CHAPTER XA SCRAP OF PAPER
Singinga sleepy little song, the waters of Coxing Kill flowed lazily down their stony channel into a deep green pool.
A week ago, swollen by the deluge of the equinox, the Kill had ramped and roared through this glen, overwhelming both the shallows and the depths in brawling, swirling flood. But now the tumult and violence were past, the raw chill had fled from the air, and under the soft sun of new October the pool had again become its serene self: rimmed by vertical gray-white rock, shadowed by shaggy hemlocks, reflecting on its placid bosom the snowy clouds floating across the high blue above—an exquisite little gem of sylvan beauty which would have held an artist enthralled. Yet it knew few visitors except the birds and the squirrels, whose practical eyes saw nothing of its charm; for it was well away from the Clove road, and few of the denizens of the Traps ever wasted their time seeking scenery.
To-day, however, the little nook was not empty of human life. At the upper end of the small chasm a figure sat against the base of one of the hemlocks, its bare feet tucked under the hem of a faded dress, its tumbled hair glowing red in the sunlight filteringdown through the eastern tree-tangle. The little birds and the wood-mice, moving about in their unceasing search for food, paused at times to cock their round eyes at that unwonted gleam of red against the bark. But soon they resumed their activities, unafraid; for, though they could not understand what the girl sitting so quietly there was doing, they felt that she was a friend.
On her updrawn knees rested a slanting piece of thin board, and on the board a scrap of paper. Her pensive gray eyes studied the short vista down-stream, and from time to time she moved a stubby pencil lightly along the sheet, transferring to it new lines. Then, with a frown, she would wet a finger-tip at her mouth and rub out a line or two.
It seemed to be an absorbing task, this marking and erasing and studying, upon which she was concentrating her whole soul. Yet it was not so engrossing as to rob her of the senses which she possessed in common with the tiny wild things around her. All at once she and a king-bird which had silently settled near by and a mouse under a bush and a chipmunk on a bowlder-top did exactly the same thing—froze in the intuitive immobility of the wilderness, looking northward. A few yards beyond, a stick had cracked dully under foot.
Among the tree-trunks a moving form presently became visible, advancing with no particular stealth but with the quiet step of a man acquainted with woods travel. The king-bird launched himself on soundless wings and was gone. The mouse faded into a hole.The chipmunk whisked about on his tail and poised for a lightning jump. The girl made no movement whatever.
The man swung nonchalantly along the brink of the rock rim, plumbing with casual gaze the clear water below. Then he halted, his lifting gaze caught and held by the red glint under the hemlock. A smile lit up his lightly bronzed face.
“Howdy, Miss Marion,” he bowed. “Are you ‘waylaying’ me?”
“If I was, you’d be all shot ’fore now,” she retorted. “I could ’most stick a gun right into your mouth from here. Are you near-sighted or somethin’?”
“Blind as a bat, I reckon. I can’t see a thing beyond you, so I’m going to stop and visit until my sight clears up.”
She flushed and sat up straighter.
“Are you makin’ fun of my hair?” she demanded.
“Why, no. Certainly not. What made you think that?”
“Oh, everybody does. They say Nigger Nat don’t need a lamp with my red-head there into the house, and anybody that meets me onto the road says he thought ’twas a forest-fire comin’, and—oh, I’m sick of it! I thought mebbe you wanted to be funny the same way when you said you couldn’t see past me.”
“No, no. It was a poor joke, but I didn’t mean it that way.” He dropped beside her, laying his gun beside his right leg. “Don’t let folks bother you. Chances are that they’d give anything to have hair likeyours—the women, anyway—but because they can’t have it they make fun of it. It’s the way of the world. What’s this?”
His hand lifted the forgotten paper and board from her lap. She snatched at it.
“Gimme that!”
“Not yet.” He jerked it aside and held it out of reach. “Why, it’s a sketch! Let’s see—here’s the creek, and——”
She threw herself at him, her cheeks burning, her hands struggling to seize the paper.
“You gimme that!” she blazed. “’Tain’t no good—don’t you look at it!”
But he laughed and stretched his long right arm to its longest, holding the paper a yard from her.
“Now don’t get excited. I won’t hurt it. I like to look at pictures——”
She tore at his left arm, which blocked her like a steel bar.
“You—you—gimme that—paper!” she panted. “If you don’t I’ll—I’ll scratch!”
He shot a shrewd glance at her furious face and at the slender, long-nailed fingers now poising in curving menace. The restraining arm gave way suddenly—so suddenly that she pitched forward. In one flashing instant that arm had looped around her and pinned her against him, her own arms blocked by his body.
“You little wildcat, I believe you would,” he nodded. “But I really haven’t finished looking at the picture. So behave yourself. Now let’s see—there’s ahemlock—good, too! And the rock edge along—no, that’s not so good. But still, I can easily see what it’s meant for, and—— Behave, I say!”
Writhing, wrenching, heaving, she was fighting like a mad thing to break his hold and free her hands. His arm only crushed her tighter. Tears of helpless anger welled into her eyes. All at once her head dropped on his shoulder.
“There, don’t cry.” He loosened his hold. “I’ll give it right—— Ouch!”
Instead of weeping on his shoulder she was biting it. He dropped the board and lurched upward, drawing her with him. She lifted her head and laughed out wildly.
“Guess you’ll let me go now, won’t you?” she taunted.
His jaw set. His right arm, too, swept around her, holding her loosely, yet close.
“Think so?” he challenged. “Go on and bite! Bite hard!”
The blazing gray eyes burned up into the steely blue ones. Breast to breast, body to body, they stood, their eyes welded together. She made to move her head, but the motion died. Still their eyes clung. And then something happened.
How, why, what it was neither knew—perhaps a subtle opening of some hitherto unknown chamber of the heart. But the fire died from the gray eyes, the chill melted from the blue ones; and something else crept into their unswerving gaze. For unmeasured minutes the man and the girl stood in silence.
Then his arms slowly loosened. Swaying a little, she stepped away.
“I—you—nobody never hugged me like that before,” she whispered, as if unconscious of her words. “I’m—I’m dizzy, seems like.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“I ain’t,” she breathed. Wide-eyed, she stared up as if seeing a man for the first time in her life: as if some fairy wand had swept from before her a veil through which she had regarded men as creatures little more interesting than any other common animals. “Why—why areyousorry?”
He made no answer. His gaze dropped and rested absently on the pencil-lined paper which had brought it all about.
“Why did you—let me go?” she asked.
“I was thinking of—Steve,” was his slow reply.
Her face clouded. Her head drooped, and her fingers intertwined.
“Steve,” she repeated. “I see. I—I was forgittin’ about Steve.”
She sank down and sat with her chin in her hands, soberly contemplating the passing water. He bent, picked up the paper, and forced his mind to concentrate on it. After a studious interval he nodded and looked thoughtfully at the tapering fingers which so recently had threatened his face.
“Er—ahem! Do you know, Miss Marion, that you have the rudiments of art? I’m no artist myself, but I know a little about it. How did you ever cometo draw like this? And why didn’t you want me to see it?”
She looked up, but in a detached way. Then her eyes returned to the creek.
“’Most everybody makes fun of my pictures,” she said, as if only part of her mind were talking. “I dunno what you mean by rood—roody—what you said about art. But I like to draw; it comes natural. I git spells when I jesthaveto draw things. That’s what got me throwed out of school. I’d draw pictures and teacher would catch me and tear ’em up—and one day I ’most tore him up too: I flew and scratched his face, and I got put out, and that was the end of my schoolin’. I don’t care. I don’t want to go to school and work onto figgers and have ’em make fun of me ’cause my hair’s red and my pop’s a nigger and all. I’d ruther go off by my own self and make pictures into the woods and rocks.
“There was an artist feller in here two-three years back—they come round sometimes—and I watched how he worked and tried to do like it, and when he see what I was up to he laughed and laughed and—I can’t stand to be laughed at! I thought you’d laugh too, soon as you see what I made onto that paper.”
He said nothing for a time. He pondered on her work, studied her again, and sighed.
“Too bad,” he thought. “She has real ability, if it could be developed. And to think that she’s the offspring of such animals as ‘them Oakses’!”
Marion spoke again.
“Down in the city do men say ‘Miss Marryin,’ likeyou do? I thought ’twas jest ‘Miss Oaks,’ or ‘Marry.’”
“It all depends. If you don’t know her well, or if you don’t want to, you say ‘Miss Oaks.’ If you’re pretty well acquainted, so that you feel sort of friendly, it’s ‘Miss Marion.’ You have to be real good friends to drop the ‘Miss’ part of it. Unless, of course, she’s only a little girl.”
“I see. I dunno if I like ‘Miss Marryin,’ but mebbe I do, too. It’s—it’s kind of respectful, ain’t it? Nobody never spoke respectful to me in my life. It makes me feel kind of growed-up. But I notice you keep on sayin’ ‘Miss Marryin’ even after you—after you hugged me jest now. And that’s only sort of friendly, you say.”
He opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again. He did not know just what to say. He felt, too, that no answer was needed—that she was musing aloud rather than talking to him. A long pause followed. Then she spoke, not of herself, but of him.
“I hear you’re livin’ right ’long into Jake’s house. Ain’t the ha’nt there now?”
“Oh, yes. He’s there. But I’m used to him now. He never does anything but tramp around and shake the bed once in awhile, and I sleep pretty well. How’s Steve? And your pop?”
“Steve—he’s all right. He’s into a good place, and I see him every day. Pop’s same as usual—drunk most of the time. But you want to watch out if he gits sober. He’s p’ison mad at you, ’count of the dogs. I’m awful glad you kilt them critters. Theywere always ugly and I was scairt of ’em. One of ’em bit you, didn’t he?”
“Not to amount to anything—nipped my side a little, but the worst damage was to my shirt.”
She nodded, and went on.
“Pop keeps a-stewin’ ’bout it. And Snake Sanders is out now, too. Snake, he was all lamed up awhile, ’specially his neck—couldn’t hardly move it for more’n a week. He says he fell down into the rocks.”
She paused. He said nothing. Then she added: “But some folks say he got licked by a detective.”
With that she faced about, her eyes twinkling now. At sight of his wide grin she laughed out.
“Folks sometimes tell the truth,” he admitted. “But what about Snake and your pop?”
“Well——” She hesitated. “Snake’s got some kind of a hold onto pop, and they’ve been together a lot lately, and pop seems to be soberin’ up some. That sometimes means trouble for somebody. I dunno what’s up—I keep out of the way when Snake comes to the house, ’cause I don’t want him pesterin’ round me. But you better be careful.”
“H’m! Pestering around you? How?”
“Oh, he wants me to go and live with him. And he’s got a woman already—Lou Brackett. She’s been his woman ’most a year. But I ain’t a-goin’. Pop, he’d try to make me go, but mom won’t let him. She hates Snake ’most as bad as I do.”
Douglas gave a soundless whistle. Her matter-of-fact statement jolted him. Then his face hardened.
“Is he at your house now?” he demanded. “Ididn’t come along the road—rambled along the creek—so I didn’t go past there.”
“What you want to know for?” She swiftly arose. “You keep away from Nigger Nat’s!”
For answer, he picked up his gun and turned toward the road. She sprang at him, grasping his arm.
“What you goin’ to do? Tell me!”
“Teach that snake to keep away from your place.”
“No! Listen to me. That’s jest what they’d like. You go trompin’ into there with a gun and makin’ a row, and you’d git it—into the back! You keep out. Let ’em come to you if they want, but you keep out of Nigger Nat’s. You’ll only make it worse for me if you go there—me and Steve too.”
The last words stopped him. Frowning, he rubbed his chin and considered.
“Nobody knows I know you—I ain’t told,” she went on. “Mebbe I might want a friend all to once, and so might Steve. A friend that nobody knowed about might be worth a lot. And till then, I’d git ’long a lot easier if pop and Snake didn’t s’picion things.”
Slowly he nodded. Again their eyes met and held, and the frank pleading in the gray ones softened the chilled-steel glimmer of the blue.
“All right, Marion. I’ll mind—this time. But only if you promise to come to me any time you need help.”
The tapering fingers gave his arm a quick pressure. Then she stood back.
“I promise you. Now you better go ’long—I’ve gotto go home pretty quick, and I’ll have to go by my own self. Go on up the crick, as if I wasn’t here.”
He nodded and turned away. But he turned back.
“Keep right on doing that,” he urged, pointing at the sketch on the ground. “It’s worth while. You’re doing fine.”
With that he trudged away. The bushes quietly closed behind him. The little mouse came out, the chipmunk whisked in a yellow streak from somewhere back to his bowlder, the creek sang placidly on. Still the girl stood looking at the spot where the man had disappeared.
“He minded me!” she murmured, a soft glow coming and going in her cheeks. “He minded me—and I bet he’d sooner fight than eat. And he said ‘Marryin,’ too, not ‘Miss.’ But—but Steve——”
All at once she leaned against the hemlock tree. And the mouse and the chipmunk stood still and stared about, seeking a sound which blended into the gurgle of the creek but was not of it; a new, sad sound which they never had heard before. It was the sobbing of a girl.