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Cressy

by Bret Harte · English · Gutenberg #2858 · 335,159 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Cressy

Author: Bret Harte


        
Release date: March 27, 2006 [eBook #2858]
                Most recently updated: March 4, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2858

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRESSY ***




Produced by Donald Lainson





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 fro

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