Bennington went faithfully to the Rock for four days. During whole afternoons he sat there looking out over the Bad Lands. At sunset he returned to camp.Aliris: A Romance of all Timegathered dust. Letters home remained unwritten. Prospecting was left to the capable hands of Old Mizzou until, much to Bennington's surprise, that individual resigned his position.
The samples lay in neatly tied coffee sacks just outside the door. The tabulations and statistics only needed copying to prepare them for the capitalist's eye. The information necessary to the understanding of them reposed in a grimy notebook, requiring merely throwing into shape as a letter to make them valuable to the Eastern owner of the property. Anybody could do that.
Old Mizzou explained these things to Bennington.
"You-all does this jes's well's I," he said. "You expresses them samples East, so as they kin assay 'em; an' you sends them notes and statistics. Then all they is to do is to pay th' rest of the boys when th' money rolls in. That ain't none of my funeral."
"But there's the assessment work," Bennington objected.
"That comes along all right. I aims to live yere in the camp jest th' same as usual; and I'll help yo' git started when you-all aims to do th' work."
"What do you want to quit for, then? If you live here, you may as well draw your pay."
"No, sonny, that ain't my way. I has some prospectin' of my own to do, an' as long as I is a employay of Bishop, I don't like to take his time fer my work."
Bennington thought this very high-minded on the part of Old Mizzou.
"Very well," he agreed, "I'll write Bishop."
"Oh, no," put in the miner hastily, "no need to trouble. I resigns in writin', of course; an' I sees to it myself."
"Well, then, if you'll help me with the assessment work, when shall we begin?"
"C'yant jest now," reflected Old Mizzou, "'cause, as I tells you, I wants to do some work of my own. A'ter th' Pioneer's Picnic, I reckons."
The Pioneer's Picnic seemed to limit many things.
Bennington shipped the ore East, tabulated the statistics, and wrote his report. About two weeks later he received a letter from Bishop saying that the assay of the samples had been very poor—not at all up to expectations—and asking some further information. As to the latter, Bennington consulted Old Mizzou. The miner said, "I told you so," and helped on the answer. After this the young man heard nothing further from his employer. As no more checks came from the East, he found himself with nothing to do.
For four afternoons, as has been said, he fruitlessly haunted the Rock. On the fifth morning he met the girl on horseback. She was quite the same as at first, and they resumed their old relations as if the fatal picnic had never taken place. In a very few days they were as intimate as though they had known each other for years.
Bennington read to her certain rewritten parts ofAliris: A Romance of all Time,which would have been ridiculous to any but these two. They saw it through the glamour of youth; for, in spite of her assertions of great age, the girl, too, felt the whirl of that elixir in her veins. You see, he was twenty-one and she was twenty: magic years, more venerable than threescore and ten. She gave him sympathy, which was just what he needed for the sake of his self-confidence and development, just the right thing for him in that effervescent period which is so necessary a concomitant of growth. The young business man indulges in a hundred wild schemes, to be corrected by older heads. The young artist paints strange impressionism, stranger symbolism, and perhaps a strangest other-ism, before at last he reaches the medium of his individual genius. The young writer thinks deep and philosophical thoughts which he expresses in measured polysyllabic language; he dreams wild dreams of ideal motive, which he sets forth in beautiful allegorical tales full of imagery; and he delights in Rhetoric—flower-crowned, flashing-eyed, deep-voiced Rhetoric, whom he clasps to his heart and believes to be true, although the whole world declares her to be false; and then, after a time, he decides not to introduce a new system of metaphysics, but to tell a plain story plainly. Ah, it is a beautiful time to those who dwell in it, and such a funny time to those who do not!
They came to possess an influence over each other. She decided how they should meet; he, how they should act. She had only to be gay, and he was gay; to be sad, and he was sad; to show her preference for serious discourse, and he talked quietly of serious things; to sigh for dreams, and he would rhapsodize. It sometimes terrified her almost when she saw how much his mood depended on hers. But once the mood was established, her dominance ceased and his began. If they were sad or gay or thoughtful or poetic, it was in his way and not in hers. He took the lead masterfully, and perhaps the more effectually in that it was done unconsciously. And in a way which every reader will understand, but which genius alone could put into words, this mutual psychical dependence made them feel the need of each other more strongly than any merely physical dependence ever could.
There is much to do in a new and romantic country, where the imminence of a sordid, dreary future, when the soil will raise its own people and the crop will be poor, is mercifully veiled. The future then counts little in the face of the Past—the Past with its bearded strong men of other lands, bringing their power and vigour here to be moulded and directed by the influences of the frontier. Its shadow still lies over the land.
They did it all. The Rock was still the favourite place to read or talk—crossbars nailed on firmly made "shinning" unnecessary now—but it was often deserted for days while they explored. Bennington had bought the little bronco, and together they extended their investigations of the country in all directions. They rode to Spring Creek Valley. They passed the Range over into Custer Valley. Once they climbed Harney by way of Grizzly Gulch.
Thus they grew to know the Hills intimately. From the summit of the Rock they would often look abroad over the tangle of valleys and ridges, selecting the objective points for their next expedition. Many surprises awaited them, for they found that here, as everywhere, a seemingly uniform exterior covered an almost infinite variety.
Or again, the horses were given a rest. The sarvis-berries ripened, and they picked hatfuls. Then followed the raspberries on the stony hills. They walked four unnecessary miles to see a forest fire, and six to buy buckskin work from a band of Sioux who had come up into the timber for their annual supply of tepee poles. They taught their ponies tricks. They even went wading together, like two small children, in a pool of Battle Creek.
Bennington was deliciously, carelessly, forgetfully happy. Only there was Jim Fay. That individual was as much of a persecution as ever, and he seemed to enjoy a greater intimacy with the girl than did the Easterner. He did not see her as often as did the latter, but he appeared to be more in her confidence. Bennington hated Jim Fay.
One afternoon they had pushed over back of Harney, up a very steep little trail in a very tiny cleft-like cañon, verdant and cool. All at once the trail had stood straight on end. The ponies scrambled up somehow, and they found themselves on a narrow openmesasplashed with green moss and matted with an aromatic covering of pine needles.
Beyond the easternmost edge of the plateau stood great spires of stone, a dozen in all, several hundred feet high, and of solid granite. They soared up grandly into the open blue, like so many cathedral spires, drawing about them that air of solitude and stillness which accompanies always the sublime in Nature. Even boundless space was amplified at the bidding of their solemn uplifted fingers. The girl reined in her horse.
"Oh!" she murmured in a hushed voice, "I feel impertinent—as though I were intruding."
A squirrel many hundreds of feet below could be heard faintly barking.
"Thereissomething solemn about them," the boy agreed in the same tone, "but, after all, we are nothing to them. They are thinking their own thoughts, far above everything in the world."
She slipped from her horse.
"Let's sit here and watch them," she said. "I want to look at them, andfeelthem."
They sat on the moss, and stared solemnly across at the great spires of stone.
"They are waiting for something there," she observed; "for something that has not come to pass, and they are looking for it always toward the East. Don't you see how they are waiting?"
"Yes, like Indian warriors wrapped each in his blanket. They might be the Manitous. They say there are lots of them in the Hills."
"Yes, of course!" she cried, on fire with the idea. "They are the Gods of the people, and they are waiting for something that is coming—something from the East. What is it?"
"Civilization," he suggested.
"Yes! And when this something, this Civilization, comes, then the Indians are to be destroyed, and so their Gods are always watching for it toward the East."
"And," he went on, "when it comes at last, then the Manitous will have to die, and so the Indians know that their hour has struck when these great stone needles fall."
"Why, we have made a legend," she exclaimed with wonder.
They stretched out on their backs along the slope, and stared up at the newly dignified Manitous in delicious silence.
"There was a legend once, you remember?" he began hesitatingly, "the first day we were on the Rock together. It was about a Spirit Mountain."
"Yes, I remember, the day we saw the Shadow."
"You said you'd tell it to me some time."
"Did I?"
"Don't you think now is a good time?"
She considered a moment idly.
"Why, yes, I suppose so," she assented, after a pause. "It isn't much of a legend though." She clasped her hands back of her head. "It goes like this," she began comfortably:
"Once upon a time, when the world was very young, there was an evil Manitou namedNe-naw-bo-shoo. He was a very wicked Manitou, but he was also very accomplished, for he could change himself into any shape he wished to assume, and he could travel swifter than the wind. But he was also very wicked. In old times the centres of all the trees were fat, and people could get food from them, butNe-naw-bo-shoowalked through the forest and pushed his staff down through the middle of the trunks, and that is why the cores of the trees are dark-coloured. Maple sap used to be pure sirup once, too, butNe-naw-bo-shoodiluted it with rain water just out of spite. But there was one peculiar thing aboutNe-naw-bo-shoo. He could not cross a vein of gold or of silver. There was some sort of magic in them that turned him back—repelled him.
"Now, one day two lovers were wandering about on the prairie away east of here. One of them was namedMon-e-dowa, or the Bird Lover, and the other wasMuj-e-ah-je-wan, or Rippling Water. And as these two walked over the plains talking together, along came the evil spirit,Ne-naw-bo-shoo, and as soon as he saw them he chased them, intending to kill them and drink their blood, as was his custom.
"They fled far over the prairie. Everywhere thatMuj-e-ah-je-wanstepped, prairie violets grew up; and everywhere thatMon-e-dowastepped, a lark sprang up and began to sing. But the wickedNe-naw-bo-shoogained on them fast, for he could run very swiftly.
"Then suddenly they saw in front of them a great mountain, grown with pines and seamed with fissures. This astonished them greatly, for they knew there were no mountains in the prairie country at all; but they had no time to spare, so they climbed quickly up a broad cañon and concealed themselves.
"Now, when the wicked Manitou came along he tried to enter the cañon too, but he had to stop, because down in the depths of the mountain were veins of gold and silver which he could not cross. For many days he raged back and forth, but in vain. At last he got tired and went away.
"ThenMon-e-dowaandMuj-e-ah-je-wan, who had been living quite peacefully on the game with which the mountain swarmed, came out of the cañon and turned toward home. But as soon as they had set foot on the level prairie again, the mountain vanished like a cloud, and then they knew they had been aided byMan-a-boo-sho, the good Manitou."
The girl arose and shook her skirt free of the pine needles that clung to it.
"Ever since then," she went on, eyeing Bennington saucily sideways, "the mountain has been invisible except to a very few. The legend says that when a maid and a warrior see it together they will be----"
"What?" asked Bennington as she paused.
"Dead within the year!" she cried gaily, and ran lightly to her pony.
"Did you like my legend?" she asked, as the ponies, foot-bunched, minced down the steepest of the trail.
"Very much; all but the moral."
"Don't you want to die?"
"Not a bit."
"Then I'll have to."
"That would be the same thing."
And Bennington dared talk in this way, for the next day began the Pioneer's Picnic, and lately she had been very kind.
The Lawtons were not going to the picnic. Bennington was to take Mary down to Rapid, where the girl was to stay with a certain Dr. McPherson of the School of Mines.
An early start was accomplished. They rode down the gulch through the dwarf oaks, past the farthermost point, and so out into the hard level dirt road of Battle Creek cañon. Beyond were the pines, and a rugged road, flint-edged, full of dips and rises, turns and twists, hovering on edges, or bosoming itself in deep rock-strewn cuts. Mary's little pony cantered recklessly through it all, scampering along like a playful dog after a stone, leading Bennington's larger animal by several feet. He had full leisure to notice the regular flop of the Tam o'Shanter over the lighter dance of the hair, the increasing rosiness of the cheeks dimpled into almost continual laughter, to catch stray snatches of gay little remarks thrown out at random as they tore along. After a time they drew out from the shadow of the pines into the clearing at Rockerville, where the hydraulic "giants" had eaten away the hill-sides, and left in them ugly unhealed sores. Then more rough pine-shadowed roads, from which occasionally would open for a moment broad vistas of endless glades, clear as parks, breathless descents, or sharp steep cuts at the bottom of which Spring Creek, or as much of it as was not turned into the Rockerville sluices, brawled or idled along. It was time for lunch, so they dismounted near a deep still pool and ate. The ponies cropped the sparse grasses, or twisted on their backs, all four legs in the air. Squirrels chattered and scolded overhead. Some of the indigo-coloured jays of the lowlands shot in long level flight between the trees. The girl and the boy helped each other, hindered each other, playing here and there near the Question, but swerving always deliciously just in time.
After lunch, more riding through more pines. The road dipped strongly once, then again; and then abruptly the forest ceased, and they found themselves cantering over broad rolling meadows knee-high with grasses, from which meadow larks rose in all directions like grasshoppers. Soon after they passed the canvas "schooners" of some who had started the evening before. Down the next long slope the ponies dropped cautiously with bunched feet and tentative steps. Spring Creek was forded for the last time, another steep grassy hill was surmounted, and they looked abroad into Rapid Valley and over to the prairie beyond.
Behind them the Hills lay, dark with the everlasting greenery of the North—even, low, with only sun-browned Harney to raise its cliff-like front above the rest of the range. As though by a common impulse they reined in their horses and looked back.
"I wonder just where the Rock is?" she mused.
They tried to guess at its location.
The treeless ridge on which they were now standing ran like a belt outside the Hills. They journeyed along its summit until late in the afternoon, and then all at once found the city of Rapid lying below them at the mouth of a mighty cañon, like a toy village on fine velvet brown.
In the city they separated, Mary going to the McPhersons', Bennington to the hotel. It was now near to sunset, so it was agreed that Bennington was to come round the following morning to get her. At the hotel Bennington spent an interesting evening viewing the pioneers with their variety of costume, manners, and speech. He heard many good stories, humorous and blood-curdling, and it was very late before he finally got to bed.
The immediate consequence was that he was equally late to breakfast. He hurried through that meal and stepped out into the street, with the intention of hastening to Dr. McPherson's for Mary, but this he found to be impossible because of the overcrowded condition of the streets. The sports of the day had already begun. From curb to curb the way was jammed with a dense mass of men, women, and children, through whom he had to worm his way. After ten feet of this, he heard his name called, and looking up, caught sight of Mary herself, perched on a dry-goods box, frantically waving a handkerchief in his direction.
"You're a nice one!" she cried in mock reproach as he struggled toward her. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks flew red signals of enjoyment.
Bennington explained.
"I know. Well, it didn't matter, any way. I just captured this box. Climb up. There's room. I've lost the doctor and Mrs. McPherson already."
Two mounted men, decorated with huge tin marshals' badges, rode slowly along forcing the crowd back to the right and to the left. The first horse race was on. Suddenly there was an eager scramble, a cloud of dust, a swift impression of dim ghostlike figures. It was over. The crowd flowed into the street again.
The two pressed together, hand in hand, on the top of the dry-goods box. They laughed at each other and everything. Something beautiful was very near to them, for this was the Pioneer's Picnic, and both remembered that the Pioneer's Picnic marked the limit of many things.
"What's next? What's next?" she called excitedly to a tall young cattleman.
The cowboy looked up at her, and his face relaxed into a pleased smile.
"Why, it's a drillin' match over in the next street, miss," he answered politely. "You'd better run right along over and get a good place." He glanced at de Laney, smiled again, and turned away, apparently to follow his own advice.
"Come on, we'll follow him," cried Mary, jumping down.
"And abandon our box?" objected Bennington. But she was already in full pursuit of the tall cowboy.
The ring around the large boulder—dragged by mule team from the hills—had just begun to form when they arrived, so they were enabled to secure good places near the front rank, where they kneeled on their handkerchiefs, and the crowd hemmed them in at the back. The drilling match was to determine which pair of contestants could in a given time, with sledge and drill, cut the deepest hole in a granite boulder. To one who stood apart, the sight must have been picturesque in the extreme. The white dust, stirred by restless feet, rose lazily across the heated air. The sun shone down clear and hot with a certain wide-eyed glare that is seen only in the rarefied atmosphere of the West. Around the outer edge of the ring hovered a few anxious small boys, agonized that they were missing part of the show. Stolidly indifferent Indians, wrapped close in their blankets, smoked silently, awaiting the next pony race, the riders of which were skylarking about trying to pull each other from their horses' backs.
When the last pair had finished, the judges measured the depths of the holes drilled, and announced the victors.
The crowd shouted and broke for the saloons. The latter had been plying a brisk business, so that men were about ready to embrace in brotherhood or in battle with equal alacrity.
Suddenly it was the dinner hour. The crowd broke. Bennington and Mary realized they had been wandering about hand in hand. They directed their steps toward the McPhersons with the greatest propriety. It was a glorious picnic.
The house was gratefully cool and dark after the summer heat out of doors. The little doctor sat in the darkest room and dissertated cannily on the strange variety of subjects which a Scotchman can always bring up on the most ordinary occasions.
The doctor was not only a learned man, as was evidenced by his position in the School of Mines and his wonderful collections, but was a scout of long standing, a physician of merit, and an Indian authority of acknowledged weight. Withal he was so modest that these things became known only by implication or hearsay, never by direct evidence. Mrs. McPherson was not Scotch at all, but plain comfortable American, redolent of wholesome cleanliness and good temper, and beaming with kindliness and round spectacles. Never was such a doctor; never was such a Mrs. McPherson; never was such a dinner! And they brought in after-dinner coffee in small cups.
"Ah, ha! Mr. de Laney," laughed the doctor, who had been watching him with quizzical eye. "We're pretty bad, but we aren't got quite to savagery yet."
Bennington hastened to disavow.
"That's all right," the doctor reassured him; "that's all right. I didn't wonder at ye in this country, but Mrs. McPherson and mysel' jest take a wee trip occasionally to keep our wits bright. Isn't it so, Mrs. Mac?"
"It is that," said she with a doubtful inner thought as to the propriety of offering cream.
"And as for you," went on the doctor dissertatively, "I suppose ye're getting to be somewhat of a miner yourself. I mind me we did a bit of assay work for your people the other day—the Crazy Horse, wasn't it? A good claim I should judge, from the sample, and so I wrote Davidson."
"When was this?" asked the Easterner, puzzled.
"The last week."
"I didn't know he had had any assaying done."
"O weel," said the doctor comfortably, "it may not have occurred to him to report yet. It was rich."
"Mrs. McPherson, let's talk about dresses," called Mary across the table. "Here we've come down for aholidayand they insist on talking mining."
And so the subject was dropped, but Bennington could not get it out of his mind. Why should Mizzou have had the Crazy Horse assayed without saying anything about it to him? Why had he not reported the result? How did it happen that the doctor's assistants had found the ore rich when the company's assayers East had proved it poor? Why should Mizzou have it assayed at all, since he was no longer connected with the company? But, above all, supposing he had done this with the intention of keeping it secret from Bennington, what possible benefit or advantage could the old man derive from such an action?
He puzzled over this. It seemed to still the effervescence of his joy. He realized suddenly that he had been very careless in a great many respects. The work had all been trusted to Davidson, while he, often, had never even seen it. He had been entirely occupied with the girl. He experienced that sudden sinking feeling which always comes to a man whom neglected duty wakes from pleasure.
What was Davidson's object? Could it be that he hoped to "buy in" a rich claim at a low figure, and to that end had sent poor samples East? The more he thought of this the more reasonable it seemed. His resignation was for the purpose of putting him in the position of outside purchaser.
He resolved to carry through the affair diplomatically. During the afternoon he ruminated on how this was to be done. Mary could not understand his preoccupation. It piqued her. A slight strangeness sprang up between them which he was toodistraitto notice. Finally, as he tumbled into bed that night, an idea so brilliant came to him that he sat bolt upright in sheer delight at his own astuteness.
He would ask Dr. McPherson for a copy of the assays. If his suspicions were correct, these assays would represent the richest samples. He would send them at once to Bishop with a statement of the case, in that manner putting the capitalist on his guard. There was something exquisitely humorous to him in the idea of thus turning to his own use the information which Davidson had accumulated for his fraudulent purposes. He went to sleep chuckling over it.
The next morning the young man had quite regained his good spirits. The girl, on the other hand, was rather quiet.
Dr. McPherson made no objections to furnishing a copy of the assays. The records, however, were at the School of Mines. He drove down to get them, and in the interim the two young people, at Mrs. McPherson's suggestion, went to see the train come in.
The platform of the station was filled to suffocation. Assuming that the crowd's intention was to view the unaccustomed locomotive, it was strange it did not occur to them that the opposite side of the track or the adjacent prairie would afford more elbow room. They huddled together on the boards of the platform as though the appearance of the spectacle depended on every last individual's keeping his feet from the naked earth. They pushed good-naturedly here and there, expostulating, calling to one another facetiously, looking anxiously down the straight, dwindling track for the first glimpse of the locomotive.
Mary and Bennington found themselves caught up at once into the vortex. After a few moments of desperate clinging together, they were forced into the front row, where they stood on the very edge, braced back against the pressure, half laughing, half vexed.
The train drew in with a grinding rush. From the step swung the conductor. Faces looked from the open windows.
On the platform of one of the last cars stood a young girl and three men. One of the men was elderly, with white hair and side whiskers. The other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best patrician type—the type that may know little, think little, say little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she was faultlessly groomed. From eye to attitude she was languidly superior—the impolitic would say bored. Yet every feature of her appearance and bearing, even to the very tips of her enamelled and sensibly thick boots, implied that she was of a different class from the ordinary, and satisfied on "common people" that impulse which attracts her lesser sisters to the vulgar menagerie. She belonged to the proper street—at the proper time of day. Any one acquainted with the species would have known at once that this private-car trip to Deadwood was to please the prosperous-looking gentleman with the side whiskers, and that it was made bearable only by the two smooth-shaven individuals in the background.
She caught sight of the pair directly in front of her, and raised her lorgnette with a languid wrist.
Her stare was from the outside-the-menagerie standpoint. Bennington was not used to it. For the moment he had the Fifth Avenue feeling, and knew that he was not properly dressed. Therefore, naturally, he was confused. He lowered his head and blushed a little. Then he became conscious that Mary's clear eyes were examining him in a very troubled fashion.
Three hours and a half afterward it suddenly occurred to him that she might have thought he had blushed and lowered his head because he was ashamed to be seen by this other girl in her company; but it was then too late.
The train pulled out. The Westerners at once scattered in all directions. Half an hour later the choking cloud dusts rose like smoke from the different trails that led north or south or west to the heart of the Hills.
"The picnic is over," he suggested gently at their noon camping place.
"Yes, thank Heaven!"
"You remember your promise?"
"What promise?"
"That you would explain your 'mystery.'"
"I've changed my mind."
A leaf floated slowly down the wind. A raven croaked. The breeze made the sunbeams waver.
"Mary, the picnic is over," he repeated again very gently.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"I love you, Mary."
The raven spread his wings and flew away.
"Do you love me?" he insisted gently.
"I want you to come to dinner at our house to-morrow noon."
"That is a strange answer, Mary."
"It is all the answer you'll get to-day."
"Why are you so cross? Is anything the matter?"
"Nothing."
"I love you, Mary. I love you, girl. At least I can say that now."
"Yes, you can say it—now."
Bennington did not know what to make of his invitation. At one moment he told himself it must mean that Mary loved him, and that she wished him to meet her parents on that account. At the next he tormented himself with the conviction that she thus merely avoided the issue. Between these moods he alternated, without being able to abide in either. He forgot all about Old Mizzou.
Promptly at noon the following day he turned up the little right-hand trail for the first time.
The Lawton house he found, first of all, to be scrupulously neat. It stood on a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a "rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building was L-shaped, of two low stories, had a veranda with a railing, and possessed various ornamental wood edgings, all of which were painted. The whole affair was mathematically squared and correspondingly neat. Some boxes and pots of flowers adorned the window ledges.
Bennington's knock was answered by an elderly woman, who introduced herself at once as Mrs. Lawton. She commenced a voluble and slightly embarrassed explanation of how "she" would be down in a moment or so, at the same time leading the way into the parlour. While this explanation was going forward, Bennington had a good chance to examine his hostess and her surroundings.
Mrs. Lawton was of the fat but energetic variety. She fairly shone with cleanliness and with an insistent determination to keep busy. You could see that all the time her tongue was uttering polite platitudes concerning the weather, her mind was hovering like a dragon fly over this or that flower of domestic economy. She was one of the women who carry their housekeeping to a perfection uncomfortable both to herself and everybody else, and then delude themselves into the martyrlike belief that she is doing it all entirely for others. As a consequence, she exhibited much of the time an aggrieved air that comported but ludicrously with her tendency to bustle. And it must be confessed that in other ways Mrs. Lawton was ludicrous. Her dumpy little form was dressed in the loudest of prints, the figures of which turned her into a huge flower bed of brilliant cabbage-like blooms. Over this chaos of colours peered her round little face with its snapping eyes. She discoursed in sentences which began coherently, but frayed out soon into nothingness under the stress of inner thought. "I don't see where that husban' of mine is. I reckon you'll think we're just awful rude, Mr. de Laney, and that gal, an' Maude. I declare it's jest enough to try any one's patience, it surely is. You've no idea, Mr. de Laney, what with the hens settin', and this mis'able dry spell that sends th' dust all over everything and every one 'way behin' hand on everythin'----" Her eye was becoming vacant as she wondered about certain biscuits.
"I'm sure it must be," agreed Bennington uncomfortably.
"What was I a-sayin'? You must excuse me, Mr. de Laney, but you, being a man, can have no idea of the life us poor women folks lead, slavin' our very lives away to keep things runnin', and then no thanks fer it a'ter all. I'd just like t' see Bill Lawton try itfer jest one week. He'd be a ravin' lunatic, an' thet I tell him often. This country's jest awful, too. I tell him he must get out sometimes, and I 'spect he will, when he's made his pile, poor man, an' then we'll have a chanst to go back East again. When we lived East, Mr. de Laney, we had a house—not like this little shack; a good house with nigh on to a dozen rooms, and I had a gal to help me and some chanst to buy things once in a while, but now that Bill Lawton's moved West, what's goin' to become o' me I don't know. I'm nigh wore out with it all."
"Then you lived East once?" asked Bennington.
"Law, yes! We lived in Illinoy once, and th' Lord only knows I wisht we lived there yet, though the farmin' was a sight of work and no pay sometimes." The inner doubts as to the biscuits proved too much for her. "Heaven knows, you ain't t' git much to eat," she cried, jumping up, "but you ain't goin' to git anythin' a tall if I don't run right off and tend to them biscuit."
She bustled out. Bennington had time then to notice the decorations of the "parlour." They offered to the eye a strange mixture of the East and West—reminiscences of the old home in "Illinoy" and trophies of the new camping-out on the frontier. From the ceiling hung a heavy lamp with prismatic danglers, surrounded by a globe on which were depicted stags in the act of leaping six-barred gates. By way of complement to this gorgeous centrepiece, the paper on the walls showed, in infinitely recurring duplicate, a huntress in green habit and big hat carrying on a desperate flirtation with a young man in the habiliments of the fifteenth century, while across the background a huddle of dogs pursued a mammoth deer. Mathematically beneath the lamp stood a table covered with a red-figured spread. On the table was a glass bell, underneath which were wax flowers and a poorly-stuffed robin. In one angle of the room austerely huddled a three-cornered "whatnot" of four shelves. Two china pugs and a statuette of a simpering pair of children under a massive umbrella adorned this article of furniture. On the wall ticked an old-fashioned square wooden clock. The floor was concealed by a rag carpet. So much for the East. The West contributed brilliant green copper ore, flaky white tin ore, glittering white quartz ore, shining pyrites, and one or two businesslike specimens of oxygenated quartz, all of which occupied points of exhibit on the "whatnot." Over the carpet were spread a deer skin, and a rug made from the hide of a timber wolf. Bennington found all this interesting but depressing. He was glad when Mrs. Lawton returned and took up her voluble discourse.
In the midst of a dissertation on the relation of corn meal to eggs the door opened, and Mr. Lawton sidled in.
"Oh, here y' are at last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately and solemnly at Bennington as though to imply that circumstances alone prevented any more open show of cordiality. At last, catching the young man's eye at a more than usually propitious moment, he went through the pantomime of opening a bottle, then furtively arose and disappeared. Mrs. Lawton, remembering her cakes, ran out. Bennington was left alone again. He had not spoken six words.
The door slowly opened, and another member of the family sidled in. Bennington owned a helpless feeling that this was a sort of show, and that these various actors in it were parading their entrances and their exits before him. Or that he himself were the object of inspection on whom the others were satisfying their own curiosity.
The newcomer was a child, a little girl about eight or ten years old. Bennington liked children as a usual thing. No one on earth could have become possessed in this one's favour. She was a creature of regular but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring disposition. On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would have expected a deluge of questions. Bennington did. But she merely stood and stared without winking.
"Hullo, little girl!" Bennington greeted her uneasily.
The creature only stared the harder.
"My doll's name is Garnet M-a-ay," she observed suddenly, with a long-drawn nasal accent.
After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.
"What is your name, little girl?" Bennington asked desperately at last.
"Maude," remarked the phenomenon briefly.
This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness. She approached.
"D' you want t' see my picters?" she whimpered confidingly.
Bennington expressed his delight.
For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with flat chests, and rat's nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted playful sportiveness of disposition. Each of these pictures was explained in minute detail. Bennington's distress became apathy. Mrs. Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break in on the duration of centuries.
"Now, Maude!" she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, "you mustn't be botherin' the gentleman." She paused to receive the expected disclaimer. It was made, albeit a little weakly. "Maude is very good with her Book," she explained. "Miss Brown, that's the school teacher that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight better than lots as is two or three years older. Now how old would you think she was, Mr. de Laney?"
Mr. de Laney tried to appraise, while the object hung her head self-consciously and twisted her feet. He had no idea of children's ages.
"About eleven," he guessed, with an air of wisdom.
"Jest eight an' a half!" cried the dame, folding her hands triumphantly. She let her fond maternal gaze rest on the prodigy. Suddenly she darted forward with extraordinary agility for one so well endowed with flesh, and seized her offspring in relentless grasp.
"I do declare, Maude Eliza!" she exclaimed in horror-stricken tones, "you ain't washed your ears! You come with me!"
They disappeared in a blue mist of wails.
As though this were his cue, the crafty features of Lawton appeared cautiously in the doorway, bestowed a furtive and searching inspection on the room, and finally winked solemnly at its only occupant. A hand was inserted. The forefinger beckoned. Bennington arose wearily and went out.
Lawton led the way to a little oat shed standing at some distance from the house. Behind this he paused. From beneath his coat he drew a round bottle and two glass tumblers.
"No joke skippin' th' ole lady," he chuckled in an undertone. He poured out a liberal portion for himself, and passed the bottle along. Bennington was unwilling to hurt the old fellow's feelings after he had taken so much trouble on his account, but he was equally unwilling to drink the whisky. So he threw it away when Lawton was not looking.
They walked leisurely toward the house, Lawton explaining various improvements in a loud tone of voice, intended more to lull his wife's suspicions than to edify the young man. The lady looked on them sternly, and announced dinner. At the table Bennington found Mary already seated.
The Easterner was placed next to Mrs. Lawton. At his other hand was Maude Eliza. Mary sat opposite. Throughout the meal she said little, and only looked up from her plate when Bennington's attention was called another way.
Her mere presence, however, seemed to open to the young man a different point of view. He found Mrs. Lawton's lengthy dissertations amusing; he considered Mr. Lawton in the light of a unique character, and Maude Eliza, while as disagreeable as ever, came in for various excuses and explanations on her own behalf in the young man's mind. He became more responsive. He told a number of very good stories, at which the others laughed. He detailed some experiences of his own at places in the world far remote, selected, it must be confessed, with some slight reference to their dazzling effect on the company. Without actually "showing off," he managed to get the effect of it. The result of his efforts was to harmonize to some extent these diverse elements. Mrs. Lawton became more coherent, Mr. Lawton more communicative; Maude Eliza stopped whining—occasionally and temporarily. Bennington had rarely been in such high spirits. He was surprised himself, but then was not that day of moment to him, and would he not have been a strange sort of individual to have seen in the world aught but brightness?
But Mary responded not at all. Rather, as Bennington arose, she fell, until at last she hardly even moved in her place.
"Chirk up, chirk up!" cried Mrs. Lawton gaily, for her. "I know some one who ought to be happy, anyhow." She glanced meaningly from one to the other and laughed heartily.
Bennington felt a momentary disgust at her tactlessness, but covered it with some laughing sally of his own. The meal broke up in great good humour. Mrs. Lawton and Maude Eliza remained to clear away the dishes. Mr. Lawton remarked that he must get back to work, and shook hands in farewell most elaborately. Bennington laughingly promised them all that he would surely come again. Then he escaped, and followed Mary up the hill, surmising truly enough that she had gone on toward the Rock. He thought he caught a glimpse of her through the elders. He hastened his footsteps. At this he stumbled slightly. From his pocket fell a letter he had received that morning. He picked it up and looked at it idly.
It was from his mother and covered a number of closely-written pages. As he was about to thrust it back into his pocket a single sentence caught his eye. It read: "Sally Ogletree gave a supper last week, which was a very pretty affair."
He stopped short on the trail, and the world seemed to go black around him. He almost fell. Then resumed his way, but step now was hesitating and slow, and he walked with his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground.