escape observation from the meadow until she could descend
upon the barn from the rear. She threw aside her impeding shawl;
her brown holland sun-bonnet, torn off her head and hanging by its
strings from her shoulders, let her coarse silver-threaded hair
stream like a mane over her back; her face and hands were bleeding
from thorns and whitened by dust. But she struggled on fiercely
like some hunted animal until she reached the descending trail,
when, letting herself go blindly, only withheld by the long grasses
she clutched at wildly on either side, she half fell, half stumbled
down the slope and emerged beside the barn, breathless and exhausted.
But what a contrast was there! For an instant she could scarcely
believe that she had left the ridge with her husband's savage
outcry in her ears, and in her eyes the swift vision of his furious
cavalcade. The boundary meadow was hidden by the soft lines of
graceful willows in whose dim recesses the figures of the
passionate horsemen seemed to have melted forever. There was
nothing now to interrupt the long vista of peaceful beauty that
stretched before her through this lonely hollow to the distant
sleeping hills. The bursting barn in the foreground, heaped with
grain that fringed its eaves and bristled from its windows and
doors until its unlovely bulk was hidden in trailing feathery
outlines; the gentle flutter of wings and soothing twitter of
swallows and jays around its open rafters, and the drifting shadows
of a few circling crows above it; the drowsy song of bees on the
wild mustard that half hid its walls with yellow bloom; the sound
of faintly-trickling water in one of those old Indian-haunted
springs that had given its name to the locality; all these for an
instant touched the senses of this hard, fierce woman as she had
not been touched since she was a girl. For one brief moment the
joys of peace and that matured repose that never had been hers
flashed upon her; but with it came the savage consciousness that
even now it was being wrested away, and the thought fired her blood
again. She listened eagerly for a second in the direction of the
meadow; there was no report of fire-arms--there was yet time to
prepare the barn for defence. She ran to the front of the building
and seized the latch of the half-closed door. A little feminine
cry that was half a laugh came from within, with the rapid rustle
of a skirt and as the door swung open a light figure vanished
through the rear window. The slanting sunlight falling in the
shadowed interior disclosed only the single erect figure of the
school-master John Ford.
The first confusion and embarrassment of an interrupted rendezvous
that had colored Ford's cheeks, gave way to a look of alarm as he
caught sight of the bleeding face and dishevelled figure of Mrs.
McKinstry. She saw it. To her distorted fancy it seemed only a
proof of deeper guilt. Without a word she closed the heavy door
behind her and swung the huge cross-bar unaided to its place. She
then turned and confronted him, wiping the dust from her face and
arms with her torn and dangling sun-bonnet in a way that recalled
her attitude on the first day he had met her.
"That was Cress with ye?" she said.
He hesitated, still gazing at her in wonder.
"Don't lie."
He started. "I don't propose to," he retorted indignantly. "It
was"--
"I don't ask ye how long this yer's bin goin' on," she said,
pointing to Cressy's sun-bonnet, a few books, and a scattered
nosegay of wild flowers lying on the hay; "and I don't want to
know. In five minutes either her father will be here, or them
hell-hounds of Harrison's who've sold him out will swarm round
this barn to git possesshun. Ef this yer"--she again pointed
contemptuously to the objects just indicated--"means that you've
cast your lot with US and kalkilate to take our bitter with our
sweet, ye'll lift up that stack of hay and bring out a gun to help
defend it. Ef you're meanin' anythin' else, Ford, you'll hide
yourself in that hay till Hiram comes and has time enough to attend
to ye."
"And if I choose to do neither?" he said haughtily.
She looked at him in unutterable scorn. "There's the winder--take
it while there's time, afore I bar it. Ef you see Hiram, tell him
ye left an old woman behind ye to defend the place whar you uster
hide with her darter."
Before he could reply there was a distant report, followed almost
directly by another. With a movement of irritation he walked to
the window, turned and looked at her--bolted it, and came back.
"Where's that gun?" he said almost rudely.
"I reckon's that would fetch ye," she said, dragging away the hay
and disclosing a long trough-like box covered with tarpaulin. It
proved to contain powder, shot, and two guns. He took one.
"I suppose I may know what I am fighting for?" he said dryly.
"Ye might say 'Cress' ef they"--indicating the direction of the
reports--"happen to ask ye," she returned with equal sobriety.
"Jess now ye kin take your stand up thar in the loft and see what's
comin'."
He did not linger, but climbed to the place assigned him, glad to
escape the company of the woman who at that moment he almost hated.
In his unreflecting passion for Cressy he had always evaded the
thought of this relationship or propinquity; the mother had
recalled it to him in a way that imperilled even his passion for
the daughter; his mind was wholly preoccupied with the idiotic,
exasperating, and utterly hopeless position that had been forced
upon him. In the bitterness of his spirit his sense of personal
danger was so far absorbed that he speculated on the chance
bullet in the melee that might end his folly and relieve him of
responsibility. Shut up in a barn with a furious woman, in a
lawless defence of questionable rights--with the added consciousness
that an equally questionable passion had drawn him into it, and
that SHE knew it--death seemed to offer the only escape from the
explanation he could never give. If another sting could have been
added it was the absurd conviction that Cressy would not appreciate
his sacrifice, but was perhaps even at that moment calmly
congratulating herself on the felicitousness of the complication
in which she had left him.
Suddenly he heard a shout and the tramping of horse. The sides of
the loft were scantily boarded to allow the extension of the pent-
up grain, and between the interstices Ford, without being himself
seen, had an uninterrupted view of the plain between him and the
line of willows. As he gazed, five men hurriedly issued from the
extreme left and ran towards the barn. McKinstry and his followers
simultaneously broke from the same covert further to the right and
galloped forward to intercept them. But although mounted, the
greater distance they had to traverse brought them to the rear of
the building only as the Harrison party came to a sudden halt
before the closed and barricaded doors of the usually defenceless
barn. The discomfiture of the latter was greeted by a derisive
shout from the McKinstry party--albeit, equally astonished. But in
that brief moment Ford recognized in the leader of the Harrisons
the well-known figure of the Sheriff of Tuolumne. It needed only
this to cap the climax of the fatality that seemed to pursue him.
He was no longer a lawless opposer of equally lawless forces, but
he was actually resisting the law itself. He understood the
situation now. It was some idiotic blunder of Uncle Ben's that
had precipitated this attack.
The belligerents had already cocked their weapons, although the
barn was still a rampart between the parties. But an adroit
flanker of McKinstry's, creeping through the tall mustard, managed
to take up an enfilading position as the Harrisons advanced to
break in the door. A threatening shout from the ambuscaded
partisans caused them to hurriedly fall back towards the rear of
the barn. There was a pause, and then began the usual Homeric
chaff,--with this Western difference that it was cunningly intended
to draw the other's fire.
"Why don't you blaze away at the door, you ---- ----! It won't
hurt ye!"
"He's afraid the bolt will shoot back!" Laughter from the
McKinstrys.
"Come outer the tall grass and show yourself, you black, mud-eating
gopher."
"He can't. He's dropped his grit and is sarchin' for it." Goading
laughter from the Harrisons.
Each man waited for that single shot which would precipitate the
fight. Even in their lawlessness the rude instinct of the duello
swayed them. The officer of the law recognized the principle as
well as its practical advantage in a collision, but he hesitated to
sacrifice one of his men in an attack on the barn, which would draw
the fire of McKinstry at that necessarily fatal range. As a brave
man he would have taken the risk himself, but as a prudent one, he
reflected that his hurriedly collected posse were all partisans,
and if he fell the conflict would resolve itself into a purely
partisan struggle without a single unprejudiced witness to justify
his conduct in the popular eye. The master also knew this; it had
checked his first impulse to come forward as a mediator; his only
reliance now was on Mrs. McKinstry's restraint and the sheriff's
forbearance. The next instant both seemed to be imperilled.
"Well, why don't you wade in?" sneered Dick McKinstry; "who do you
reckon's hidden in the barn?"
"I'll tell ye," said a harsh, passionate voice from the hill-side.
"It's Cressy McKinstry and the school-master hidin' in the hay."
Both parties turned quickly towards the intruder who had approached
them unperceived. But the speech was followed by a more startling
revulsion of sentiment as Mrs. McKinstry's voice rang out from the
barn, "You lie, Seth Davis!"
The brief advantage offered to the sheriff in Davis's advent as a
neutral witness, was utterly lost by this unlooked-for revelation
of Mrs. McKinstry's presence in the barn! The fates were clearly
against him! A woman in the fight, and an old one at that! A
white woman to be forcibly ejected! In the whole unwritten code of
Southwestern chivalry there was no such precedent.
"Stand back," he said disgustedly to his followers, "stand back and
let the d----d barn slide. But you, Hiram McKinstry, I'll give YOU
five minutes to shake yourself clear of your wife's petticoats and
git!" His blood was up now--the quicker from his momentary
weakness and the trick of which he thought himself a dupe.
Again the fatal signal seemed imminent, again it was delayed. For
Hiram McKinstry, with clanking spurs and rifle in hand stepped from
behind the barn, full in the presence of his antagonists.
"Ez to my gitten in five minits," he began in his laziest,
drowsiest manner, "we'll see when the time's up. But jest now
words hev passed betwixt my wife and Seth Davis. Afore anythin'
else goes on yer, he's got to take HIS back. My wife allows he
lies; I allow he lies too, and I stan' here to say it."
The right of personal insult to precedence of redress was too old a
frontier principle to be gainsaid now. Both parties held back and
every eye was turned to where Seth Davis had been standing. But he
had disappeared.
Where?
When Mrs. McKinstry hurled her denial from the barn, he had taken
advantage of the greater surprise to leap to one of the trusses of
hay that projected beyond the loft, and secure a footing from which
he quickly scrambled through the open scantling to the interior.
The master who, startled by his voice, had made his way through the
loose grain to the rear, reached it as Seth half crawled, half
tumbled through. Their eyes met in a single flash of rage, but
before Seth could utter an outcry, the master had dropped his gun,
seized him around the neck and crammed a thick handful of the soft
hay he had hurriedly snatched up into his face and gasping mouth.
A furious but silent struggle ensued; the yielding hay on which
they both fell deadened all sound of a scuffle and concealed them
from view; masses of it, already loosened by the intruder's
entrance, and dislodged in their contortions began to slip through
the opening to the ground. The master, still uppermost and holding
Seth firmly down, allowed himself to slip with them, shoving his
adversary before him; the maddened Missourian detecting his
purpose, made a desperate attempt to change his position, and
succeeded in raising his knee against the master's chest. Ford,
guarding against what seemed to be only a wrestler's strategy,
contented himself by locking the bent knee firmly in that position,
and thus unwittingly gave Seth the looked-for opportunity of
drawing the bowie-knife concealed in his boot leg. He knew his
mistake only as Seth violently freed his arm, and threw it upward
for the blow. He heard the steel slither like a scythe through the
hay, and unlocking his hold desperately threw himself on the
uplifted arm. The movement saved him. For the released body of
Seth slipped rapidly through the opening, upheld for a single
instant on the verge by the grasp of the master's two hands on the
arm that still held the knife, and then dropped heavily downward.
Even then, the hay that had slipped before him would have broken
his fall, but his head came in violent contact with some farming
implements standing against the wall, and without a cry he was
stretched senseless on the ground. The whole occurrence passed so
rapidly and so noiselessly that not only did McKinstry's challenge
fall upon his already unconscious ears, but the loosened hay which
in the master's struggles to recover himself still continued to
slide gently from the loft, actually hid him from the eyes of the
spectators who sought him a moment afterwards. A mass of hay and
wild oats, dislodged apparently by Mrs. McKinstry in securing her
defences, was all that met their eyes; even the woman herself was
unconscious of the deadly struggle that had taken place above her.
The master staggered to an upright position half choked and half
blinded with dust, turgid and bursting with the rush of blood to
his head, but clear and collected in mind, and unremorsefully
triumphant. Unconscious of the real extent of Seth's catastrophe
he groped for and seized his gun, examined the cap and eagerly
waited for a renewed attack. "He tried to kill me; he would have
killed me; if he comes again I must kill him," he kept repeating to
himself. It never occurred to him that this was inconsistent with
his previous thought--indeed with the whole tenor of his belief.
Perhaps the most peaceful man who has been once put in peril of
life by an adversary, who has recognized death threatening him in
the eye of his antagonist, is by some strange paradox not likely to
hold his own life or the life of his adversary as dearly as before.
Everything was silent now. The suspense irritated him, he no
longer dreaded but even longed for the shot that would precipitate
hostilities. What were they doing? Guided by Seth, were they
concerting a fresh attack?
Listening more intently he became aware of a distant shouting, and
even more distinctly, of the dull, heavy trampling of hoofs. A
sudden angry fear that the McKinstrys had been beaten off and were
flying--a fear and anger that now for the first time identified him
with their cause--came over him, and he scrambled quickly towards
the opening below. But the sound was approaching and with it came
a voice.
"Hold on there, sheriff!"
It was the voice of the agent Stacey.
There was a pause of reluctant murmuring. But the warning was
enforced by a command from another voice--weak, unheroic, but
familiar, "I order this yer to stop--right yer!"
A burst of ironical laughter followed. The voice was Uncle Ben's.
"Stand back! This is no time for foolin'," said the sheriff
roughly.
"He's right, Sheriff Briggs," said Stacey's voice hurriedly;
"you're acting for HIM; he's the owner of the land."
"What? That Ben Dabney?"
"Yes; he's Daubigny, who bought the title from us."
There was a momentary hush, and then a hurried murmur.
"Which means, gents," rose Uncle Ben's voice persuasively, "that
this yer young man, though fair-minded and well-intended, hez bin a
leetle too chipper and previous in orderin' out the law. This yer
ain't no law matter with ME, boys. It ain't to be settled by law-
papers, nor shot-guns and deringers. It's suthin' to be chawed
over sociable-like, between drinks. Ef any harm hez bin done, ef
anythin's happened, I'm yer to 'demnify the sheriff, and make it
comf'ble all round. Yer know me, boys. I'm talkin'. It's me--
Dabney, or Daubigny, which ever way you like it."
But in the silence that followed, the passions had not yet
evidently cooled. It was broken by the sarcastic drawl of Dick
McKinstry: "If them Harrisons don't mind heven had their medders
trampled over by a few white men, why"--
"The sheriff ez 'demnified for that," interrupted Uncle Ben
hastily.
"'N ef Dick McKinstry don't mind the damage to his pants in
crawlin' out o' gunshot in the tall grass"--retorted Joe Harrison.
"I'm yer to settle that, boys," said Uncle Ben cheerfully.
"But who'll settle THIS?" clamored the voice of the older Harrison
from behind the barn where he had stumbled in crossing the fallen
hay. "Yer's Seth Davis lyin' in the hay with the top of his head
busted. Who's to pay for that?"
There was a rush to the spot, and a quick cry of reaction.
"Whose work is this?" demanded the sheriff's voice, with official
severity.
The master uttered an instinctive exclamation of defiance, and
dropping quickly to the barn floor, would the next moment have
opened the door and declared himself, but Mrs. McKinstry, after a
single glance at his determined face, suddenly threw herself before
him with an imperious gesture of silence. Then her voice rang
clearly from the barn:--
"Well, if it's the hound that tried to force his way in yer, I
reckon ye kin put that down to ME!"
CHAPTER X.
It was known to Indian Spring, the next day, amid great excitement,
that a serious fracas had been prevented on the ill-fated boundary
by the dramatic appearance of Uncle Ben Dabney, not only as a
peacemaker, but as Mr. Daubigny the bona fide purchaser and owner
of the land. It was known and accepted with great hilarity that
"old marm McKinstry" had defended the barn alone and unaided, with--
as variously stated--a pitchfork, an old stable-broom, and a pail
of dirty water, against Harrison, his party, and the entire able
posse of the Sheriff of Tuolumne County, with no further damage
than a scalp wound which the head of Seth Davis received while
falling from the loft of the barn from which he had been dislodged
by Mrs. McKinstry and the broom aforesaid. It was known with
unanimous approbation that the acquisition of the land-title by a
hitherto humble citizen of Indian Spring was a triumph of the
settlement over foreign interference. But it was not known that
the school-master was a participant in the fight, or even present
on the spot. At Mrs. McKinstry's suggestion he had remained
concealed in the loft until after the withdrawal of both parties
and the still unconscious Seth. When Ford had remonstrated, with
the remark that Seth would be sure to declare the truth when he
recovered his senses, Mrs. McKinstry smiled grimly: "I reckon when
he comes to know I was with ye all the time, he'd rather hev it
allowed that I licked him than YOU. I don't say he'll let it pass
ez far ez you're concerned or won't try to get even with ye, but he
won't go round tellin' WHY. However," she added still more grimly,
"if you think you're ekul to tellin' the hull story--how ye kem to
be yer and that Seth wasn't lyin' arter all when he blurted it out
afore 'em--why I sha'n't hinder ye." The master said no more. And
indeed for a day or two nothing transpired to show that Seth was
not equally reticent.
Nevertheless Mr. Ford was far from being satisfied with the issue
of his adventure. His relations with Cressy were known to the
mother, and although she had not again alluded to them, she would
probably inform her husband. Yet he could not help noticing, with
a mingling of unreasoning relief and equally unreasoning distrust,
that she exhibited a scornful unconcern in the matter, apart from
the singular use to which she had put it. He could hardly count
upon McKinstry, with his heavy, blind devotion to Cressy, being as
indifferent. On the contrary, he had acquired the impression,
without caring to examine it closely, that her father would not be
displeased at his marrying Cressy, for it would really amount to
that. But here again he was forced to contemplate what he had
always avoided, the possible meaning and result of their intimacy.
In the reckless, thoughtless, extravagant--yet thus far innocent--
indulgence of their mutual passion, he had never spoken of
marriage, nor--and it struck him now with the same incongruous
mingling of relief and uneasiness--had SHE! Perhaps this might
have arisen from some superstitious or sensitive recollection on
her part of her previous engagement to Seth, but he remembered now
that they had not even exchanged the usual vows of eternal
constancy. It may seem strange that, in the half-dozen stolen and
rapturous interviews which had taken place between these young
lovers, there had been no suggestion of the future, nor any of
those glowing projects for a united destiny peculiar to their years
and inexperience. They had lived entirely in a blissful present,
with no plans beyond their next rendezvous. In that mysterious and
sudden absorption of each other, not only the past, but the future
seemed to have been forgotten.
These thoughts were passing through his mind the next afternoon to
the prejudice of that calm and studious repose which the deserted
school-house usually superinduced, and which had been so fondly
noted by McKinstry and Uncle Ben. The latter had not arrived for
his usual lesson; it was possible that undue attention had been
attracted to his movements now that his good fortune was known; and
the master was alone save for the occasional swooping incursion of
a depredatory jay in search of crumbs from the children's
luncheons, who added apparently querulous insult to the larcenous
act. He regretted Uncle Ben's absence, as he wanted to know more
about his connection with the Harrison attack and his eventual
intentions. Ever since the master emerged from the barn and
regained his hotel under cover of the darkness, he had heard only
the vaguest rumors, and he purposely avoided direct inquiry.
He had been quite prepared for Cressy's absence from school that
morning--indeed in his present vacillating mood he had felt that
her presence would have been irksome and embarrassing; but it
struck him suddenly and unpleasantly that her easy desertion of him
at that critical moment in the barn had not since been followed by
the least sign of anxiety to know the result of her mother's
interference. What did she imagine had transpired between Mrs.
McKinstry and himself? Had she confidently expected her mother's
prompt acceptance of the situation and a reconciliation? Was that
the reason why she had treated that interruption as lightly as if
she were already his recognized betrothed? Had she even calculated
upon it? had she--? He stopped, his cheek glowing from irritation
under the suspicion, and shame at the disloyalty of entertaining it.
Opening his desk, he began to arrange his papers mechanically, when
he discovered, with a slight feeling of annoyance, that he had
placed Cressy's bouquet--now dried and withered--in the same
pigeon-hole with the mysterious letters with which he had so often
communed in former days. He at once separated them with a half
bitter smile, yet after a moment's hesitation, and with his old
sense of attempting to revive a forgotten association, he tried to
re-peruse them. But they did not even restrain his straying
thoughts, nor prevent him from detecting a singular occurrence.
The nearly level sun was, after its old fashion, already hanging
the shadowed tassels of the pine boughs like a garland on the wall.
But the shadow seemed to have suddenly grown larger and more
compact, and he turned, with a quick consciousness of some
interposing figure at the pane. Nothing however was to be seen.
Yet so impressed had he been that he walked to the door and stepped
from the porch to discover the intruder. The clearing was
deserted, there was a slight rustling in the adjacent laurels, but
no human being was visible. Nevertheless the old feeling of
security and isolation which had never been quite the same since
Mr. McKinstry's confession, seemed now to have fled the sylvan
school-house altogether, and he somewhat angrily closed his desk,
locked it, and determined to go home.
His way lay through the first belt of pines towards the mining-
flat, but to-day from some vague impulse he turned and followed the
ridge. He had not proceeded far when he perceived Rupert Filgee
lounging before him on the trail, and at a little distance further
on his brother Johnny. At the sight of these two favorite pupils
Mr. Ford's heart smote him with a consciousness that he had of late
neglected them, possibly because Rupert's lofty scorn of the
"silly" sex was not as amusing to him as formerly, and possibly
because Johnny's curiosity had been at times obtrusive. He however
quickened his pace and joined Rupert, laying his hand familiarly as
of old on his shoulder. To his surprise the boy received his
advances with some constraint and awkwardness, glancing uneasily in
the direction of Johnny. A sudden idea crossed Mr. Ford's mind.
"Were you looking for me at the schoolroom just now?"
"No, sir."
"You didn't look in at the window to see if I was there?" continued
the master.
"No, sir."
The master glanced at Rupert. Truth-telling was a part of Rupert's
truculent temper, although, as the boy had often bitterly remarked,
it had always "told agin' him."
"All right," said the master, perfectly convinced. "It must have
been my fancy; but I thought somebody looked in--or passed by the
window."
But here Johnny, who had overheard the dialogue and approached
them, suddenly threw himself upon his brother's unoffending legs
and commenced to beat and pull them about with unintelligible
protests. Rupert, without looking down, said quietly, "Quit that
now--I won't, I tell ye," and went through certain automatic
movements of dislodging Johnny as if he were a mere impeding puppy.
"What's the matter, Johnny?" said the master, to whom these
gyrations were not unfamiliar.
Johnny only replied by a new grip of his brother's trousers.
"Well, sir," said Rupert, slightly recovering his dimples and his
readiness, "Johnny, yer, wants me to tell ye something. Ef he
wasn't the most original self-cocking, God-forsaken liar in Injin
Spring--ef he didn't lie awake in his crib mornin's to invent lies
fer the day, I wouldn't mind tellin' ye, and would hev told you
before. However, since you ask, and since you think you saw
somebody around the school-house, Johnny yer allows that Seth Davis
is spyin' round and followin' ye wherever you go, and he dragged me
down yer to see it. He says he saw him doggin' ye."
"With a knife and pithtolth," added Johnny's boundless imagination,
to the detriment of his limited facts.
Mr. Ford looked keenly from the one to the other, but rather with a
suspicion that they were cognizant of his late fracas than belief
in the truth of Johnny's statement.
"And what do YOU think of it, Rupert?" he asked carelessly.
I think, sir," said Rupert, "that allowin'--for onct--that Johnny
ain't lying, mebbee it's Cressy McKinstry that Seth's huntin'
round, and knowin' that she's always runnin' after you"--he
stopped, and reddening with a newborn sense that his fatal
truthfulness had led him into a glaring indelicacy towards the
master, hurriedly added: "I mean, sir, that mebbee it's Uncle Ben
he's jealous of, now that he's got rich enough for Cressy to hev
him, and knowin' he comes to school in the afternoon perhaps"--
"'Tain't either!" broke in Johnny promptly. "Theth's over ther
beyond the thchool, and Crethy's eatin' ithecream at the bakerth
with Uncle Ben."
"Well, suppose she is, Seth don't know it, silly!" answered Rupert,
sharply. Then more politely to the master: "That's it! Seth has
seen Uncle Ben gallivanting with Cressy and thinks he's bringing
her over yer. Don't you see?"
The master however did not see but one thing. The girl who had
only two days ago carelessly left it to him to explain a compromising
situation to her mother--this girl who had precipitated him into a
frontier fight to the peril of his position and her good name, was
calmly eating ices with an available suitor without the least
concern of the past! The connection was perhaps illogical, but it
was unpleasant. It was the more awkward from the fact that he
fancied that not only Rupert's beautiful eyes, but even the infant
Johnny's round ones, were fixed upon him with an embarrassed
expression of hesitating and foreboding sympathy.
"I think Johnny believes what he says--don't you, Johnny?" he
smiled with an assumption of cheerful ease, "but I see no necessity
just yet for binding Seth Davis over to keep the peace. Tell me
about yourself, Rupe. I hope Uncle Ben doesn't think of changing
his young tutor with his good fortune?"
"No, sir," returned Rupert brightening; "he promises to take me to
Sacramento with him as his private secretary or confidential clerk,
you know, ef--ef"--he hesitated again with very un-Rupert-like
caution, "ef things go as he wants 'em." He stopped awkwardly and
his brown eyes became clouded. "Like ez not, Mr. Ford, he's only
foolin' me--and--HIMSELF." The boy's eyes sought the master's
curiously.
"I don't know about that," returned Mr. Ford uneasily, with a
certain recollection of Uncle Ben's triumph over his own
incredulity; "he surely hasn't shown himself a fool or a boaster so
far. I consider your prospect a very fair one, and I wish you joy
of it, my boy." He ran his fingers through Rupert's curls in his
old caressing fashion, the more tenderly perhaps that he fancied he
still saw symptoms of stormy and wet weather in the boy's brown
eyes. "Run along home, both of you, and don't worry yourselves
about me."
He turned away, but had scarcely proceeded half a dozen yards
before he felt a tug at his coat. Looking down he saw the
diminutive Johnny. "They'll be comin' home thith way," he said,
reaching up in a hoarse confidential whisper.
"Who?"
"Crethy and 'im."
But before the master could make any response to this presumably
gratifying information, Johnny had rejoined his brother. The two
boys waved their hands towards him with the same diffident and
mysterious sympathy that left him hesitating between a smile and a
frown. Then he proceeded on his way. Nevertheless, for no other
reason than that he felt a sudden distaste to meeting any one, when
he reached the point where the trail descended directly to the
settlement, he turned into a longer and more solitary detour by the
woods.
The sun was already so low that its long rays pierced the forest
from beneath, and suffused the dim colonnade of straight pine
shafts with a golden haze, while it left the dense intercrossed
branches fifty feet above in deeper shadow. Walking in this yellow
twilight, with his feet noiselessly treading down the yielding
carpet of pine needles, it seemed to the master that he was passing
through the woods in a dream. There was no sound but the dull
intermittent double knock of the wood-pecker, or the drowsy croak
of some early roosting bird; all suggestion of the settlement, with
all traces of human contiguity, were left far behind. It was
therefore with a strange and nervous sense of being softly hailed
by some woodland sprite that he seemed to hear his own name faintly
wafted upon the air. He turned quickly; it was Cressy, panting
behind him! Even then, in her white closely gathered skirts, her
bared head and graceful arching neck bent forward, her flying
braids freed from the straw hat which she had swung from her arm so
as not to impede her flight, there was so much of the following
Maenad about her that he was for an instant startled.
He stopped; she bounded to him, and throwing her arms around his
neck with a light laugh, let herself hang for a moment breathless
on his breast. Then recovering her speech she said slowly:--
"I started on an Injin trot after you, just as you turned off the
trail, but you'd got so far ahead while I was shaking myself clear
of Uncle Ben that I had to jist lope the whole way through the
woods to catch up." She stopped, and looking up into his troubled
face caught his cheeks between her hands, and bringing his knit
brows down to the level of her humid blue eyes said, "You haven't
kissed me yet. What's the matter?"
"Doesn't it strike you that I might ask that question, considering
that it's three days since I've seen you, and that you left me, in
a rather awkward position, to explain matters to your mother?" he
said coldly. He had formulated the sentence in his mind some
moments before, but now that it was uttered, it appeared singularly
weak and impotent.
"That's so," she said with a frank laugh, burying her face in his
waistcoat. "You see, dandy boy"--his pet name--"I reckoned for
that reason we'd better lie low for a day or two. Well," she
continued, untying his cravat and retying it again, "how DID you
crawl out of it?"
"Do you mean to say your mother did not tell you?" he asked
indignantly.
"Why should she?" returned Cressy lazily. "She never talks to me
of these things, honey."
"And you knew nothing about it?"
Cressy shook her head, and then winding one of her long braids
around the young man's neck, offered the end of it to his mouth,
and on his sternly declining it, took it in her own.
Yet even her ignorance of what had really happened did not account
to the master for the indifference of her long silence, and albeit
conscious of some inefficiency in his present unheroic attitude, he
continued sarcastically, "May I ask WHAT you imagined would happen
when you left me?"
"Well," said Cressy confidently, "I reckoned, chile, you could lie
as well as the next man, and that, being gifted, you'd sling Maw
something new and purty. Why, I ain't got no fancy, but I fixed up
something against Paw's questioning ME. I made that conceited
Masters promise to swear that HE was in the barn with me. Then I
calculated to tell Paw that you came meandering along just before
Maw popped in, and that I skedaddled to join Masters. Of course,"
she added quickly, tightening her hold of the master as he made a
sudden attempt at withdrawal, "I didn't let on to Masters WHY I
wanted him to promise, or that you were there."
"Cressy," said Ford, irritated beyond measure, "are you mad, or do
you think I am?"
The girl's face changed. She cast a half frightened, half
questioning glance at his eyes and then around the darkening aisle.
"If we're going to quarrel, Jack," she said hurriedly, "don't let's
do it BEFORE FOLKS."
"In the name of Heaven," he said, following her eyes indignantly,
"what do you mean?"
"I mean," she said, with a slight shiver of resignation and scorn,
"if you--oh dear! if IT'S ALL going to be like THEM, let's keep it
to ourselves."
He gazed at her in hopeless bewilderment. Did she really mean that
she was more frightened at the possible revelation of their
disagreement than of their intimacy?
"Come," she continued tenderly, still glancing, however, uneasily
around her, "come! We'll be more comfortable in the hollow. It's
only a step." Still holding him by her braid she half led, half
dragged him away. To the right was one of those sudden depressions
in the ground caused by the subsidence of the earth from hidden
springs and the uprooting of one or two of the larger trees. When
she had forced him down this declivity below the level of the
needle-strewn forest floor, she seated him upon a mossy root, and
shaking out her skirts in a half childlike, half coquettish way,
comfortably seated herself in his lap, with her arm supplementing
the clinging braid around his neck.
"Now hark to me, and don't holler so loud," she said turning his
face to her questioning eyes. "What's gone of you anyway, nigger
boy?" It should be premised that Cressy's terms of endearment were
mainly negro-dialectical, reminiscences of her brief babyhood, her
slave-nurse, and the only playmates she had ever known.
Still implacable, the master coldly repeated the counts of his
indictment against the girl's strange indifference and still
stranger entanglements, winding up by setting forth the whole story
of his interview with her mother, his forced defence of the barn,
Seth's outspoken accusation, and their silent and furious struggle
in the loft. But if he had expected that this daughter of a
Southwestern fighter would betray any enthusiasm over her lover's
participation in one of their characteristic feuds--if he looked
for any fond praise for his own prowess, he was bitterly mistaken.
She loosened her arm from his neck of her own accord, unwound the
braid, and putting her two little hands clasped between her knees,
crossed her small feet before her, and, albeit still in his lap,
looked the picture of languid dejection.
"Maw ought to have more sense, and you ought to have lit out of the
window after me," she said with a lazy sigh. "Fightin' ain't in
your line--it's too much like THEM. That Seth's sure to get even
with you."
"I can protect myself," he said haughtily. Nevertheless he had a
depressing consciousness that his lithe and graceful burden was
somewhat in the way of any heroic expression.
"Seth can lick you out of your boots, chile," she said with naive
abstraction. Then, as he struggled to secure an upright position,
"Don't git riled, honey. Of course you'd let them kill you before
YOU'D give in. But that's their best holt--that's their trade!
That's all they can do--don't you see? That's where YOU'RE not
like THEM--that's why you're not their low down kind! That's why
you're my boy--that's why I love you!"
She had thrown her whole weight again upon his shoulders until she
had forced him back to his seat. Then, with her locked hands again
around his neck, she looked intently into his face. The varying
color dropped from her cheeks, her eyes seemed to grow larger, the
same look of rapt absorption and possession that had so transfigured
her young face at the ball was fixed upon it now. Her lips parted
slightly, she seemed to murmur rather than speak:--
"What are these people to us? What are Seth's jealousies, Uncle
Ben's and Masters's foolishness, Paw and Maw's quarr'ls and
tantrums to you and me, dear? What is it what THEY think, what
they reckon, what they plan out, and what they set themselves
against--to us? We love each other, we belong to each other,
without their help or their hindrance. From the time we first saw
each other it was so, and from that time Paw and Maw, and Seth and
Masters, and even YOU and ME, dear, had nothing else to do. That
was love as I know it; not Seth's sneaking rages, and Uncle Ben's
sneaking fooleries, and Masters's sneaking conceit, but only love.
And knowing that, I let Seth rage, and Uncle Ben dawdle, and
Masters trifle--and for what? To keep them from me and my boy.
They were satisfied, and we were happy."
Vague and unreasoning as he knew her speech to be, the rapt and
perfect conviction with which it was uttered staggered him.
"But how is this to end, Cressy?" he said passionately.
The abstracted look passed, and the slight color and delicate
mobility of her face returned. "To end, dandy boy?" she repeated
lazily. "You didn't think of marrying me--did you?"
He blushed, stammered, and said "Yes," albeit with all his past
vacillation and his present distrust of her, transparent on his
cheek and audible in his voice.
"No, dear," she said quietly, reaching down, untying her little
shoe and shaking the dust and pine needles from its recesses, "no!
I don't know enough to be a wife to you, just now, and you know it.
And I couldn't keep a house fit for you, and you couldn't afford to
keep ME without it. And then it would be all known, and it
wouldn't be us two, dear, and our lonely meetings any more. And we
couldn't be engaged--that would be too much like me and Seth over
again. That's what you mean, dandy boy--for you're only a dandy
boy, you know, and they don't get married to backwood Southern
girls who haven't a nigger to bless themselves with since the war!
No," she continued, lifting her proud little head so promptly after
Ford had recovered from his surprise as to make the ruse of
emptying her shoe perfectly palpable, "no, that's what we've both
allowed, dear, all along. And now, honey, it's near time for me to
go. Tell me something good--before I go. Tell me that you love me
as you used to--tell me how you felt that night at the ball when
you first knew we loved each other. But stop--kiss me first--
there, once more--for keeps."
CHAPTER XI.
When Uncle Ben, or "Benjamin Daubigny, Esq.," as he was already
known in the columns of the "Star," accompanied Miss Cressy
McKinstry on her way home after the first display of attention and
hospitality since his accession to wealth and position, he remained
for some moments in a state of bewildered and smiling idiocy. It
was true that their meeting was chance and accidental; it was true
that Cressy had accepted his attention with lazy amusement; it was
true that she had suddenly and audaciously left him on the borders
of the McKinstry woods in a way that might have seemed rude and
abrupt to any escort less invincibly good-humored than Uncle Ben,
but none of these things marred his fatuous felicity. It is even
probable that in his gratuitous belief that his timid attentions
had been too marked and impulsive, he attributed Cressy's flight to
a maidenly coyness that pleasurably increased his admiration for
her and his confidence in himself. In his abstraction of enjoyment
and in the gathering darkness he ran against a fir-tree very much
as he had done while walking with her, and he confusedly apologized
to it as he had to her, and by her own appellation. In this way he
eventually overran his trail and found himself unexpectedly and
apologetically in the clearing before the school-house.
"Ef this ain't the singlerest thing, miss," he said, and then
stopped suddenly. A faint noise in the school-house like the sound
of splintered wood attracted his attention. The master was
evidently there. If he was alone he would speak to him.
He went to the window, looked in, and in an instant his amiable
abstraction left him. He crept softly to the door, tried it, and
then putting his powerful shoulder against the panel, forced the
lock from its fastenings. He entered the room as Seth Davis,
frightened but furious, lifted himself from before the master's
desk which he had just broken open. He had barely time to conceal
something in his pocket and close the lid again before Uncle Ben
approached him.
"What mouut ye be doin' here, Seth Davis?" he asked with the slow
deliberation which in that locality meant mischief.
"And what mouut YOU be doin' here, Mister Ben Dabney?" said Seth,
resuming his effrontery.
"Well," returned Uncle Ben, planting himself in the aisle before
his opponent, "I ain't doin' no sheriff's posse business jest now,
but I reckon to keep my hand in far enuff to purtect other folks'
property," he added, with a significant glance at the broken lock
of the desk.
"Ben Dabney," said Seth in snarling expostulation, "I hain't got no
quar'll with ye!"
"Then hand me over whatever you took just now from teacher's desk
and we'll talk about that afterwards," said Uncle Ben advancing.
"I tell ye I hain't got no quar'll with ye, Uncle Ben," continued
Seth, retreating with a malignant sneer; "and when you talk of
protectin' other folks' property, mebbe ye'd better protect YOUR
OWN--or what ye'd like to call so--instead of quar'llin' with the
man that's helpin' ye. I've got yer the proofs that that sneakin'
hound of a Yankee school-master that Cress McKinstry's hell bent
on, and that the old man and old woman are just chuckin' into her
arms, is a lyin', black-hearted, hypocritical seducer"--
"Stop!" said Uncle Ben in a voice that made the crazy casement
rattle.
He strode towards Seth Davis, no longer with his habitual careful,
hesitating step, but with a tread that seemed to shake the whole
school-room. A single dominant clutch of his powerful right hand
on the young man's breast forced him backwards into the vacant
chair of the master. His usually florid face had grown as gray as
the twilight; his menacing form in a moment filled the little room
and darkened the windows. Then in some inexplicable reaction his
figure slightly drooped, he laid one heavy hand tremblingly on the
desk, and with the other affected to wipe his mouth after his old
embarrassed fashion.
"What's that you were sayin' o' Cressy?" he said huskily.
"Wot everybody says," said the frightened Seth, gaining a cowardly
confidence under his adversary's emotion. "Wot every cub that sets
yer under his cantin' teachin', and sees 'em together, knows. It's
wot you'd hev knowed ef he and Roop Filgee hadn't played ye fer a
softy all the time. And while you've bin hangin' round yer fer a
flicker of Cressy's gownd as she prances out o' school, he's bin
lyin' low and laffin' at ye, and while he's turned Roop over to
keep you here, pretendin' to give ye lessons, he's bin gallivantin'
round with her and huggin' and kissin' her in barns and in the
brush--and now YOU want to quar'll with me."
He stopped, panting for breath, and stared malignantly in the gray
face of his hearer. But Uncle Ben only lifted his heavy hand
mildly with an awkward gesture of warning, stepped softly in his
old cautious hesitating manner to the open door, closed it, and
returned gently:--
"I reckon ye got in through the winder, didn't ye, Seth?" he said,
with a labored affectation of unemotional ease, "a kind o' one leg
over, and one, two, and then you're in, eh?"
"Never you mind HOW I got in, Ben Dabney," returned Seth, his
hostility and insolence increasing with his opponent's evident
weakness, "ez long ez I got yer and got, by G-d! what I kem here
fer! For whiles all this was goin' on, and whiles the old fool man
and old fool woman was swallowin' what they did see and blinkin' at
what they didn't, and huggin' themselves that they'd got high-toned
kempany fer their darter, that high-toned kempany was playin' THEM
too, by G-d! Yes, Sir! that high-toned, cantin' school-teacher was
keepin' a married woman in 'Frisco, all the while he was here
honey-foglin' with Cressy, and I've got the papers yer to prove
it." He tapped his breast-pocket with a coarse laugh and thrust
his face forward into the gray shadow of his adversary's.
"An' you sorter spotted their bein' in this yer desk and bursted
it?" said Uncle Ben, gravely examining the broken lock in the
darkness as if it were the most important feature of the incident.
Seth nodded. "You bet your life. I saw him through the winder
only this afternoon lookin over 'em alone, and I reckoned to lay
my hands on 'em if I had to bust him or his desk. And I did!" he
added with a triumphant chuckle.
"And you did--sure pop!" said Uncle Ben with slow deliberate
admiration, passing his heavy hand along the splintered lid. "And
you reckon, Seth, that this yer showin' of him up will break off
enythin' betwixt him and this yer--this yer Miss--Miss McKinstry?"
he continued with labored formality.
"I reckon ef the old fool McKinstry don't shoot him in his tracks
thar'll be white men enough in Injin Springs to ride this high-
toned, pizenous hypocrit on a rail outer the settlement!"
"That's so!" said Uncle Ben musingly, after a thoughtful pause, in
which he still seemed to be more occupied with the broken desk than
his companion's remark. Then he went on cautiously: "And ez this
thing orter be worked mighty fine, Seth, p'r'aps, on the hull,
you'd better let me have them papers."
"What! YOU?" snarled Seth, drawing back with a glance of angry
suspicion; "not if I know it!"
"Seth," said Uncle Ben, resting his elbows on the desk
confidentially, and speaking with painful and heavy deliberation,
"when you first interdoosed this yer subject you elluded to my
hevin', so to speak, rights o' preemption and interference with
this young lady, and that in your opinion, I wasn't purtectin' them
rights. It 'pears to me that, allowin' that to be gospel truth,
them ther papers orter be in MY possession--you hevin' so to speak
no rights to purtect, bein' off the board with this yer young lady,
and bein' moved gin'rally by free and independent cussedness. And
ez I sed afore, this sort o' thing havin' to be worked mighty fine,
and them papers manniperlated with judgment, I reckon, Seth, if you
don't objeck, I'll hev--hev--to trouble you."
Seth started to his feet with a rapid glance at the door, but Uncle
Ben had risen again with the same alarming expression of completely
filling the darkened school-room, and of shaking the floor beneath
him at the slightest movement. Already he fancied he saw Uncle
Ben's powerful arm hovering above him ready to descend. It
suddenly occurred to him that if he left the execution of his
scheme of exposure and vengeance to Uncle Ben, the onus of stealing
the letters would fall equally upon their possessor. This
advantage seemed more probable than the danger of Uncle Ben's
weakly yielding them up to the master. In the latter case he,
Seth, could still circulate the report of having seen the letters
which Uncle Ben had himself stolen in a fit of jealousy--a
hypothesis the more readily accepted from the latter's familiar
knowledge of the schoolhouse and his presumed ambitious jealousy of
Cressy in his present attitude as a man of position. With affected
reluctance and hesitation he put his hand to his breast-pocket.
"Of course," he said, "if you're kalkilatin' to take up the quar'll
on YOUR rights, and ez Cressy ain't anythin' more to me, YOU orter
hev the proofs. Only don't trust them into that hound's hands.
Once he gets 'em again he'll secure a warrant agin you for stealin'.
That'll be his game. I'd show 'em to HER first--don't ye see?--and
I reckon ef she's old Ma'am McKinstry's darter, she'll make it
lively for him."
He handed the letters to the looming figure before him. It seemed
to become again a yielding mortal, and said in a hesitating voice,
"P'r'aps you'd better make tracks outer this, Seth, and leave me
yer to put things to rights and fix up that door and the desk agin
to-morrow mornin'. He'd better not know it to onct, and so start a
row about bein' broken into."
The proposition seemed to please Seth; he even extended his hand in
the darkness. But he met only an irresponsive void. With a slight
shrug of his shoulders and a grunting farewell, he felt his way to
the door and disappeared. For a few moments it seemed as if Uncle
Ben had also deserted the schoolhouse, so profound and quiet was
the hush that fell upon it. But as the eye became accustomed to
the shadow a grayish bulk appeared to grow out of it over the
master's desk and shaped itself into the broad figure of Uncle Ben.
Later, when the moon rose and looked in at the window, it saw him
as the master had seen him on the first day he had begun his
lessons in the school-house, with his face bent forward over the
desk and the same look of child-like perplexity and struggle that
he had worn at his allotted task. Unheroic, ridiculous, and no
doubt blundering and idiotic as then, but still vaguely persistent
in his thought, he remained for some moments in this attitude.
Then rising and taking advantage of the moonlight that flooded the
desk, he set himself to mend the broken lock with a large
mechanical clasp-knife he produced from his pocket, and the aid of
his workmanlike thumb and finger. Presently he began to whistle
softly, at first a little artificially and with relapses of
reflective silence. The lock of the desk restored, he secured into
position again that part of the door-lock which he had burst off in
his entrance. This done, he closed the door gently and once more
stepped out into the moonlit clearing. In replacing his knife in
his pocket he took out the letters which he had not touched since
they were handed to him in the darkness. His first glance at the
handwriting caused him to stop. Then still staring at it, he began
to move slowly and automatically backwards to the porch. When he
reached it he sat down, unfolded the letter, and without attempting
to read it, turned its pages over and over with the unfamiliarity
of an illiterate man in search of the signature. This when found
apparently plunged him again into motionless abstraction. Only
once he changed his position to pull up the legs of his trousers,
open his knees, and extend the distance between his feet, and then
with the unfolded pages carefully laid in the moonlit space thus
opened before him, regarded them with dubious speculation. At the
end of ten minutes he rose with a sigh of physical and mental
relaxation, refolded the letter, put it in his pocket, and made his
way to the town.
When he reached the hotel he turned into the bar-room, and
observing that it happened to be comparatively deserted, asked for
a glass of whiskey. In response to the barkeeper's glance of
curiosity--as Uncle Ben seldom drank, and then only as a social
function with others--he explained:--
"I reckon straight whiskey is about ez good ez the next thing for
blind chills."
The bar-keeper here interposed that in his larger medical
experience he had found the exhibition of ginger in combination
with gin attended with effect, although it was evident that in his
business capacity he regarded Uncle Ben, as a drinker, with
distrust.
"Ye ain't seen Mr. Ford hanging round yer lately?" continued Uncle
Ben with laborious ease.
The bar-keeper, with his eye still scornfully fixed on his
customer, but his hands which were engaged in washing his glasses
under the counter giving him the air of humorously communicating
with a hidden confederate, had not seen the school-master that
afternoon.
Uncle Ben turned away and slowly mounted the staircase to the
master's room. After a moment's pause on the landing, which must
have been painfully obvious to any one who heard his heavy ascent,
he gave two timid raps on the door which were equally ridiculous in
contrast with his powerful tread. The door was opened promptly by
the master.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said shortly. "Come in."
Uncle Ben entered without noticing the somewhat ungracious form of
invitation. "It war me," he said, "dropped in, not finding ye
downstairs. Let's have a drink."
The master gazed at Uncle Ben, who, owing to his abstraction, had
not yet wiped his mouth of the liquor he had imperfectly swallowed,
and was in consequence more redolent of whiskey than a confirmed
toper. He rang the bell for the desired refreshment with a
slightly cynical smile. He was satisfied that his visitor, like
many others of humble position, was succumbing to his good fortune.
"I wanted to see ye, Mr. Ford," he began, taking an unproffered
chair and depositing his hat after some hesitation outside the
door, "in regard to what I onct told ye about my wife in Mizzouri.
P'r'aps you disremember?"
"I remember," returned the master resignedly.
"You know it was that arternoon that fool Stacey sent the sheriff
and the Harrisons over to McKinstry's barn."
"Go on!" petulantly said the master, who had his own reasons for
not caring to recall it.
"It was that arternoon, you know, that you hadn't time to hark to
me--hevin' to go off on an engagement," continued Uncle Ben with
protracted deliberation, "and"--
"Yes, yes, I remember," interrupted the master exasperatedly, "and
really unless you get on faster, I'll have to leave you again."
"It was that arternoon," said Uncle Ben without heeding him, "when
I told you I hadn't any idea what had become o' my wife ez I left
in Mizzouri."
"Yes," said the master sharply, "and I told you it was your bounden
duty to look for her."
"That's so," said Uncle Ben nodding comfortably, "them's your very
words; on'y a leetle more strong than that, ef I don't disremember.
Well, I reckon I've got an idee!" The master assumed a sudden
expression of interest, but Uncle Ben did not vary his monotonous
tone.
"I kem across that idee, so to speak, on the trail. I kem across
it in some letters ez was lying wide open in the brush. I picked
em up and I've got 'em here."
He slowly took the letters from his pocket with one hand, while he
dragged the chair on which he was sitting beside the master. But
with a quick flush of indignation Mr. Ford rose and extended his
hand.
"These are MY letters, Dabney," he said sternly, "stolen from my
desk. Who has dared to do this?"
But Uncle Ben had, as if accidentally, interposed his elbow between
the master and Seth's spoils.
"Then it's all right?" he returned deliberately. "I brought 'em
here because I thought they might give an idee where my wife was.
For them letters is in her own handwrite. You remember ez I told
ez how she was a scollard."
The master sat back in his chair white and dumb. Incredible,
extraordinary, and utterly unlooked for as was this revelation, he
felt instinctively that it was true.
"I couldn't read it myself--ez you know. I didn't keer to ax any
one else to read it for me--you kin reckon why, too. And that's
why I'm troublin' you to-night, Mr. Ford--ez a friend."
The master with a desperate effort recovered his voice. "It is
impossible. The lady who wrote those letters does not bear your
name. More than that," he added with hasty irrelevance, "she is so
free that she is about to be married, as you might have read. You
have made a mistake, the handwriting may be like, but it cannot be
really your wife's."
Uncle Ben shook his head slowly. "It's her'n--there's no mistake.
When a man, Mr. Ford, hez studied that handwrite--havin', so to
speak, knowed it on'y from the OUTSIDE--from seein' it passin' like
between friends--that man's chances o' bein' mistook ain't ez great
ez the man's who on'y takes in the sense of the words that might
b'long to everybody. And her name not bein' the same ez mine,
don't foller. Ef she got a divorce she'd take her old gal's name--
the name of her fammerly. And that would seem to allow she DID get
a divorce. What mowt she hev called herself when she writ this?"
The master saw his opportunity and rose to it with a chivalrous
indignation, that for the moment imposed even upon himself. "I
decline to answer that question," he said angrily. "I refuse to
allow the name of any woman who honors me with her confidence to be
dragged into the infamous outrage that has been committed upon me
and common decency. And I shall hold the thief and scoundrel--
whoever he may be--answerable to myself in the absence of her
natural protector."
Uncle Ben surveyed the hero of these glittering generalities with
undisguised admiration. He extended his hand to him gravely.
"Shake! Ef another proof was wantin', Mr. Ford, of that bein' my
wife's letter," he said, "that high-toned style of yours would
settle it. For, ef thar was one thing she DID like, it was that
sort of po'try. And one reason why her and me didn't get on, and
why I skedaddled, was because it wasn't in my line. Et's all in
trainin'! On'y a man ez had the Fourth Reader at his fingers' ends
could talk like that. Bein' brought up on Dobell--ez is nowhere--
it sorter lets me outer you, ez it did outer HER. But allowin' it
ain't the square thing for YOU to mention her name, that wouldn't
be nothin' agin' MY doin' it, and callin' her, well--Lou Price in a
keerless sort o' way, eh?"
"I decline to answer further," replied the master quickly, although
his color had changed at the name. "I decline to say another word
on the matter until this mystery is cleared up--until I know who
dared to break into my desk and steal my property, and the purpose
of this unheard-of outrage. And I demand possession of those
letters at once."
Uncle Ben without a word put them in the master's hand, to his
slight surprise, and it must be added to his faint discomfiture,
nor was it decreased when Uncle Ben added, with grave naivete and a
patronizing pressure of his hand on his shoulder,--"In course ez
you're taken' it on to yourself, and ez Lou Price ain't got no
further call on ME, they orter be yours. Ez to who got 'em outer
the desk, I reckon you ain't got no suspicion of any one spyin'
round ye--hev ye?"
In an instant the recollection of Seth Davis's face at the window
and the corroboration of Rupert's warning flashed across Ford's
mind. The hypothesis that Seth had imagined that they were
Cressy's letters, and had thrown them down without reading them
when he had found out his mistake, seemed natural. For if he had
read them he would undoubtedly have kept them to show to Cressy.
The complex emotions that had disturbed the master on the discovery
of Uncle Ben's relationship to the writer of the letters were
resolving themselves into a furious rage at Seth. But before he
dared revenge himself he must be first assured that Seth was
ignorant of their contents. He turned to Uncle Ben.
"I have a suspicion, but to make it certain I must ask you for the
present to say nothing of this to any one."
Uncle Ben nodded. "And when you hev found out and you're settled
in your mind that you kin make my mind easy about this yer Lou
Price, ez we'll call her, bein' divorced squarely, and bein', so to
speak, in the way o' gettin' married agin, ye might let me know ez
a friend. I reckon I won't trouble you any more to-night--onless
you and me takes another sociable drink together in the bar. No?
Well, then, good-night." He moved slowly towards the door. With
his hand on the lock he added: "Ef yer writin' to her agin, you
might say ez how you found ME lookin' well and comf'able, and
hopin' she's enjyin' the same blessin'. 'So long."
He disappeared, leaving the master in a hopeless collapse of
conflicting, and, it is to be feared, not very heroic emotions.
The situation, which had begun so dramatically, had become suddenly
unromantically ludicrous, without, however, losing any of its
embarrassing quality. He was conscious that he occupied the
singular position of being more ridiculous than the husband--whose
invincible and complacent simplicity stung him like the most
exquisite irony. For an instant he was almost goaded into the fury
of declaring that he had broken off from the writer of the letters
forever, but its inconsistency with the chivalrous attitude he had
just taken occurred to him in time to prevent him from becoming
doubly absurd. His rage with Seth Davis seemed to him the only
feeling left that was genuine and rational, and yet, now that Uncle
Ben had gone, even that had a spurious ring. It was necessary for
him to lash himself into a fury over the hypothesis that the
letters MIGHT have been Cressy's, and desecrated by that scoundrel's
touch. Perhaps he had read them and left them to be picked up by
others. He looked over them carefully to see if their meaning
would, to the ordinary reader, appear obvious and compromising.
His eye fell on the first paragraph.
"I should not be quite fair with you, Jack, if I affected to
disbelieve in your faith in your love for me and its endurance, but
I should be still more unfair if I didn't tell you what I honestly
believe, that at your age you are apt to deceive yourself, and,
without knowing it, to deceive others. You confess you have not
yet decided upon your career, and you are always looking forward so
hopefully, dear Jack, for a change in the future, but you are
willing to believe that far more serious things than that will
suffer no change in the mean time. If we continued as we were, I,
who am older than you and have more experience, might learn the
misery of seeing you change towards ME as I have changed towards
another, and for the same reason. If I were sure I could keep pace
with you in your dreams and your ambition, if I were sure that I
always knew WHAT they were, we might still be happy--but I am not
sure, and I dare not again risk my happiness on an uncertainty. In
coming to my present resolution I do not look for happiness, but at
least I know I shall not suffer disappointment, nor involve others
in it. I confess I am growing too old not to feel the value to a
woman--a necessity to her in this country--of security in her
present and future position. Another can give me that. And
although you may call this a selfish view of our relations, I
believe that you will soon--if you do not, even as you read this
now--feel the justice of it, and thank me for taking it."
With a smile of scorn he tore up the letter, in what he fondly
believed was the bitterness of an outraged trustful nature,
forgetting that for many weeks he had scarcely thought of its
writer, and that he himself in his conduct had already anticipated
its truths.
CHAPTER XII.
The master awoke the next morning, albeit after a restless night,
with that clarity of conscience and perception which it is to be
feared is more often the consequence of youth and a perfect
circulation than of any moral conviction or integrity. He argued
with himself that as the only party really aggrieved in the
incident of the previous night, the right of remedy remained with
him solely, and under the benign influence of an early breakfast
and the fresh morning air he was inclined to feel less sternly even
towards Seth Davis. In any event, he must first carefully weigh
the evidence against him, and examine the scene of the outrage
closely. For this purpose, he had started for the school-house
fully an hour before his usual time. He was even light-hearted
enough to recognize the humorous aspect of Uncle Ben's appeal to
him, and his own ludicrously paradoxical attitude, and as he at
last passed from the dreary flat into the fringe of upland pines,
he was smiling. Well for him, perhaps, that he was no more
affected by any premonition of the day before him than the lately
awakened birds that lightly cut the still sleeping woods around him
in their long flashing sabre-curves of flight. A yellow-throat,
destined to become the breakfast of a lazy hawk still swinging
above the river, was especially moved to such a causeless and
idiotic roulade of mirth that the master listening to the foolish
bird was fain to whistle too. He presently stopped, however, with
a slight embarrassment. For a few paces before him Cressy had
unexpectedly appeared.
She had evidently been watching for him. But not with her usual
indolent confidence. There was a strained look of the muscles of
her mouth, as of some past repression, and a shaded hollow under
her temples beneath the blonde rings of her shorter hair. Her
habitually slow, steady eye was troubled, and she cast a furtive
glance around her before she searched him with her glance. Without
knowing why, yet vaguely fearing that he did, he became still more
embarrassed, and in the very egotism of awkwardness, stammered
without a further salutation: "A disgraceful thing has happened
last night, and I'm up early to find the perpetrator. My desk was
broken into, and"--
"I know it," she interrupted, with a half-impatient, half uneasy
putting away of the subject with her little hand--"there--don't go
all over it again. Paw and Maw have been at me about it all night--
ever since those Harrisons in their anxiousness to make up their
quarrel, rushed over with the news. I'm tired of it!"
For an instant he was staggered. How much had she learned! With
the same awkward indirectness, he said vaguely, "But it might have
been YOUR letters, you know?"
"But it wasn't," she said, simply. "It OUGHT to have been. I wish
it had"-- She stopped, and again regarded him with a strange
expression. "Well," she said slowly, "what are you going to do?"
"To find out the scoundrel who has done this," he said firmly, "and
punish him as he deserves."
The almost imperceptible shrug that had raised her shoulders gave
way as she regarded him with a look of wearied compassion.
"No," she said, gravely, "you cannot. They're too many for you.
You must go away, at once."
"Never," he said indignantly. "Even if it were not a cowardice.
It would be more--a confession!"
"Not more than they already know," she said wearily. "But, I tell
you, you MUST go. I have sneaked out of the house and run here all
the way to warn you. If you--you care for me, Jack--you will go."
"I should be a traitor to you if I did," he said quickly. "I shall
stay."
"But if--if--Jack--if"--she drew nearer him with a new-found
timidity, and then suddenly placed her two hands upon his
shoulders: "If--if--Jack--I were to go with you?"
The old rapt, eager look of possession had come back to her face
now; her lips were softly parted. Yet even then she seemed to be
waiting some reply more potent than that syllabled on the lips of
the man before her.
Howbeit that was the only response. "Darling," he said kissing
her, "but wouldn't that justify them"--
"Stop," she said suddenly. Then putting her hand over his mouth,
she continued with the same half-weary expression: "Don't let us go
over all that again either. It is SO tiresome. Listen, dear.
You'll do one or two little things for me--won't you, dandy boy?
Don't linger long at the school-house after lessons. Go right
home! Don't look after these men TO-DAY--to-morrow, Saturday, is
your holiday--you know--and you'll have more time. Keep to
yourself to-day as much as you can, dear, for twelve hours--until--
until--you hear from me, you know. It will be all right then," she
added, lifting her eyelids with a sudden odd resemblance to her
father's look of drowsy pain, which Ford had never noticed before.
"Promise me that, dear, won't you?"
With a mental reservation he promised hurriedly--preoccupied in his
wonder why she seemed to avoid his explanation, in his desire to
know what had happened, in the pride that had kept him from asking
more or volunteering a defence, and in his still haunting sense of
having been wronged. Yet he could not help saying as he caught and
held her hand:--
"YOU have not doubted me, Cressy? YOU have not allowed this
infamous raking up of things that are past and gone to alter your
feelings?"
She looked at him abstractedly. "You think it might alter ANYBODY'S
feelings, then?"
"Nobody's who really loved another"--he stammered.
"Don't let us talk of it any more," she said suddenly stretching
out her arms, lifting them above her head with a wearied gesture,
and then letting them fall clasped before her in her old habitual
fashion. "It makes my head ache; what with Paw and Maw and the
rest of them--I'm sick of it all."
She turned away as Ford drew back coldly and let her hand fall from
his arm. She took a few steps forward, stopped, ran back to him
again, crushed his face and head in a close embrace, and then
seemed to dip like a bird into the tall bracken, and was gone.
The master stood for some moments chagrined and bewildered; it was
characteristic of his temperament that he had paid less heed to
what she told him than what he IMAGINED had passed between her
mother and herself. She was naturally jealous of the letters--he
could forgive her for that; she had doubtless been twitted about
them, but he could easily explain them to her parents--as he would
have done to her. But he was not such a fool as to elope with her
at such a moment, without first clearing his character--and knowing
more of hers. And it was equally characteristic of him that in his
sense of injury he confounded her with the writer of the letters--
as sympathizing with his correspondent in her estimate of his
character, and was quite carried away with the belief that he was
equally wronged by both.
It was not until he reached the schoolhouse that the evidences of
last night's outrage for a time distracted his mind from his
singular interview. He was struck with the workmanlike manner in
which the locks had been restored, and the care that had evidently
been taken to remove the more obvious and brutal traces of
burglary. This somewhat staggered his theory that Seth Davis was
the perpetrator; mechanical skill and thoughtfulness were not among
the lout's characteristics. But he was still more disconcerted on
pushing back his chair to find a small india-rubber tobacco pouch
lying beneath it. The master instantly recognized it: he had seen
it a hundred times before--it was Uncle Ben's. It was not there
when he had closed the room yesterday afternoon. Either Uncle Ben
had been there last night, or had anticipated him this morning.
But in the latter case he would scarcely have overlooked his fallen
property--that, in the darkness of the night, might have readily
escaped detection. His brow darkened with a sudden conviction that
it was Uncle Ben who was the real and only offender, and that his
simplicity of the previous night was part of his deception. A
sickening sense that he had been again duped--but why or to what
purpose he hardly dared to think--overcame him. Who among these
strange people could he ever again trust? After the fashion of
more elevated individuals, he had accepted the respect and kindness
of those he believed his inferiors as a natural tribute to his own
superiority; any change in THEIR feelings must therefore be
hypocrisy or disloyalty; it never occurred to him that HE might
have fallen below their standard.
The arrival of the children and the resumption of his duties for a
time diverted him. But although the morning's exercise restored
the master's self-confidence, it cannot be said to have improved
his judgment. Disdaining to question Rupert Filgee, as the
possible confidant of Uncle Ben, he answered the curious inquiries
of the children as to the broken doorlock with the remark that it
was a matter that he should have to bring before the Trustees of
the Board, and by the time that school was over and the pupils
dismissed he had quite resolved upon this formal disposition of it.
In spite of Cressy's warning--rather because of it--in the new
attitude he had taken towards her and her friends, he lingered in
the school-house until late. He had occupied himself in drawing up
a statement of the facts, with an intimation that his continuance
in the school would depend upon a rigid investigation of the
circumstances, when he was aroused by the clatter of horses' hoofs.
The next moment the school-house was surrounded by a dozen men.
He looked up; half of them dismounted and entered the room. The
other half remained outside darkening the windows with their
motionless figures. Each man carried a gun before him on the
saddle; each man wore a rude mask of black cloth partly covering
his face.
Although the master was instinctively aware that he was threatened
by serious danger, he was far from being impressed by the arms and
disguise of his mysterious intruders. On the contrary, the obvious
and glaring inconsistency of this cheaply theatrical invasion of
the peaceful school-house; of this opposition of menacing figures
to the scattered childish primers and text-books that still lay on
the desks around him, only extracted from him a half scornful smile
as he coolly regarded them. The fearlessness of ignorance is often
as unassailable as the most experienced valor, and the awe-
inspiring invaders were at first embarrassed and then humanly
angry. A lank figure to the right made a forward movement of
impotent rage, but was checked by the evident leader of the party.
"Ef he likes to take it that way, there ain't no Regulators law
agin it, I reckon," he said, in a voice which the master instantly
recognized as Jim Harrison's, "though ez a gin'ral thing they don't
usually find it FUN." Then turning to the master he added, "Mister
Ford, ef that's the name you go by everywhere, we're wantin' a man
about your size."
Ford knew that he was in hopeless peril. He knew that he was
physically defenceless and at the mercy of twelve armed and lawless
men. But he retained a preternatural clearness of perception, and
audacity born of unqualified scorn for his antagonists, with a
feminine sharpness of tongue. In a voice which astonished even
himself by its contemptuous distinctness, he said: "My name IS
Ford, but as I only SUPPOSE your name is Harrison perhaps you'll be
fair enough to take that rag from your face and show it to me like
a man."
The man removed the mask from his face with a slight laugh.
"Thank you," said Ford. "Now, perhaps you will tell me which one
of you gentlemen broke into the school-house, forced the lock of my
desk, and stole my papers. If he is here I wish to tell him he is
not only a thief, but a cur and a coward, for the letters are a
woman's--whom he neither knows nor has the right to know."
If he had hoped to force a personal quarrel and trust his life to
the chance of a single antagonist, he was disappointed, for
although his unexpected attitude had produced some effect among the
group, and even attracted the attention of the men at the windows,
Harrison strode deliberately towards him.
"That kin wait," he said; "jest now we propose to take you and your
letters and drop 'em and you outer this yer township of Injin
Springs. You kin take 'em back to the woman or critter you got 'em
of. But we kalkilate you're a little too handy and free in them
sorter things to teach school round yer, and we kinder allow we
don't keer to hev our gals and boys eddicated up to your high-toned
standard. So ef you choose to kem along easy we'll mak' you
comf'ble on a hoss we've got waitin' outside, an' escort you across
the line. Ef you don't--we'll take you anyway."
The master cast a rapid glance around him. In his quickness of
perception he had already noted that the led horse among the
cavalcade was fastened by a lariat to one of the riders so that
escape by flight was impossible, and that he had not a single
weapon to defend himself with or even provoke, in his desperation,
the struggle that could forestall ignominy by death. Nothing was
left him but his voice, clear and trenchant as he faced them.
"You are twelve to one," he said calmly, "but if there is a single
man among you who dare step forward and accuse me of what you only
TOGETHER dare do, I will tell him he is a liar and a coward, and
stand here ready to make it good against him. You come here as
judge and jury condemning me without trial, and confronting me with
no accusers; you come here as lawless avengers of your honor, and
you dare not give ME the privilege of as lawlessly defending my
own."
There was another slight murmur among the men, but the leader moved
impatiently forward. "We've had enough o' your preachin': we want
YOU," he said roughly. "Come."
"Stop," said a dull voice.
It came from a mute figure which had remained motionless among the
others. Every eye was turned upon it as it rose and lazily pushed
the cloth from its face.
"Hiram McKinstry!" said the others in mingled tones of astonishment
and suspicion.
"That's me!" said McKinstry, coming forward with heavy deliberation.
"I joined this yer delegation at the crossroads instead o' my
brother, who had the call. I reckon et's all the same--or mebbe
better. For I perpose to take this yer gentleman off your hands."
He lifted his slumbrous eyes for the first time to the master, and
at the same time put himself between him and Harrison. "I
perpose," he continued, "to take him at his word; I perpose ter
give him a chance to answer with a gun. And ez I reckon, by all
accounts, there's no man yer ez hez a better right than ME, I
perpose to be the man to put that question to him in the same way.
Et may not suit some gents," he continued slowly, facing an angry
exclamation from the lank figure behind him, "ez would prefer to
hev eleven men to take up THEIR private quo'lls, but even then I
reckon that the man who is the most injured hez the right to the
first say and that man's ME."
With a careful deliberation that had a double significance to the
malcontents, he handed his own rifle to the master and without
looking at him continued: "I reckon, sir, you've seen that afore,
but ef it ain't quite to your hand, any of those gents, I
kalkilate, will be high-toned enuff to giv you the chyce o' theirs.
And there's no need o' trapsin' beyon' the township lines, to fix
this yer affair; I perpose to do it in ten minutes in the brush
yonder."
Whatever might have been the feelings and intentions of the men
around him, the precedence of McKinstry's right to the duello was a
principle too deeply rooted in their traditions to deny; if any
resistance to it had been contemplated by some of them, the fact
that the master was now armed, and that Mr. McKinstry would quickly
do battle at his side with a revolver in defence of his rights,
checked any expression. They silently drew back as the master and
McKinstry slowly passed out of the school-house together, and then
followed in their rear. In that interval the master turned to
McKinstry and said in a low voice: "I accept your challenge and
thank you for it. You have never done me a greater kindness--
whatever I have done to YOU--yet I want you to believe that neither
now nor THEN--I meant you any harm."
"Ef you mean by that, sir, that ye reckon ye won't return my fire,
ye're blind and wrong. For it will do you no good with them," he
said with a significant wave of his crippled hand towards the
following crowd, "nor me neither."
Firmly resolved, however, that he would not fire at McKinstry, and
clinging blindly to this which he believed was the last idea of his
foolish life, he continued on without another word until they
reached the open strip of chemisal that flanked the clearing.
The rude preliminaries were soon settled. The parties armed with
rifles were to fire at the word from a distance of eighty yards,
and then approach each other, continuing the fight with revolvers
until one or the other fell. The selection of seconds was effected
by the elder Harrison acting for McKinstry, and after a moment's
delay by the volunteering of the long, lank figure previously noted
to act for the master. Preoccupied by other thoughts, Mr. Ford
paid little heed to his self-elected supporter, who to the others
seemed to be only taking that method of showing his contempt for
McKinstry's recent insult. The master received the rifle
mechanically from his hand and walked to position. He noticed,
however, and remembered afterwards that his second was half hidden
by the trunk of a large pine to his right that marked the limit of
the ground.
In that supreme moment it must be recorded, albeit against all
preconceived theory, that he did NOT review his past life, was NOT
illuminated by a flash of remorseful or sentimental memory, and did
NOT commend his soul to his Maker, but that he was simply and
keenly alive to the very actual present in which he still existed
and to his one idea of not firing at his adversary. And if
anything could render his conduct more theoretically incorrect it
was a certain exalted sense that he was doing quite right and was
not only NOT a bad sort of fellow, but one whom his survivors might
possibly regret!
"Are you ready, gentlemen? One--two--three--fi . . . !"
The explosions were singularly simultaneous--so remarkable in fact
that it seemed to the master that his rifle, fired in the air, had
given a DOUBLE report. A light wreath of smoke lay between him and
his opponent. He was unhurt--so evidently was his adversary, for
the voice rose again.
"Advance! . . . Hallo there! Stop!"
He looked up quickly to see McKinstry stagger and then fall heavily
to the ground.
With an exclamation of horror, the first and only terrible emotion
he had felt, he ran to the fallen man, as Harrison reached his side
at the same moment.
"For God's sake," he said wildly, throwing himself on his knees
beside McKinstry, "what has happened? For I swear to you, I never
aimed at you! I fired in the air. Speak! Tell him, you," he
turned with a despairing appeal to Harrison, "you must have seen it
all--tell him it was not me!"
A half wondering, half incredulous smile passed quickly over
Harrison's face. "In course you didn't MEAN it," he said dryly,
"but let that slide. Get up and get away from yer, while you kin,"
he added impatiently, with a significant glance at one or two men
who lingered after the sudden and general dispersion of the crowd
at McKinstry's fall. "Get--will ye!"
"Never!" said the young man passionately, "until he knows that it
was not my hand that fired that shot."
McKinstry painfully struggled to his elbow. "It took me yere," he
said with a slow deliberation, as if answering some previous
question, and pointing to his hip, "and it kinder let me down when
I started forward at the second call."
"But it was not I who did it, McKinstry, I swear it. Hear me! For
God's sake, say you believe me."
McKinstry turned his drowsy troubled eyes upon the master as if he
were vaguely recalling something. "Stand back thar a minit, will
ye," he said to Harrison, with a languid wave of his crippled hand;
"I want ter speak to this yer man."
Harrison drew back a few paces and the master sought to take the
wounded man's hand, but he was stopped by a gesture. "Where hev
you put Cressy?" McKinstry said slowly.
"I don't understand you," stammered Ford.
"Where are you hidin' her from me?" repeated McKinstry with painful
distinctness. "Whar hev you run her to, that you're reckonin' to
jine her arter--arter--THIS?"
"I am not hiding her! I am not going to her! I do not know where
she is. I have not seen her since we parted early this morning
without a word of meeting again," said the master rapidly, yet with
a bewildered astonishment that was obvious even to the dulled
faculties of his hearer.
"That war true?" asked McKinstry, laying his hand upon the master's
shoulder and bringing his dull eyes to the level of the young
man's.
"It is the whole truth," said Ford fervently, "and true also that I
never raised my hand against you."
McKinstry beckoned to Harrison and the two others who had joined
him, and then sank partly back with his hand upon his side, where
the slow empurpling of his red shirt showed the slight ooze of a
deeply-seated wound.
"You fellers kin take me over to the ranch," he said calmly, "and
let him," pointing to Ford, "ride your best hoss fer the doctor. I
don't," he continued in grave explanation, "gin'rally use a doctor,
but this yer is suthin' outside the old woman's regular gait." He
paused, and then drawing the master's head down towards him, he
added in his ear, "When I get to hev a look at the size and shape
o' this yer ball that's in my hip, I'll--I'll--I'll--be--a--little
more kam!" A gleam of dull significance struggled into his eye.
The master evidently understood him, for he rose quickly, ran to
the horse, mounted him and dashed off for medical assistance, while
McKinstry, closing his heavy lids, anticipated this looked-for calm
by fainting gently away.
CHAPTER XIII.
Of the various sentimental fallacies entertained by adult humanity
in regard to childhood, none are more ingeniously inaccurate and
gratuitously idiotic than a comfortable belief in its profound
ignorance of the events in which it daily moves, and the motives
and characters of the people who surround it. Yet even the
occasional revelations of an enfant terrible are as nothing
compared to the perilous secrets which a discreet infant daily
buttons up, or secures with a hook-and-eye, or even fastens with a
safety-pin across its gentle bosom. Society can never cease to be
grateful for that tact and consideration--qualities more often
joined with childish intuition and perception than with matured
observation--that they owe to it; and the most accomplished man or
woman of the great world might take a lesson from this little
audience who receive from their lips the lie they feel too
palpable, with round-eyed complacency, or outwardly accept as moral
and genuine the hollow sentiment they have overheard rehearsed in
private for their benefit.
It was not strange therefore that the little people of the Indian
Spring school knew perhaps more of the real relations of Cressy
McKinstry to her admirers than the admirers themselves. Not that
this knowledge was outspoken--for children rarely gossip in the
grown-up sense--or even communicable by words intelligent to the
matured intellect. A whisper, a laugh that often seemed vague and
unmeaning, conveyed to each other a world of secret significance,
and an apparently senseless burst of merriment in which the whole
class joined and that the adult critic set down to "animal
spirits"--a quality much more rare with children than generally
supposed--was only a sympathetic expression of some discovery
happily oblivious to older preoccupation. The childish simplicity
of Uncle Ben perhaps appealed more strongly to their sympathy, and
although, for that very reason, they regarded him with no more
respect than they did each other, he was at times carelessly
admitted to their confidence. It was especially Rupert Filgee who
extended a kind of patronizing protectorate over him--not unmixed
with doubts of his sanity, in spite of the promised confidential
clerkship he was to receive from his hands.
On the day of the events chronicled in the preceding chapter,
Rupert on returning from school was somewhat surprised to find
Uncle Ben perched upon the rail-fence before the humble door of the
Filgee mansion and evidently awaiting him. Slowly dismounting as
Rupert and Johnny approached, he beamed upon the former for some
moments with arch and yet affable mystery.
"Roopy, old man, I s'pose ye've got yer duds all ready in yer pack,
eh?"
A flush of pleasure passed over the boy's handsome face. He cast,
however, a hurried look down on the all-pervading Johnny.
"'Cause ye see we kalkilate to take the down stage to Sacramento
at four o'clock," continued Uncle Ben, enjoying Rupert's half
sceptical surprise. "Ye enter into office, so to speak, with me
at that hour, when the sellery, seventy-five dollars a month and
board, ez private and confidential clerk, begins--eh?"
Rupert's dimples deepened in charming, almost feminine,
embarrassment. "But dad--?" he stammered.
"Et's all right with HIM. He's agreeable."
"But--?"
Uncle Ben followed Rupert's glance at Johnny, who however appeared
to be absorbed in the pattern of Uncle Ben's new trousers.
"That's fixed," he said with a meaning smile. "There's a sort o'
bonus we pays down, you know--for a Chinyman to do the odd jobs."
"And teacher--Mr. Ford--did ye tell him?" said Rupert brightening.
Uncle Ben coughed slightly. "He's agreeable, too, I reckon. That
is," he wiped his mouth meditatively, "he ez good ez allowed it in
gin'ral conversation a week ago, Roop."
A swift shadow of suspicion darkened the boy's brown eyes. "Is
anybody else goin' with us?" he said quickly.
"Not this yer trip," replied Uncle Ben complacently. "Ye see,
Roop," he continued, drawing him aside with an air of comfortable
mystery, "this yer biz'ness b'longs to the private and confidential
branch of the office. From informashun we've received"--
"WE?" interrupted Rupert.
"'We,' that's the OFFICE, you know," continued Uncle Ben with a
heavy assumption of business formality, "wot we've received per
several hands and consignee--we--that's YOU and ME, Roop--we goes
down to Sacramento to inquire into the standin' of a certing party,
as per invoice, and ter see--ter see--ter negotiate you know, ter
find out if she's married or di-vorced," he concluded quickly, as
if abandoning for the moment his business manner in consideration
of Rupert's inexperience. "We're to find out her standin', Roop,"
he began again with a more judicious blending of ease and
technicality, "and her contracts, if any, and where she lives and
her way o' life, and examine her books and papers ez to marriages
and sich, and arbitrate with her gin'rally in conversation--you
inside the house and me out on the pavement, ready to be called in
if an interview with business principals is desired."
Observing Rupert somewhat perplexed and confused with these
technicalities, he tactfully abandoned them for the present, and
consulting a pocket-book said, "I've made a memorandum of some
pints that we'll talk over on the journey," again charged Rupert
to be punctually at the stage office with his carpetbag, and
cheerfully departed.
When he had disappeared Johnny Filgee, without a single word of
explanation, fell upon his brother, and at once began a violent
attack of kicks and blows upon his legs and other easily accessible
parts of his person, accompanying his assault with unintelligible
gasps and actions, finally culminating in a flood of tears and the
casting of himself on his back in the dust with the copper-fastened
toes of his small boots turning imaginary wheels in the air.
Rupert received these characteristic marks of despairing and
outraged affection with great forbearance, only saying, "There,
now, Johnny, quit that," and eventually bearing him still
struggling into the house. Here Johnny, declaring that he would
kill any "Chinyman" that offered to dress him, and burn down the
house after his brother's infamous desertion of it, Rupert was
constrained to mingle a few nervous, excited tears with his
brother's outbreak. Whereat Johnny, admitting the alleviation of
an orange, a four-bladed knife, and the reversionary interest in
much of Rupert's personal property, became more subdued. Sitting
there with their arms entwined about each other, the sunlight
searching the shiftless desolation of their motherless home, the
few cheap playthings they had known lying around them, they
beguiled themselves with those charming illusions of their future
intentions common to their years--illusions they only half believed
themselves and half accepted of each other. Rupert was quite
certain that he would return in a few days with a gold watch and a
present for Johnny, and Johnny, with a baleful vision of never
seeing him again, and a catching breath, magnificently undertook to
bring in the wood and build the fire and wash the dishes "all of
himself." And then there were a few childish confidences regarding
their absent father--then ingenuously playing poker in the Magnolia
Saloon--that might have made that public-spirited, genial companion
somewhat uncomfortable, and more tears that were half smiling and
some brave silences that were wholly pathetic, and then the hour
for Rupert's departure all too suddenly arrived. They separated
with ostentatious whooping, and then Johnny, suddenly overcome with
the dreadfulness of all earthly things, and the hollowness of life
generally, instantly resolved to run away!
To do this he prepared himself with a purposeless hatchet, an
inconsistent but long-treasured lump of putty and all the sugar
that was left in the cracked sugar-bowl. Thus accoutred he sallied
forth, first to remove all traces of his hated existence that might
be left in his desk at school. If the master were there he would
say Rupert had sent him; if he wasn't, he would climb in at the
window. The sun was already sinking when he reached the clearing
and found a cavalcade of armed men around the building.
Johnny's first conviction was that the master had killed Uncle Ben
or Masters, and that the men, taking advantage of the absence of
his--Johnny's--big brother, were about to summarily execute him.
Observing no struggle from within, his second belief was that the
master had been suddenly elected Governor of California and was
about to start with a state escort from the school-house, and that
he, Johnny, was in time to see the procession. But when the master
appeared with McKinstry, followed by part of the crowd afoot, this
quick-witted child of the frontier, from his secure outlook in the
"brush," gathered enough from their fragmentary speech to guess the
serious purport of their errand, and thrill with anticipation and
slightly creepy excitement.
A duel! A thing hitherto witnessed only by grown-up men,
afterwards swaggering with importance and strange technical
bloodthirsty words, and now for the first time reserved for a BOY--
and that boy him, Johnny!--to behold in all its fearful
completeness! A duel! of which, he, Johnny, meanly abandoned by
his brother, was now exalted perhaps to be the only survivor! He
could scarcely credit his senses. It was too much!
To creep through the brush while the preliminaries were being
settled, reach a certain silver fir on the appointed ground, and
with the aid of his now lucky hatchet, climb unseen to its upper
boughs, was an exciting and difficult task, but one eventually
overcome by his short but energetic legs. Here he could not only
see all that occurred, but by a fortunate chance the large pine
next to him had been selected as the limit of the ground. The
sharp eyes of the boy had long since penetrated the disguises of
the remaining masked men, and when the long, lank figure of the
master's self-appointed second took up its position beneath the
pines in full view of him, although hidden from the spectators,
Johnny instantly recognized it to be none other than Seth Davis.
The manifest inconsistency of his appearance as Mr. Ford's second
with what Johnny knew of his relations to the master was the one
thing that firmly fixed the incident in the boy's memory.
The men were already in position. Harrison stepped forward to give
the word. Johnny's down-hanging legs tingled with cramp and
excitement. Why didn't they begin? What were they waiting for?
What if it were interrupted, or--terrible thought--made up at the
last moment? Would they "holler" out when they were hit, or
stagger round convulsively as they did at the "cirkiss"? Would
they all run away afterwards and leave Johnny alone to tell the
tale? And--horrible thought!--would any body believe him? Would
Rupert? Rupert, had he "on'y knowed this," he wouldn't have gone
away.
"One"--
With a child's perfect faith in the invulnerable superiority of his
friends, he had not even looked at the master, but only at his
destined victim. Yet as the word "two" rang out Johnny's attention
was suddenly attracted to the surprising fact that the master's
second, Seth Davis, had also drawn a pistol, and from behind his
tree was deliberately and stealthily aiming at McKinstry! He
understood it all now--he was a friend of the master's. Bully for
Seth!
"Three!"
Crack! Z-i-i-p! Crackle! What a funny noise! And yet he was
obliged to throw himself flat upon the bough to keep from falling.
It seemed to have snapped beneath him and benumbed his right leg.
He did not know that the master's bullet, fired in the air, had
ranged along the bough, stripping the bark throughout its length,
and glancing with half-spent force to inflict a slight flesh wound
on his leg!
He was giddy and a little frightened. And he had seen nobody hit,
nor nothin'. It was all a humbug! Seth had disappeared. So had
the others. There was a faint sound of voices and something like a
group in the distance--that was all. It was getting dark, too, and
his leg was still asleep, but warm and wet. He would get down.
This was very difficult, for his leg would not wake up, and but for
the occasional support he got by striking his hatchet in the tree
he would have fallen in descending. When he reached the ground his
leg began to pain, and looking down he saw that his stocking and
shoe were soaked with blood.
His small and dirty handkerchief, a hard wad in his pocket, was
insufficient to staunch the flow. With a vague recollection of a
certain poultice applied to a boil on his father's neck, he
collected a quantity of soft moss and dried yerba buena leaves, and
with the aid of his check apron and of one of his torn suspenders
tightly wound round the whole mass, achieved a bandage of such
elephantine proportions that he could scarcely move with it. In
fact, like most imaginative children, he became slightly terrified
at his own alarming precautions. Nevertheless, although a word or
an outcry from him would have at that moment brought the distant
group to his assistance, a certain respect to himself and his
brother kept him from uttering even a whimper of weakness.
Yet he found refuge, oddly enough, in a suppressed but bitter
denunciation of the other boys of his acquaintance. What was Cal.
Harrison doing, while he, Johnny, was alone in the woods, wounded
in a grown-up duel--for nothing would convince this doughty infant
that he had not been an active participant? Where was Jimmy Snyder
that he didn't come to his assistance with the other fellers?
Cowards all; they were afraid. Ho, ho! And he, Johnny, wasn't
afraid! ho--he didn't mind it! Nevertheless he had to repeat the
phrase two or three times until, after repeated struggles to move
forward through the brush, he at last sank down exhausted. By this
time the distant group had slowly moved away, carrying something
between them, and leaving Johnny alone in the fast coming darkness.
Yet even this desertion did not affect him as strongly as his
implicit belief in the cowardly treachery of his old associates.
It grew darker and darker, until the open theatre of the late
conflict appeared enclosed in funereal walls; a cool searching
breath of air that seemed to have crept through the bracken and
undergrowth like a stealthy animal, lifted the curls on his hot
forehead. He grasped his hatchet firmly as against possible wild
beasts, and as a medicinal and remedial precaution, took another
turn with his suspender around his bandage. It occurred to him
then that he would probably die. They would all feel exceedingly
sorry and alarmed, and regret having made him wash himself on
Saturday night. They would attend his funeral in large numbers in
the little graveyard, where a white tombstone inscribed to "John
Filgee, fell in a duel at the age of seven," would be awaiting him.
He would forgive his brother, his father, and Mr. Ford. Yet even
then he vaguely resented a few leaves and twigs dropped by a
woodpecker in the tree above him, with a shake of his weak fist and
an incoherent declaration that they couldn't "play no babes in the
wood on HIM." And then having composed himself he once more turned
on his side to die, as became the scion of a heroic race! The free
woods, touched by an upspringing wind, waved their dark arms above
him, and higher yet a few patient stars silently ranged themselves
around his pillow.
But with the rising wind and stars came the swift trampling of
horses' hoofs and the flashing of lanterns, and Doctor Duchesne and
the master swept down into the opening.
"It was here," said the master quickly, "but they must have taken
him on to his own home. Let us follow."
"Hold on a moment," said the doctor, who had halted before the
tree. "What's all this? Why, it's baby Filgee--by thunder!"
In another moment they had both dismounted and were leaning over
the half conscious child. Johnny turned his feverishly bright eyes
from the lantern to the master and back again.
"What is it, Johnny boy?" asked the master tenderly. "Were you
lost?"
With a gleam of feverish exaltation, Johnny rose, albeit
wanderingly, to the occasion!
"Hit!" he lisped feebly, "Hit in a doell! at the age of theven."
"What!" asked the bewildered master.
But Doctor Duchesne, after a single swift scrutiny of the boy's
face, had unearthed him from his nest of leaves, laid him in his
lap, and deftly ripped away the preposterous bandage. "Hold the
light here. By Jove! he tells the truth. Who did it, Johnny?"
But Johnny was silent. In an interval of feverish consciousness
and pain, his perception and memory had been quickened; a suspicion
of the real cause of his disaster had dawned upon him--but his
childish lips were heroically sealed. The master glanced
appealingly at the Doctor.
"Take him before you in the saddle to McKinstry's," said the latter
promptly. "I can attend to both."
The master lifted the boy tenderly in his arms. Johnny, stimulated
by the prospect of a free ride, became feebly interested in his
fellow sufferer.
"Did Theth hit him bad?" he asked.
"Seth?" echoed the master, wildly.
"Yeth. I theed him when he took aim."
The master did not reply, but the next moment Johnny felt himself
clasped in his arms in the saddle before him, borne like a
whirlwind in the direction of the McKinstry ranch.
CHAPTER XIV.
They found the wounded man lying in the front room upon a rudely
extemporized couch of bear-skins, he having sternly declined the
effeminacy of his wife's bedroom. In the possibility of a fatal
termination to his wound, and in obedience to a grim frontier
tradition, he had also refused to have his boots removed in order
that he might "die with them on," as became his ancestral custom.
Johnny was therefore speedily made comfortable in the McKinstry
bed, while Dr. Duchesne gave his whole attention to his more
serious patient. The master glanced hurriedly around for Mrs.
McKinstry. She was not only absent from the room, but there seemed
to be no suggestion of her presence in the house. To his greater
surprise the hurried inquiry that rose to his lips was checked by a
significant warning from the attendant. He sat down beside the now
sleeping boy, and awaited the doctor's return with his mind
wandering between the condition of the little sufferer and the
singular revelation that had momentarily escaped his childish lips.
If Johnny had actually seen Seth fire at McKinstry, the latter's
mysterious wound was accounted for--but not Seth's motive. The act
was so utterly incomprehensible and inconsistent with Seth's avowed
hatred of the master that the boy must have been delirious.
He was roused by the entrance of the surgeon. "It's not so bad as
I thought," he said, with a reassuring nod. "It was a mighty close
shave between a shattered bone and a severed artery, but we've got
the ball, and he'll pull through in a week. By Jove! though--the
old fire-eater was more concerned about finding the ball than
living or dying! Go in there--he wants to see you. Don't let him
talk too much. He's called in a lot of his friends for some reason
or other--and there's a regular mass-meeting in there. Go in, and
get rid of 'em. I'll look after baby Filgee--though the little
chap will be all right again after another dressing."
The master cast a hurried look of relief at the surgeon, and re-
entered the front room. It was filled with men whom the master
instinctively recognized as his former adversaries. But they gave
way before him with a certain rude respect and half abashed
sympathy as McKinstry called him to his side. The wounded man
grasped his hand. "Lift me up a bit," he whispered. The master
assisted him with difficulty to his elbow.
"Gentlemen!" said McKinstry, with a characteristic wave of his
crippled hand towards the crowd as he laid the other on the
master's shoulder. "Ye heerd me talkin' a minit ago; ye heer me
now. This yer young man as we've slipped up on and meskalkilated
has told the truth--every time! Ye ken tie to him whenever and
wherever ye want to. Ye ain't expected to feel ez I feel, in
course, but the man ez goes back on HIM--quo'lls with me. That's
all--and thanks for inquiring friends. Ye'll git now, boys, and
leave him a minit with me."
The men filed slowly out, a few lingering long enough to shake the
master's hand with grave earnestness, or half smiling, half abashed
embarrassment. The master received the proffered reconciliation of
these men, who but a few hours before would have lynched him with
equal sincerity, with cold bewilderment. As the door closed on the
last of the party he turned to McKinstry. The wounded man had sunk
down again, but was regarding with drowsy satisfaction a leaden
bullet he was holding between his finger and thumb.
"This yer shot, Mr. Ford," he said in a slow voice, whose weakness
was only indicated by its extreme deliberation, "never kem from the
gun I gave ye--and was never fired by you." He paused and then
added with his old dull abstraction, "It's a long time since I've
run agin anythin' that makes me feel more--kam."
In Mr. McKinstry's weak condition the master did not dare to make
Johnny's revelation known to him, and contented himself by simply
pressing his hand, but the next moment the wounded man resumed,--
"That ball jest fits Seth's navy revolver--and the hound hes made
tracks outer the country."
"But what motive could he have in attacking YOU at such a time?"
asked the master.
"He reckoned that either I'd kill you and so he'd got shut of us
both in that way, without it being noticed; or if I missed you, the
others would hang YOU--ez they kalkilated to--for killing ME! The
idea kem to him when he overheard you hintin' you wouldn't return
my fire."
A shuddering conviction that McKinstry had divined the real truth
passed over the master. In the impulse of the moment he again
would have corroborated it by revealing Johnny's story, but a
glance at the growing feverishness of the wounded man checked his
utterance. "Don't talk of it now," he said hurriedly. "Enough for
me to know that you acquit ME. I am here now only to beg you to
compose yourself until the doctor comes back--as you seemed to be
alone, and Mrs. McKinstry"--he stopped in awkward embarrassment.
A singular confusion overspread the invalid's face. "She hed
steppt out afore this happened, owin' to contrairy opinions betwixt
me and her. Ye mout hev noticed, Mr. Ford, that gin'rally she
didn't 'pear to cotton to ye! Thar ain't a woman a goin' ez is the
ekal of Blair Rawlins' darter in nussin' a man and keeping him in
fightin' order, but in matters like things that consarn herself and
Cress, I begin to think, Mr. Ford, that somehow, she ain't exakly--
kam! Bein' kam yourself, ye'll put any unpleasantness down to
that. Wotever you hear from HER, and, for the matter o' that, from
her own darter too--for I'm takin' back the foolishness I said to
ye over yon about your runnin' off with Cress--you'll remember, Mr.
Ford, it warn't from no ill feeling to YOU, in her or Cress--but
on'y a want of kam! I mout hev had MY idees about Cress, you mout
hev had YOURS, and that fool Dabney mout hev had HIS; but it warn't
the old woman's--nor Cressy's--it warn't Blair Rawlins' darter's
idea--nor yet HER darter's! And why? For want o' kam! Times I
reckon it was left out o' woman's nater. And bein' kam yourself,
you understand it, and take it all in."
The old look of drowsy pain had settled so strongly in his red eyes
again that the master was fain to put his hand gently over them,
and with a faint smile beg him to compose himself to sleep. This
he finally did after a whispered suggestion that he himself was
feeling "more kam." The master sat for some moments with his hand
upon the sleeping man's eyes, and a vague and undefinable sense of
loneliness seemed to fall upon him from the empty rafters of the
silent and deserted house. The rising wind moaned fitfully around
its bleak shell with the despairing sound of far and forever
receding voices. So strong was the impression that when the doctor
and McKinstry's attending brother re-entered the room, the master
still lingered beside the bed with a dazed sensation of abandonment
that the doctor's practical reassuring smile could hardly dispel.
"He's doing splendidly now," he said, listening to the sleeper's
more regular respiration: "and I'd advise you to go now, Mr. Ford,
before he wakes, lest he might be tempted to excite himself by
talking to you again. He's really quite out of danger now. Good-
night! I'll drop in on you at the hotel when I return."
The master, albeit still confused and bewildered, felt his way to
the door and out into the open night. The wind was still
despairingly wrestling with the tree-tops, but the far receding
voices seemed to be growing fainter in the distance, until, as he
passed on, they too seemed to pass away forever.
. . . . . .
Monday morning had come again, and the master was at his desk in
the school house early, with a still damp and inky copy of the Star
fresh from the press before him. The free breath of the pines was
blowing in the window, and bringing to his ears the distant voices
of his slowly gathering flock, as he read as follows:--
"The perpetrator of the dastardly outrage at the Indian Spring
Academy on Thursday last--which, through unfortunate
misrepresentation of the facts, led to a premature calling out of
several of our most public-spirited citizens, and culminated in a
most regrettable encounter between Mr. McKinstry and the
accomplished and estimable principal of the school--has, we regret
to say, escaped condign punishment by leaving the country with his
relations. If, as is seriously whispered, he was also guilty of an
unparalleled offence against a chivalrous code which will exclude
him in the future from ever seeking redress at the Court of Honor,
our citizens will be only too glad to get rid of the contamination
of being obliged to arrest him. Those of our readers who know the
high character of the two gentlemen who were thus forced into a
hostile meeting, will not be surprised to know that the most ample
apologies were tendered on both sides, and that the entente
cordiale has been thoroughly restored. The bullet--which it is
said played a highly important part in the subsequent explanation,
proving to have come from a REVOLVER fired by some outsider--has
been extracted from Mr. McKinstry's thigh, and he is doing well,
with every prospect of a speedy recovery."
Smiling, albeit not uncomplacently, at this valuable contribution
to history from an unfettered press, his eye fell upon the next
paragraph, perhaps not so complacently:--
"Benjamin Daubigny, Esq., who left town for Sacramento on important
business, not entirely unconnected with his new interests in Indian
Springs, will, it is rumored, be shortly joined by his wife, who
has been enabled by his recent good fortune to leave her old home
in the States, and take her proper proud position at his side.
Although personally unknown to Indian Springs, Mrs. Daubigny is
spoken of as a beautiful and singularly accomplished woman, and it
is to be regretted that her husband's interests will compel them to
abandon Indian Springs for Sacramento as a future residence. Mr.
Daubigny was accompanied by his private secretary Rupert, the
eldest son of H. G. Filgee, Esq., who has been a promising graduate
of the Indian Spring Academy, and offers a bright example to the
youth of this district. We are happy to learn that his younger
brother is recovering rapidly from a slight accident received last
week through the incautious handling of firearms."
The master, with his eyes upon the paper, remained so long plunged
in a reverie that the school-room was quite filled and his little
flock was wonderingly regarding him before he recalled himself. He
was hurriedly reaching his hand towards the bell when he was
attracted by the rising figure of Octavia Dean.
"Please, sir, you didn't ask if we had any news!"
"True--I forgot," said the master smiling. "Well, have you
anything to tell us?"
"Yes, sir. Cressy McKinstry has left school."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir; she's married."
"Married," repeated the master with an effort, yet conscious of the
eyes concentrated upon his colorless face. "Married--and to whom?"
"To Joe Masters, sir, at the Baptist Chapel at Big Bluff, Sunday,
an' Marm McKinstry was thar with her."
There was a momentary and breathless pause. Then the voices of his
little pupils--those sage and sweet truants from tradition, those
gentle but relentless historians of the future--rose around him in
shrill chorus--"WHY, WE KNOWED IT ALL ALONG, SIR!"
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Cressy, by Bret Harte