Phoebe watched the two unhappily, sighed when they disappeared around the corner of the house, and set her bowl of butter upon the broad, flat rock which just missed being overflowed with water, and sighed again.
“I'm afraid it isn't going to work,” she murmured aloud; for Phoebe, having lived much of her life in the loneliness which the West means to women, frequently talked to herself. “She's such a nice little thing—but the boys don't take to her like I thought they would. I don't see as she's having a mite of influence on their manners, unless it's to make them act worse, just to shock her. Clark USED to take off his hat when he come into the house most every time. And great grief! Now he'd wear it and his chaps and spurs to the table, if I didn't make him take them off. She's nice—she's most too nice. I've got to give that girl a good talking to.”
She mounted the steps to the back porch, tried the kitchen door, and found it locked. She went around to the door on the west side, opposite the gate, found that also secured upon the inside, and passed grimly to the next.
“My grief! I didn't know any of these doors COULD be locked!” she muttered angrily. “They never have been before that I ever heard of.” She stopped before Evadna's window, and saw, through a slit in the green blind, that the old-fashioned bureau had been pulled close before it. “My grief!” she whispered disgustedly, and retraced her steps to the east side, which, being next to the pond, was more secluded. She surveyed dryly a window left wide open there, gathered her brown-and-white calico dress close about her plump person, and crawled grimly through into the sitting-room, where, to the distress of Phoebe's order-loving soul, the carpet was daily well-sanded with the tread of boys' boots fresh from outdoors, and where cigarette stubs decorated every window-sill, and the stale odor of Peaceful's pipe was never long absent.
She went first to all the outer rooms, and unlocked every one of the outraged doors which, unless in the uproar and excitement of racing, laughing boys pursuing one another all over the place with much slamming and good-natured threats of various sorts, had never before barred the way of any man, be he red or white, came he at noon or at midnight.
Evadna's door was barricaded, as Phoebe discovered when she turned the knob and attempted to walk in. She gave the door an indignant push, and heard a muffled shriek within, as if Evadna's head was buried under her pillow.
“My grief! A body'd think you expected to be killed and eaten,” she called out unsympathetically. “You open this door! Vadnie Ramsey. This is a nice way to act with my own boys, in my own house! A body'd think—”
There was the sound of something heavy being dragged laboriously away from the barricaded door; and in a minute a vividly blue eye appeared at a narrow crack.
“Oh, I don't see how you dare to L-LIVE in such a place, Aunt Phoebe!” she cried tearfully, opening the door a bit wider. “Those Indians—and that awful man—”
“That was only Grant, honey. Let me in. There's a few things I want to say to you, Vadnie. You promised to help me teach my boys to be gentle—it's all they lack, and it takes gentle women, honey—”
“I am gentle,” Evadna protested grievedly. “I've never once forgotten to be gentle and quiet, and I haven't done a thing to them—but they're horrid and rough, anyway—”
“Let me in, honey, and we'll talk it over. Something's got to be done. If you wouldn't be so timid, and would make friends with them, instead of looking at them as if you expected them to murder you—I must say, Vadnie, you're a real temptation; they can't help scaring you when you go around acting as if you expected to be scared. You—you're TOO—” The door opened still wider, and she went in. “Now, the idea of a great girl like you hiding her head under a pillow just because Grant asked old Hagar to apologize!”
Evadna sat down upon the edge of the bed and stared unwinkingly at her aunt. “They don't apologize like that in New Jersey,” she observed, with some resentment in her voice, and dabbed at her unbelievably blue eyes with a moist ball of handkerchief.
“I know they don't, honey.” Phoebe patted her hand reassuringly. “That's what I want you to help me teach my boys—to be real gentlemen. They're pure gold, every one of them; but I can't deny they're pretty rough on the outside sometimes. And I hope you will be—”
“Oh, I know. I understand perfectly. You just got me out here as a—a sort of sandpaper for your boys' manners!” Evadna choked over a little sob of self-pity. “I can just tell you one thing, Aunt Phoebe, that fellow you call Grant ought to be smoothed with one of those funny axes they hew logs with.”
Phoebe bit her lips because she wanted to treat the subject very seriously. “I want you to promise me, honey, that you will be particularly nice to Grant; PARTICULARLY nice. He's so alone, and he's very proud and sensitive, because he feels his loneliness. No one understands him as I do—”
“I hate him!” gritted Evadna, in an emphatic whisper which her Aunt Phoebe thought it wise not to seem to hear.
Phoebe settled herself comfortably for a long talk. The murmur of her voice as she explained and comforted and advised came soothingly from the room, with now and then an interruption while she waited for a tardy answer to some question. Finally she rose and stood in the doorway, looking back at a huddled figure on the bed.
“Now dry your eyes and be a good girl, and remember what you've promised,” she admonished kindly. “Aunt Phoebe didn't mean to scold you, honey; she only wants you to feel that you belong here, and she wants you to like her boys and have them like you. They've always wanted a sister to pet; and Aunt Phoebe is hoping you'll not disappoint her. You'll try; won't you, Vadnie?”
“Y—yes,” murmured Vadnie meekly from the pillow. “I know you will.” Phoebe looked at her for a moment longer rather wistfully, and turned away. “I do wish she had some spunk,” she muttered complainingly, not thinking that Evadna might hear her. “She don't take after the Ramseys none—there wasn't anything mushy about them that I ever heard of.”
“Mushy! MUSHY!” Evadna sat up and stared at nothing at all while she repeated the word under her breath. “She wants me to be gentle—she preached gentleness in her letters, and told how her boys need it, and then—she calls it being MUSHY!”
She reached mechanically for her hair-brush, and fumbled in a tumbled mass of shining, yellow hair quite as unbelievable in its way as were her eyes—Grant had shown a faculty for observing keenly when he called her a Christmas angel—and drew out a half-dozen hairpins, letting them slide from her lap to the floor. “MUSHY!” she repeated, and shook down her hair so that it framed her face and those eyes of hers. “I suppose that's what they all say behind my back. And how can a girl be nice WITHOUT being mushy?” She drew the brush meditatively through her hair. “I am scared to death of Indians,” she admitted, with analytical frankness, “and tarantulas and snakes—but—MUSHY!”
Grant stood smoking in the doorway of the sitting-room, where he could look out upon the smooth waters of the pond darkening under the shade of the poplars and the bluff behind, when Evadna came out of her room. He glanced across at her, saw her hesitate, as if she were meditating a retreat, and gave his shoulders a twitch of tolerant amusement that she should be afraid of him. Then he stared out over the pond again. Evadna walked straight over to him.
“So you're that other savage whose manners I'm supposed to smooth, are you?” she asked abruptly, coming to a stop within three feet of him, and regarding him carefully, her hands clasped behind her.
“Please don't tease the animals,” Grant returned, in the same impersonal tone which she had seen fit to employ—but his eyes turned for a sidelong glance at her, although he appeared to be watching the trout rise lazily to the insects skimming over the surface of the water.
“I'm supposed to be nice to you—par-TIC-ularly nice—because you need it most. I dare say you do, judging from what I've seen of you. At any rate, I've promised. But I just want you to understand that I'm not going to mean one single bit of it. I don't like you—I can't endure you!—and if I'm nice, it will just be because I've promised Aunt Phoebe. You're not to take my politeness at its face value, for back of it I shall dislike you all the time.”
Grant's lips twitched, and there was a covert twinkle in his eyes, though he looked around him with elaborate surprise.
“It's early in the day for mosquitoes,” he drawled; “but I was sure I heard one buzzing somewhere close.”
“Aunt Phoebe ought to get a street roller to smooth your manners,” Evadna observed pointedly.
“Instead it's as if she hung her picture of a Christmas angel up before the wolf's den, eh?” he suggested calmly, betraying his Indian blood in the unconsciously symbolic form of expression. “No doubt the wolf's nature will be greatly benefited—his teeth will be dulled for his prey, his voice softened for the nightcry—if he should ever, by chance, discover that the Christmas angel is there.”
“I don't think he'll be long in making the discovery.” The blue of Evadna's eyes darkened and darkened until they were almost black. “Christmas angel,—well, I like that! Much you know about angels.”
Grant turned his head indolently and regarded her.
“If it isn't a Christmas angel—they're always very blue and very golden, and pinky-whitey—if it isn't a Christmas angel, for the Lord's sake what is it?” He gave his head a slight shake, as if the problem was beyond his solving, and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.
“Oh, I could pinch you!” She gritted her teeth to prove she meant what she said.
“It says it could pinch me.” Grant lazily addressed the trout. “I wonder why it didn't, then, when it was being squashed?”
“I just wish to goodness I had! Only I suppose Aunt Phoebe—”
“I do believe it's got a temper. I wonder, now, if it could be a LIVE angel?” Grant spoke to the softly swaying poplars.
“Oh, you—there now!” She made a swift little rush at him, nipped his biceps between a very small thumb and two fingers, and stood back, breathing quickly and regarding him in a shamed defiance. “I'll show you whether I'm alive!” she panted vindictively.
“It's alive, and it's a humming-bird. Angels don't pinch.” Grant laid a finger upon his arm and drawled his solution of a trivial mystery. “It mistook me for a honeysuckle, and gave me a peck to make sure.” He smiled indulgently, and exhaled a long wreath of smoke from his nostrils. “Dear little humming-birds—so simple and so harmless!”
“And I've promised to be nice to—THAT!” cried Evadna, in bitterness, and rushed past him to the porch.
Being a house built to shelter a family of boys, and steps being a superfluity scorned by their agile legs, there was a sheer drop of three feet to the ground upon that side. Evadna made it in a jump, just as the boys did, and landed lightly upon her slippered feet.
“I hate you—hate you—HATE YOU!” she cried, her eyes blazing up at his amused face before she ran off among the trees.
“It sings a sweet little song,” he taunted, and his laughter followed her mockingly as she fled from him into the shadows.
“What's the joke, Good Injun? Tell us, so we can laugh too.” Wally and Jack hurried in from the kitchen and made for the doorway where he stood.
From under his straight, black brows Grant sent a keen glance into the shade of the grove, where, an instant before, had flickered the white of Evadna's dress. The shadows lay there quietly now, undisturbed by so much as a sleepy bird's fluttering wings.
“I was just thinking of the way I yanked that dog down into old Wolfbelly's camp,” he said, though there was no tangible reason for lying to them. “Mister!” he added, his eyes still searching the shadows out there in the grove, “we certainly did go some!”
“There's no use asking the Injuns to go on the warpath,” Gene announced disgustedly, coming out upon the porch where the rest of the boys were foregathered, waiting for the ringing tattoo upon the iron triangle just outside the back door which would be the supper summons. “They're too lazy to take the trouble—and, besides, they're scared of dad. I was talking to Sleeping Turtle just now—met him down there past the Point o' Rocks.”
“What's the matter with us boys going on the warpath ourselves? We don't need the Injuns. As long as she knows they're hanging around close, it's all the same. If we could just get mum off the ranch—”
“If we could kidnap her—say, I wonder if we couldn't!” Clark looked at the others tentatively.
“Good Injun might do the rescue act and square himself with her for what happened at the milk-house,” Wally suggested dryly.
“Oh, say, you'd scare her to death. There's no use in piling it on quite so thick,” Jack interposed mildly. “I kinda like the kid sometimes. Yesterday, when I took her part way up the bluff, she acted almost human. On the dead, she did!”
“Kill the traitor! Down with him! Curses on the man who betrays us!” growled Wally, waving his cigarette threateningly.
Whereupon Gene and Clark seized the offender by heels and shoulders, and with a brief, panting struggle heaved him bodily off the porch.
“Over the cliff he goes—so may all traitors perish!” Wally declaimed approvingly, drawing up his legs hastily out of the way of Jack's clutching fingers.
“Say, old Peppajee's down at the stable with papa,” Donny informed them breathlessly. “I told Marie to put him right next to Vadnie if he stays to supper—and, uh course, he will. If mamma don't get next and change his place, it'll be fun to watch her; watch Vad, I mean. She's scared plum to death of anything that wears a blanket, and to have one right at her elbow—wonder where she is—”
“That girl's got to be educated some if she's going to live in this family,” Wally observed meditatively. “There's a whole lot she's got to learn, and the only way to learn her thorough is—”
“You forget,” Grant interrupted him ironically, “that she's going to make gentlemen of us all.”
“Oh, yes—sure. Jack's coming down with it already. You oughta be quarantined, old-timer; that's liable to be catching.” Wally snorted his disdain of the whole proceeding. “I'd rather go to jail myself.”
Evadna by a circuitous route had reached the sitting-room without being seen or heard; and it was at this point in the conversation that she tiptoed out again, her hands doubled into tight little fists, and her teeth set hard together. She did not look, at that moment, in the least degree “mushy.”
When the triangle clanged its supper call, however, she came slowly down from her favorite nook at the head of the pond, her hands filled with flowers hastily gathered in the dusk.
“Here she comes—let's get to our places first, so mamma can't change Peppajee around,” Donny implored, in a whisper; and the group on the porch disappeared with some haste into the kitchen.
Evadna was leisurely in her movements that night. The tea had been poured and handed around the table by the Portuguese girl, Marie, and the sugar-bowl was going after, when she settled herself and her ruffles daintily between Grant and a braided, green-blanketed, dignifiedly loquacious Indian.
The boys signaled each another to attention by kicking surreptitiously under the table, but nothing happened. Evadna bowed a demure acknowledgment when her Aunt Phoebe introduced the two, accepted the sugar-bowl from Grant and the butter from Peppajee, and went composedly about the business of eating her supper. She seemed perfectly at ease; too perfectly at ease, decided Grant, who had an instinct for observation and was covertly watching her. It was unnatural that she should rub elbows with Peppajee without betraying the faintest trace of surprise that he should be sitting at the table with them.
“Long time ago,” Peppajee was saying to Peaceful, taking up the conversation where Evadna had evidently interrupted it, “many winters ago, my people all time brave. All time hunt, all time fight, all time heap strong. No drinkum whisky all same now.” He flipped a braid back over his shoulder, buttered generously a hot biscuit, and reached for the honey. “No brave no more—kay bueno. All time ketchum whisky, get drunk all same likum hog. Heap lazy. No hunt no more, no fight. Lay all time in sun, sleep. No sun come, lay all time in wikiup. Agent, him givum flour, givum meat, givum blanket, you thinkum bueno. He tellum you, kay bueno. Makum Injun lazy. Makum all same wachee-typo” (tramp). “All time eat, all time sleep, playum cards all time, drinkum whisky. Kay bueno. Huh.” The grunt stood for disgust of his tribe, always something of an affectation with Peppajee.
“My brother, my brother's wife, my brother's wife's—ah—” He searched his mind, frowning, for an English word, gave it up, and substituted a phrase. “All the folks b'longum my brother's wife, heap lazy all time. Me no likum. Agent one time givum plenty flour, plenty meat, plenty tea. Huh. Them damn' folks no eatum. All time playum cards, drinkum whisky. All time otha fella ketchum flour, ketchum meat, ketchum tea—ketchum all them thing b'longum.” In the rhetorical pause he made there, his black eyes wandered inadvertently to Evadna's face. And Evadna, the timid one, actually smiled back.
“Isn't it a shame they should do that,” she murmured sympathetically.
“Huh.” Peppajee turned his eyes and his attention to Peaceful, as if the opinion and the sympathy of a mere female were not worthy his notice. “Them grub all gone, them Injuns mebbyso ketchum hungry belly.” Evadna blushed, and looked studiously at her plate.
“Come my wikiup. Me got plenty flour, plenty meat, plenty tea. Stay all time my wikiup. Sleepum my wikiup. Sun come up”—he pointed a brown, sinewy hand toward the east—“eatum my grub. Sun up there”—his finger indicated the zenith—“eatum some more. Sun go 'way, eatum some more. Then sleepum all time my wikiup. Bimeby, mebbyso my flour all gone, my meat mebbyso gone, mebbyso tea—them folks all time eatum grub, me no ketchum. Me no playum cards, all same otha fella ketchum my grub. Kay bueno. Better me playum cards mebbyso all time.
“Bimeby no ketchum mo' grub, no stopum my wikiup. Them folks pikeway. Me tellum 'Yo' heap lazy, heap kay bueno. Yo' all time eatum my grub, yo' no givum me money, no givum hoss, no givum notting. Me damn' mad all time yo'. Yo' go damn' quick!'” Peppajee held out his cup for more tea. “Me tellum my brother,” he finished sonorously, his black eyes sweeping lightly the faces of his audience, “yo' no come back, yo'—”
Evadna caught her breath, as if someone had dashed cold water in her face. Never before in her life had she heard the epithet unprintable, and she stared fixedly at the old-fashioned, silver castor which always stood in the exact center of the table.
Old Peaceful Hart cleared his throat, glanced furtively at Phoebe, and drew his hand down over his white beard. The boys puffed their cheeks with the laughter they would, if possible, restrain, and eyed Evadna's set face aslant. It was Good Indian who rebuked the offender.
“Peppajee, mebbyso you no more say them words,” he said quietly. “Heap kay bueno. White man no tellum where white woman hear. White woman no likum hear; all time heap shame for her.”
“Huh,” grunted Peppajee doubtingly, his eyes turning to Phoebe. Times before had he said them before Phoebe Hart, and she had passed them by with no rebuke. Grant read the glance, and answered it.
“Mother Hart live long time in this place,” he reminded him. “Hear bad talk many times. This girl no hear; no likum hear. You sabe? You no make shame for this girl.” He glanced challengingly across the table at Wally, whose grin was growing rather pronounced.
“Huh. Mebbyso you boss all same this ranch?” Peppajee retorted sourly. “Mebbyso Peacefu' tellum, him no likum.”
Peaceful, thus drawn into the discussion, cleared his throat again.
“Wel-l-l—WE don't cuss much before the women,” he admitted apologetically “We kinda consider that men's talk. I reckon Vadnie'll overlook it this time.” He looked across at her beseechingly. “You no feelum bad, Peppajee.”
“Huh. Me no makum squaw-talk.” Peppajee laid down his knife, lifted a corner of his blanket, and drew it slowly across his stern mouth. He muttered a slighting sentence in Indian.
In the same tongue Grant answered him sharply, and after that was silence broken only by the subdued table sounds. Evadna's eyes filled slowly until she finally pushed back her chair and hurried out into the yard and away from the dogged silence of that blanketed figure at her elbow.
She was scarcely settled, in the hammock, ready for a comforting half hour of tears, when someone came from the house, stood for a minute while he rolled a cigarette, and then came straight toward her.
She sat up, and waited defensively. More baiting, without a doubt—and she was not in the mood to remember any promises about being a nice, gentle little thing. The figure came close, stooped, and took her by the arm. In the half—light she knew him then. It was Grant.
“Come over by the pond,” he said, in what was almost a command. “I want to talk to you a little.”
“Does it occur to you that I might not want to talk t to you?” Still, she let him help her to her feet.
“Surely. You needn't open your lips if you don't want to. Just 'lend me your ears, and be silent that ye may hear.' The boys will be boiling out on the porch, as usual, in a minute; so hurry.”
“I hope it's something very important,” Evadna hinted ungraciously. “Nothing else would excuse this high-handed proceeding.”
When they had reached the great rock where the pond had its outlet, and where was a rude seat hidden away in a clump of young willows just across the bridge, he answered her.
“I don't know that it's of any importance at all,” he said calmly. “I got to feeling rather ashamed of myself, is all, and it seemed to me the only decent thing was to tell you so. I'm not making any bid for your favor—I don't know that I want it. I don't care much about girls, one way or the other. But, for all I've got the name of being several things—a savage among the rest—I don't like to feel such a brute as to make war on a girl that seems to be getting it handed to her right along.”
He tardily lighted his cigarette and sat smoking beside her, the tiny glow lighting his face briefly now and then.
“When I was joshing you there before supper,” he went on, speaking low that he might not be overheard—and ridiculed—from the house, “I didn't know the whole outfit was making a practice of doing the same thing. I hadn't heard about the dead tarantula on your pillow, or the rattler coiled up on the porch, or any of those innocent little jokes. But if the rest are making it their business to devil the life out of you, why—common humanity forces me to apologize and tell you I'm out of it from now on.”
“Oh! Thank you very much.” Evadna's tone might be considered ironical. “I suppose I ought to say that your statement lessens my dislike of you—”
“Not at all.” Grant interrupted her. “Go right ahead and hate me, if you feel that way. It won't matter to me—girls never did concern me much, one way or the other. I never was susceptible to beauty, and that seems to be a woman's trump card, always—”
“Well, upon my word!”
“Sounds queer, does it? But it's the truth, and so what's the use of lying, just to be polite? I won't torment you any more; and if the boys rig up too strong a josh, I'm liable to give you a hint beforehand. I'm willing to do that—my sympathies are always with the under dog, anyway, and they're five to one. But that needn't mean that I'm—that I—” He groped for words that would not make his meaning too bald; not even Grant could quite bring himself to warn a girl against believing him a victim of her fascinations.
“You needn't stutter. I'm not really stupid. You don't like me any better than I like you. I can see that. We're to be as decent as possible to each other—you from 'common humanity,' and I because I promised Aunt Phoebe.”
“We-e-l!—that's about it, I guess.” Grant eyed her sidelong.” Only I wouldn't go so far as to say I actually dislike you. I never did dislike a girl, that I remember. I never thought enough about them, one way or the other.” He seemed rather fond of that statement, he repeated it so often.” The life I live doesn't call for girls. Put that's neither here nor there. What I wanted to say was, that I won't bother you any more. I wouldn't have said a word to you tonight, if you hadn't walked right up to me and started to dig into me. Of course, I had to fight back—the man who won't isn't a normal human being.”
“Oh, I know.” Evadna's tone was resentful. “From Adam down to you, it has always been 'The woman, she tempted me.' You're perfectly horrid, even if you have apologized. 'The woman, she tempted me,' and—”
“I beg your pardon; the woman didn't,” he corrected blandly. “The woman insisted on scrapping. That's different.”
“Oh, it's different! I see. I have almost forgotten something I ought to say, Mr. Imsen. I must thank you for—well, for defending me to that Indian.”
“I didn't. Nobody was attacking you, so I couldn't very well defend you, could I? I had to take a fall out of old Peppajee, just on principle. I don't get along very well with my noble red cousins. I wasn't doing it on your account, in particular.”
“Oh, I see.” She rose rather suddenly from the bench. “It wasn't even common humanity, then—”
“Not even common humanity,” he echoed affirmatively. “Just a chance I couldn't afford to pass up, of digging into Peppajee.”
“That's different.” She laughed shortly and left him, running swiftly through the warm dusk to the murmur of voices at the house.
Grant sat where she left him, and smoked two cigarettes meditatively before he thought of returning to the house. When he finally did get upon his feet, he stretched his arms high above his head, and stared for a moment up at the treetops swaying languidly just under the stars.
“Girls must play the very deuce with a man if he ever lets them get on his mind,” he mused. “I see right now where a fellow about my size and complexion had better watch out.” But he smiled afterward, as if he did not consider the matter very serious, after all.
At midnight, the Peaceful Hart ranch lay broodily quiet under its rock-rimmed bluff. Down in the stable the saddle-horses were but formless blots upon the rumpled bedding in their stalls—except Huckleberry, the friendly little pinto with the white eyelashes and the blue eyes, and the great, liver-colored patches upon his sides, and the appetite which demanded food at unseasonable hours, who was now munching and nosing industriously in the depths of his manger, and making a good deal of noise about it.
Outside, one of the milch cows drew a long, sighing breath of content with life, lifted a cud in mysterious, bovine manner, and chewed dreamily. Somewhere up the bluff a bobcat squalled among the rocks, and the moon, in its dissipated season of late rising, lifted itself indolently up to where it could peer down upon the silent ranch.
In the grove where the tiny creek gurgled under the little stone bridge, someone was snoring rhythmically in his blankets, for the boys had taken to sleeping in the open air before the earliest rose had opened buds in the sunny shelter of the porch. Three feet away, a sleeper stirred restlessly, lifted his head from the pillow, and slapped half-heartedly at an early mosquito that was humming in his ear. He reached out, and jogged the shoulder of him who snored.
“Say, Gene, if you've got to sleep at the top of your voice, you better drag your bed down into the orchard,” he growled. “Let up a little, can't yuh?”
“Ah, shut up and let a fellow sleep!” mumbled Gene, snuggling the covers up to his ears.
“Just what I want YOU to do. You snore like a sawmill. Darn it, you've got to get out of the grove if yuh can't—”
“Ah-h-EE-EE!” wailed a voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully down to silence.
“What's that?” The two jerked themselves to a sitting position, and stared into the blackness of the grove.
“Bobcat,” whispered Clark, in a tone which convinced not even himself.
“In a pig's ear,” flouted Gene, under his breath. He leaned far over and poked his finger into a muffled form. “D'yuh hear that noise, Grant?”
Grant sat up instantly. “What's the matter?” he demanded, rather ill-naturedly, if the truth be told.
“Did you hear anything—a funny noise, like—”
The cry itself finished the sentence for him. It came from nowhere, it would seem, since they could see nothing; rose slowly to a subdued shriek, clung there nerve-wrackingly, and then wailed mournfully down to silence. Afterward, while their ears were still strained to the sound, the bobcat squalled an answer from among the rocks.
“Yes, I heard it,” said Grant. “It's a spook. It's the wail of a lost spirit, loosed temporarily from the horrors of purgatory. It's sent as a warning to repent you of your sins, and it's howling because it hates to go back. What you going to do about it?”
He made his own intention plain beyond any possibility of misunderstanding. He lay down and pulled the blanket over his shoulders, cuddled his pillow under his head, and disposed himself to sleep.
The moon climbed higher, and sent silvery splinters of light quivering down among the trees. A frog crawled out upon a great lily—pad and croaked dismally.
Again came the wailing cry, nearer than before, more subdued, and for that reason more eerily mournful. Grant sat up, muttered to himself, and hastily pulled on some clothes. The frog cut himself short in the middle of a deep-throated ARR-RR-UMPH and dove headlong into the pond; and the splash of his body cleaving the still surface of the water made Gene shiver nervously. Grant reached under his pillow for something, and freed himself stealthily from a blanketfold.
“If that spook don't talk Indian when it's at home, I'm very much mistaken,” he whispered to Clark, who was nearest. “You boys stay here.”
Since they had no intention of doing anything else, they obeyed him implicitly and without argument, especially as a flitting white figure appeared briefly and indistinctly in a shadow-flecked patch of moonlight. Crouching low in the shade of a clump of bushes, Grant stole toward the spot.
When he reached the place, the thing was not there. Instead, he glimpsed it farther on, and gave chase, taking what precautions he could against betraying himself. Through the grove and the gate and across the road he followed, in doubt half the time whether it was worth the trouble. Still, if it was what he suspected, a lesson taught now would probably insure against future disturbances of the sort, he thought, and kept stubbornly on. Once more he heard the dismal cry, and fancied it held a mocking note.
“I'll settle that mighty quick,” he promised grimly, as he jumped a ditch and ran toward the place.
Somewhere among the currant bushes was a sound of eery laughter. He swerved toward the place, saw a white form rise suddenly from the very ground, as it seemed, and lift an arm with a slow, beckoning gesture. Without taking aim, he raised his gun and fired a shot at it. The arm dropped rather suddenly, and the white form vanished. He hurried up to where it had stood, knelt, and felt of the soft earth. Without a doubt there were footprints there—he could feel them. But he hadn't a match with him, and the place was in deep shade.
He stood up and listened, thought he heard a faint sound farther along, and ran. There was no use now in going quietly; what counted most was speed.
Once more he caught sight of the white form fleeing from him like the very wraith it would have him believe it. Then he lost it again; and when he reached the spot where it disappeared, he fell headlong, his feet tangled in some white stuff. He swore audibly, picked himself up, and held the cloth where the moon shone full upon it. It looked like a sheet, or something of the sort, and near one edge was a moist patch of red. He stared at it dismayed, crumpled the cloth into a compact bundle, tucked it under his arm, and ran on, his ears strained to catch some sound to guide him.
“Well, anyhow, I didn't kill him,” he muttered uneasily as he crawled through a fence into the orchard. “He's making a pretty swift get-away for a fellow that's been shot.”
In the orchard the patches of moonlight were larger, and across one of them he glimpsed a dark object, running wearily. Grant repressed an impulse to shout, and used the breath for an extra burst of speed. The ghost was making for the fence again, as if it would double upon its trail and reach some previously chosen refuge. Grant turned and ran also toward the fence, guessing shrewdly that the fugitive would head for the place where the wire could be spread about, and a beaten trail led from there straight out to the road which passed the house. It was the short cut from the peach orchard; and it occurred to him that this particular spook seemed perfectly familiar with the byways of the ranch. Near the fence he made a discovery that startled him a little.
“It's a squaw, by Jove!” he cried when he caught an unmistakable flicker of skirts; and the next moment he could have laughed aloud if he had not been winded from the chase. The figure reached the fence before him, and in the dim light he could see it stoop to pass through. Then it seemed as if the barbs had caught in its clothing and held it there. It struggled to free itself; and in the next minute he rushed up and clutched it fast.
“Why don't you float over the treetops?” he panted ironically. “Ghosts have no business getting their spirit raiment tangled up in a barbed-wire fence.”
It answered with a little exclamation, with a sob following close upon it. There was a sound of tearing cloth, and he held his captive upright, and with a merciless hand turned her face so that the moonlight struck it full. They stared at each other, breathing hard from more than the race they had run.
“Well—I'll—be—” Grant began, in blank amazement.
She wriggled her chin in his palm, trying to free herself from his pitiless staring. Failing that, she began to sob angrily without any tears in her wide eyes.
“You—shot me, you brute!” she cried accusingly at last. “You—SHOT me!” And she sobbed again.
Before he answered, he drew backward a step or two, sat down upon the edge of a rock which had rolled out from a stone-heap, and pulled her down beside him, still holding her fast, as if he half believed her capable of soaring away over the treetops, after all.
“I guess I didn't murder you—from the chase you gave me. Did I hit you at all?”
“Yes, you did! You nearly broke my arm—and you might have killed me, you big brute! Look what you did—and I never harmed you at all!” She pushed up a sleeve, and held out her arm accusingly in the moonlight, disclosing a tiny, red furrow where the skin was broken and still bleeding. “And you shot a big hole right through Aunt Phoebe's sheet!” she added, with tearful severity.
He caught her arm, bent his head over it—and for a moment he was perilously near to kissing it; an impulse which astonished him considerably, and angered him more. He dropped the arm rather precipitately; and she lifted it again, and regarded the wound with mournful interest.
“I'd like to know what right you have to prowl around shooting at people,” she scolded, seeing how close she could come to touching the place with her fingertips without producing any but a pleasurable pain.
“Just as much right as you have to get up in the middle of the night and go ahowling all over the ranch wrapped up in a sheet,” he retorted ungallantly.
“Well, if I want to do it, I don't see why you need concern yourself about it. I wasn't doing it for your benefit, anyway.”
“Will you tell me what you DID do it for? Of all the silly tomfoolery—”
An impish smile quite obliterated the Christmas-angel look for an instant, then vanished, and left her a pretty, abused maiden who is grieved at harsh treatment.
“Well, I wanted to scare Gene,” she confessed. “I did, too. I just know he's a cowardy-cat, because he's always trying to scare ME. It's Gene's fault—he told me the grove is haunted. He said a long time ago, before Uncle Hart settled here, a lot of Indians waylaid a wagon-train here and killed a girl, and he says that when the moon is just past the full, something white walks through the grove and wails like a lost soul in torment. He says sometimes it comes and moans at the corner of the house where my room is. I just know he was going to do it himself; but I guess he forgot. So I thought I'd see if he believed his own yarns. I was going to do it every night till I scared him into sleeping in the house. I had a perfectly lovely place to disappear into, where he couldn't trace me if he took to hunting around—only he wouldn't dare.” She pulled down her sleeve very carefully, and then, just as carefully, she pushed it up again, and took another look.
“My best friend TOLD me I'd get shot if I came to Idaho,” she reminded herself, with a melancholy satisfaction.
“You didn't get shot,” Grant contradicted for the sake of drawing more sparks of temper where temper seemed quaintly out of place, and stared hard at her drooping profile. “You just got nicely missed; a bullet that only scrapes off a little skin can't be said to hit. I'd hate to hit a bear like that.”
“I believe you're wishing you HAD killed me! You might at least have some conscience in the matter, and be sorry you shot a lady. But you're not. You just wish you had murdered me. You hate girls—you said so. And I don't know what business it is of yours, if I want to play a joke on my cousin, or why you had to be sleeping outside, anyway. I've a perfect right to be a ghost if I choose—and I don't call it nice, or polite, or gentlemanly for you to chase me all over the place with a gun, trying to kill me! I'll never speak to you again as long as I live. When I say that I mean it. I never liked you from the very start, when I first saw you this afternoon. Now I hate and despise you. I suppose I oughtn't to expect you to apologize or be sorry because you almost killed me. I suppose that's just your real nature coming to the surface. Indians love to hurt and torture people! I shouldn't have expected anything else of you, I suppose. I made the mistake of treating you like a white man.”
“Don't you think you're making another mistake right now?” Grant's whole attitude changed, as well as his tone. “Aren't you afraid to push the white man down into the dirt, and raise up—the INDIAN?”
She cast a swift, half-frightened glance up into his face and the eyes that glowed ominously in the moonlight.
“When people make the blunder of calling up the Indian,” he went on steadily, “they usually find that they have to deal with—the Indian.”
Evadna looked at him again, and turned slowly white before her temper surged to the surface again.
“I didn't call up the Indian,” she defended hotly; “but if the Indian wants to deal with me according to his nature—why, let him! But you don't ACT like other people! I don't know another man who wouldn't have been horrified at shooting me, even such a tiny little bit; but you don't care at all. You never even said you were sorry.”
“I'm not in the habit of saying all I think and feel.”
“You were quick enough to apologize, after supper there, when you hadn't really done anything; and now, when one would expect you to be at least decently sorry, you—you—well, you act like the savage you are! There, now! It may not be nice to say it, but it's the truth.”
Grant smiled bitterly. “All men are savages under the skin,” he said. “How do YOU know what I think and feel? If I fail to come through with the conventional patter, I am called an Indian—because my mother was a half-breed.” He threw up his head proudly, let his eyes rest for a moment upon the moon, swimming through a white river of clouds just over the tall poplar hedge planted long ago to shelter the orchard from the sweeping west winds; and, when he looked down at her again, he caught a glimpse of repentant tears in her eyes, and softened.
“Oh, you're a girl, and you demand the usual amount of poor-pussy talk,” he told her maliciously. “So I'm sorry. I'm heartbroken. If it will help any, I'll even kiss the hurt to make it well—and I'm not a kissing young man, either, let me tell you.”
“I'd die before I'd let you touch me!” Her repentance, if it was that, changed to pure rage. She snatched the torn sheet from him and turned abruptly toward the fence. He followed her, apparently unmoved by her attitude; placed his foot upon the lower wire and pressed it into the soft earth, lifted the one next above it as high as it would go, and thus made it easier for her to pass through. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, as though tempted to reject even that slight favor, then stooped, and went through.
As the wires snapped into place, she halted and looked back at him.
“Maybe I've been mean—but you're been meaner,” she summed up, in self-justification. “I suppose the next thing you will do will be to tell the boys. Well, I don't care what you do, so long as you never speak to me again. Go and tell them if you want to—tell. TELL, do you hear? I don't want even the favor of your silence!” She dexterously tucked the bundle of white under the uninjured arm, caught the loose folds of her skirt up in her hands, and ran away up the path, not once stopping to see whether he still followed her.
Grant did not follow. He stood leaning against the fence-post, and watched her until her flying form grew indistinct in the shade of the poplar hedge; watched it reappear in a broad strip of white moonlight, still running; saw it turn, slacken speed to a walk, and then lose itself in the darkness of the grove.
Five minutes, ten minutes, he stood there, staring across the level bit of valley lying quiet at the foot of the jagged-rimmed bluff standing boldly up against the star-flecked sky. Then he shook himself impatiently, muttered something which had to do with a “doddering fool,” and retraced his steps quickly through the orchard, the currant bushes, and the strawberry patch, jumped the ditch, and so entered the grove and returned to his blankets.
“We thought the spook had got yuh, sure.” Gene lifted his head turtlewise and laughed deprecatingly. “We was just about ready to start out after the corpse, only we didn't know but what you might get excited and take a shot at us in the dark. We heard yuh shoot—what was it? Did you find out?”
“It wasn't anything,” said Grant shortly, tugging at a boot.
“Ah—there was, too! What was it you shot at?” Clark joined in the argument from the blackness under the locust tree.
“The moon,” Grant told him sullenly. “There wasn't anything else that I could see.”
“And that's a lie,” Gene amended, with the frankness of a foster-brother. “Something yelled like—”
“You never heard a screech-owl before, did you, Gene?” Grant crept between his blankets and snuggled down, as if his mind held nothing more important than sleep.
“Screech-owl my granny! You bumped into something you couldn't handle—if you want to know whatIthink about it,” Clark guessed shrewdly. “I wish now I'd taken the trouble to hunt the thing down; it didn't seem worth while getting up. But I leave it to Gene if you ain't mad enough to murder whatever it was. What was it?”
He waited a moment without getting a reply.
“Well, keep your teeth shut down on it, then, darn yuh!” he growled. “That's the Injun of it—I know YOU! Screech-owl—huh! You said when you left it was an Indian—and that's why we didn't take after it ourselves. We don't want to get the whole bunch down on us like they are on you—and if there was one acting up around here, we knew blamed well it was on your account for what happened to-day. I guess you found out, all right. I knew the minute you heaved in sight that you was just about as mad as you can get—and that's saying a whole lot. If it WAS an Indian, and you killed him, you better let us—”
“Oh, for the lord's sake, WILL YOU SHUT UP!” Grant raised to an elbow, glared a moment, and lay down again.
The result proved the sort of fellow he was. Clark shut up without even trailing off into mumbling to himself, as was his habit when argument brought him defeat.