“On my honour,” Ashby assured her.
The woman’s face stood clear—cruelly clear in the light of the kerosene lamp above her head. About her mouth and eyes there was a repellent expression. Her mind, still working vividly, was reviewing the past; and a bitter memory prompted thewords which were said however with a smile that was still seductive:
“Try to recall, Señor Ashby, what strangers were in The Polka to-night?”
At these ominous words the men started and regarded each other questioningly. Their keen and trained intelligences were greatly distressed at being so utterly in the dark. For an instant, it is true, the thought of the greaser that Ashby had brought in rose uppermost in their minds, but only to be dismissed quickly when they recalled the woman’s words concerning the way that the road agent was dressed. A moment more, however, and a strange thought had fastened itself on one of their active minds—a thought which, although persisting in forcing itself upon the Sheriff’s consideration, was in the end rejected as wholly improbable. But who was it then? In his intensity Rance let his cigar go out.
“Ah!” at last he cried. “Johnson, by the eternal!”
“Johnson?” echoed Ashby, wholly at sea and surprised at the look of corroboration in Nina’s eyes.
“Yes, Johnson,” went on Rance, insistently. Why had he not seen at once that it was Johnson who was the road agent! There could be no mistake! “You weren’t there,” he explained hurriedly, “when he came in and began flirting with the Girl and—”
“Ramerrez making love to the Girl?” broke in Ashby. “Ye Gods!”
“The Girl? So that’s the woman he’s after now!” Nina laughed bitterly. “Well, she’s not destined to have him for long, I can tell you!” And with that she reached out for the bottle on the table and poured herself a small glass of whisky and swallowed it. When she turned her lips were tightly shut over her brilliant teeth, a thousand thoughts came rushing into her brain. There was no longer any compunction—she would strike now and deep. Through her efforts alone the man would be captured, and she gloried in the thought.
“Here—here is something that will interest you!” she said; and putting her hand in her bosom drew out a soiled, faded photograph. “There—that will settle him for good and all! Never again will he boast of trifling with Nina Micheltoreña—with me, a Micheltoreña in whose veins runs the best and proudest blood of California!”
Ashby fairly snatched the photograph out of her hand and, after one look at it, passed it over to the Sheriff.
“Good of him, isn’t it?” sneered Nina; and then seemingly trying by her very vehemence to impress upon herself the impossibility of his ever being anything but an episode in her life, she added: “I hate him!”
The picture was indeed an excellent one. It represented Ramerrez in the gorgeous dress of acaballero—and the outlaw was a fine specimen of that spectacular class of men. But Rance studied the photograph only long enough to be sure that no mistake was possible. With a quick movement he put it away in his pocket and looked long and hard at the figure of the degraded woman standing before him and revelling in her treachery. In that time he forgot that anyone had ever entertained a kind thought about her; he forgot that she once was respected as well as admired; he was conscious only of regarding her with a far deeper disgust and repugnance than he held towards others much her inferior in birth and education. But, presently, his face grew a shade whiter, if that were possible, and he cursed himself for not having thought of the danger to which the Girl might even now be exposed. In less than a minute, therefore, both men stood ready for the work before them. But on the threshold just before going out into the fierce storm that had burst during the last few minutes, he paused and called back:
“You Mexican devil! If any harm comes to the Girl, I’ll strangle you with my own hands!” And not waiting to hear the woman’s mocking laughter he passed out, followed by Ashby, into the storm.
Inthe still black night and with no guide other than the dimly-lighted lantern which she carried, the Girl had started for home—a bit of shelter in the middle of a great silence, a little fortress in the wilderness, as it were, with its barred doors and windows—on the top of Cloudy Mountain. To be sure, it was not the first time that she had followed the trail alone: Day and night, night and day, for as long, almost, as she could remember, she had been doing it; indeed, she had watched the alders, oaks and dwarf pines, that bordered the trail, grow year by year as she herself had grown, until now the whispering of the mountain’s night winds spoke a language as familiar as her own; but never before had she climbed up into the clean, wide, free sweep of this unbounded horizon, the very air untainted and limitless as the sky itself, with so keen and uncloying a pleasure. But there was a new significance attached to her home-coming to-night: was she not to entertain there her first real visitor?
At the threshold of her cabin the Girl, her cheeks aglow and eyes as bright, almost, as the red cape that enveloped her lithe, girlish figure, paused, and swinging her lantern high above her head so that its light was reflected in the room, she endeavoured toimagine what would be the impression that a stranger would receive coming suddenly upon these surroundings.
And well might she have paused, for no eye ever rested upon a more conglomerate ensemble! Yet, withal, there was a certain attractiveness about this log-built, low, square room, half-papered with gaudy paper—the supply, evidently, having fallen short,—that was as unexpected as it was unusual.
Upon the floor, which had a covering of corn sacks, were many beautiful bear and wolf skins, Indian rugs and Navajo blankets; while overhead—screening some old trunks and boxes neatly piled up high in the loft, which was reached by a ladder, generally swung out of the way—hung a faded, woollen blanket; from the opposite corner there fell an old, patchwork, silk quilt. Dainty white curtains in all their crispness were at the windows, and upon the walls were many rare and weird trophies of the chase, not to mention the innumerable pictures that had been taken from “Godey’s Lady Book” and other periodicals of that time. A little book-shelf, that had been fashioned out of a box, was filled with old and well-read books; while the mantel that guarded the fireplace was ornamented with various small articles, conspicuous among which were a clock that beat loud, automatic time with a brassy resonance, a china dog and cat of most gaudycolours, a whisky bottle and two tumblers, and some winter berries in a jar.
There were two pieces of furniture in the room, however, which were placed with an eye to attract attention, and these the Girl prized most highly: one was a homemade rocking-chair that had been made out of a barrel and had been dyed, unsuccessfully, with indigo blue, and had across its back a knitted tidy with a large, upstanding, satin bow; the other was a homemade, pine wardrobe that had been rudely decorated by one of the boys of the camp and in which the Girl kept her dresses, and was piled up high towards the ceiling with souvenirs of her trip to Monterey, including the hat-boxes and wicker basket that had come well nigh to loading down the stage on that memorable journey.
But it was upon her bed and bedroom fixings that the greatest attempt at decoration had been made; partitioning off the room, as it were, and at the same time forming a canopy about the bed, were curtains of cheap, gaudy material, through the partings of which there was to be had a glimpse of a daintily-made-up bed, whose pillows were made conspicuous by the hand-made lace that trimmed their slips, as was the bureau-cover, and upon which, in charming disarray, were various articles generally included in a woman’s toilet, not to mention the numberless strings of coloured beads and other bitsof feminine adornment. A table standing in the centre of the room was covered with a small, white cloth, while falling in folds from beneath this was a faded, red cotton cover. The table was laid for one, the charlotte “rusks” and “lemming” turnover—each on a separate plate—which Nick had been commissioned to procure, earlier in the evening, from the Palmetto restaurant, looming up prominently in the centre; and on another plate were some chipped beef and biscuits. A large lamp was suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the room and was quaintly, if not grotesquely, shaded; while other lamps flanked by composition metal reflectors concentrated light upon the Girl’s bureau, the book-shelf and mantel, leaving the remainder of the room in variant shadow.
All in all, what with the fire that was burning cheerily in the grate and the strong odour of steaming coffee, the room had a soft glow and homelike air that was most inviting.
In that brief moment that the Girl stood in the doorway reviewing her possessions, a multitude of expressions drifted across her countenance, a multitude of possibilities thrilled within her bosom. But however much she would have liked to analyse these strange feelings, she resisted the inclination and gave all her attention to the amusing scene that was being enacted before her eyes.
For some time Billy Jackrabbit had been standing by the table looking greedily down upon the charlotte russes there. He was on the point of putting his finger through the centre of one of them when Wowkle—the Indian woman-of-all-work of the cabin, who sat upon the floor before the fire singing a lullaby to the papoose strapped to its cradle on her back—turning suddenly her gaze in his direction, was just in time to prevent him.
“Charlotte rusk—Palmetto rest’rant—not take,” were her warning words.
Jackrabbit drew himself up quickly, but he was furious at interference from a source where it was wholly unexpected.
“Hm—me honest,” he growled fiercely, flashing her a malignant look.
“Huh?” was Wowkle’s monosyllabic observation delivered in a guttural tone.
All of a sudden, Jackrabbit’s gaze was arrested by a piece of paper which lay upon the floor and in which had been wrapped the charlotte russes; he went over to it quickly, picked it up, opened it and proceeded to collect on his finger the cream that had adhered to it.
“Huh!” he growled delightedly, holding up his finger for Wowkle’s inspection. The next instant, however, he slumped down beside her upon the floor, where both the man and the woman sat in silencegazing into the fire. The man was the first to speak.
“Send me up—Polka. Say, p’haps me marry you—huh?” he said, coming to the point bluntly.
Wowkle’s eyes were glued to the fire; she answered dully:
“Me don’t know.”
There was a silence, and then:
“Me don’t know,” observed Jackrabbit thoughtfully. A moment later, however, he added: “Me marry you—how much me get give fatha—huh?”
Wowkle raised her narrowing eyes to his and told him with absolute indifference:
“Huh—me don’t know.”
Jackrabbit’s face darkened. He pondered for a long time.
“Me don’t know—” suddenly he began and then stopped. They had been silent for some moments, when at last he ventured: “Me give fatha four dolla”—and here he indicated the number with his two hands, the finger with the cream locking those of the other hand—“and one blanket.”
Wowkle’s eyes dilated.
“Better keep blanket—baby cold,” was her ambiguous answer.
Whereupon Jackrabbit emitted a low growl. Presently he handed her his pipe, and while shepuffed steadily away he fondled caressingly the string of beads which she wore around her neck.
“You sing for get those?” he asked.
“Me sing,” she replied dully, beginning almost instantly in soft, nasal tones:
“My days are as um grass”—
“My days are as um grass”—
“My days are as um grass”—
Jackrabbit’s face cleared.
“Huh!” he growled in rejoicement.
Immediately Wowkle edged up close to him and together they continued in chorus:
“Or as um faded flo’r,Um wintry winds sweep o’er um plain,We pe’ish in um ho’r.”
“Or as um faded flo’r,Um wintry winds sweep o’er um plain,We pe’ish in um ho’r.”
“Or as um faded flo’r,Um wintry winds sweep o’er um plain,We pe’ish in um ho’r.”
“But Gar,” said the man when the song was ended, at the same time taking his pipe away from her, “to-morrow we go missionary—sing like hell—get whisky.”
But as Wowkle made no answer, once more a silence fell upon them.
“We pe’ish in um ho’r,” suddenly repeated Jackrabbit, half-singing, half-speaking the words, and rising quickly started for the door. At the table, however, he halted and inquired: “All right—go missionary to-morrow—get marry—huh?”
Wowkle hesitated, then rose, and finally started slowly towards him. Half-way over she stopped and reminded him in a most apathetic manner:
“P’haps me not stay marry to you for long.”
“Huh—seven monse?” queried Jackrabbit in the same tone.
“Six monse,” came laconically from the woman.
In nowise disconcerted by her answer, the Indian now asked:
“You come soon?”
Wowkle thought a moment; then suddenly edging up close to him she promised to come to him after the Girl had had her supper.
“Huh!” fairly roared the Indian, his coal-black eyes glowing as he looked at her.
It was at this juncture that the Girl, after hanging up her lantern on a peg on the outer door, broke in unexpectedly upon the strange pair of lovers.
Dumbfounded, the woman and the man stood gaping at her. Wowkle was the first to regain her composure, and bending over the table she turned up the light.
“Hello, Billy Jackrabbit!” greeted the Girl, breezily. “Fixed it?”
“Me fix,” he grunted.
“That’s good! Now git!” ordered the Girl in the same happy tone that had characterised her greeting.
Slowly, stealthily, Jackrabbit left the cabin, the two women, though for different reasons, watching him go until the door had closed behind him.
“Now, Wowkle,” said the Girl, turning to her with a smile, “it’s for two to-night.”
Wowkle’s eyelashes twinkled up inquisitorially.
“Huh?”
“Yep.”
Wowkle’s eyes narrowed to pin-points.
“Come anotha? Never before come anotha,” was her significant comment.
“Never you mind.” The Girl voiced the reprimand without the twitching of an eyelid; and then as she hung up her cape upon the wardrobe, she added: “Pick up the room, Wowkle!”
The big-hipped, full-bosomed woman did not move but stood in all her stolidness gazing at her mistress like one in a dream; whereupon the Girl, exasperated beyond measure at the other’s placidity, rushed over to her and shook her so violently that she finally awakened to the importance of her mistress’ request.
“He’s comin’ now, now; he’s comin’!” the Girl was saying, when suddenly her eyes were attracted to a pair of stockings hanging upon the wall; quickly she released her hold on the woman and with a hop, skip and a jump they were down and hid away in her bureau drawer.
“My roses—what did you do with them,Wowkle?” she asked a trifle impatiently as she fumbled in the drawer.
“Ugh!” grunted Wowkle, and pointed to a corner of the bureau top.
“Good!” cried the Girl, delightedly, as she spied them. The next instant she was busily engaged in arranging them in her hair, pausing only to take a pistol out of her pocket, which she laid on the edge of the bureau. “No offence, Wowkle,” she went on thoughtfully, a moment later, “but I want you to put your best foot forward when you’re waitin’ on table to-night. This here company o’ mine’s a man o’ idees. Oh, he knows everythin’! Sort of a damme style.”
Wowkle gave no sign of having heard her mistress’ words, but kept right on tidying the room. Now she went over to the cupboard and took down two cups, which she placed on the fireplace base. It was while she was in the act of laying down the last one that the Girl broke in suddenly upon her thoughts with:
“Say, Wowkle, did Billy Jackrabbit really propose to you?”
“Yep—get marry,” spoke up Jackrabbit’s promised wife without looking up.
For some moments the Girl continued to fumble among her possessions in the bureau drawer; at last she brought forth an orange-coloured satin ribbon,which she placed in the Indian woman’s hands with her prettiest smile, saying:
“Here, Wowkle, you can have that to fix up for the weddin’.”
Wowkle’s eyes glowed with appreciation.
“Huh!” she ejaculated, and proceeded to wind the ribbon about the beads around her neck.
Turning once more to the bureau, the Girl took out a small parcel done up in tissue paper and began to unwrap it.
“I’m goin’ to put on them, if I can git ’em on,” she said, displaying a pair of white satin slippers. The next instant she had plumped herself down upon the floor and was trying to encase her feet in a pair of slippers which were much too small for them. “Remember what fun I made o’ you when you took up with Billy Jackrabbit?” suddenly she asked with a happy little smile. “What for? sez I. Well, p’r’aps you was right. P’r’aps it’s nice to have someone you really care for—who belongs to you. P’r’aps they ain’t so much in the saloon business for a woman after all, and you don’t know what livin’ really is until—” She stopped abruptly and threw upon the floor the slipper that refused to give to her foot. “Oh, Wowkle,” she went on, taking up the other slipper, “it’s nice to have someone you can talk to, someone you can turn your heart inside out to.”
At last she had succeeded in getting into one slipper and, rising, tried to stand in it; but it hurt her so frightfully that she immediately sank down upon the floor and proceeded to pat and rub and coddle her foot to ease the pain. It was while she was thus engaged that a knock came upon her cabin door.
“Oh, Lord, here he is!” she cried, panic-stricken, and began to drag herself hurriedly across the room with the intention of concealing herself behind the curtain at the foot of the bed; while Wowkle, with unusual celerity, made for the fireplace, where she stood with her back to the door, gazing into the fire.
The Girl had only gotten half-way across the room, however, when a voice assailed her ears.
“Miss, Miss, kin I—” came in low, subdued tones.
“What? The Sidney Duck?” she cried, turning and seeing his head poked through the window.
“Beg pardon, Miss; I know men ain’t lowed up here nohow,” humbly apologised that individual; “but, but—”
Vexed and flustered, the Girl turned upon him a trifle irritably with:
“Git! Git, I tell you!”
“But I’m in grite trouble, Miss,” began The Sidney Duck, tearfully. “The boys are back—they missed that road agent Ramerrez and now they’re taking it out of me. If—if you’d only speak a word for me, Miss.”
“No—” began the Girl, and stopped. The next instant she ordered Wowkle to shut the window.
“Oh, don’t be ’ard on me, Miss,” whimpered the man.
The Girl flashed him a scornful look.
“Now, look here, Sidney Duck, there’s one kind o’ man I can’t stand, an’ that’s a cheat an’ a thief, an’ you’re it,” said the Girl, laying great stress upon her words. “You’re no better’n that road agent Ramerrez, an’—”
“But, Miss—” interrupted the man.
“Miss nothin’!” snapped back the Girl, tugging away at the slippers; in desperation once more she ordered:
“Wowkle, close the winder! Close the winder!”
The Sidney Duck glowered at her. He had expected her intercession on his behalf and could not understand this new attitude of hers toward him.
“Public ’ouse jide!” he retorted furiously, and slammed the window.
“Ugh!” snarled Wowkle, resentfully, her eyes full of fire.
Now at any other time, The Sidney Duck would have been made to pay dearly for his words, buteither the Girl did not hear him, or if she did she was too engrossed to heed them; at any rate, the remark passed unnoticed.
“I got it on!” presently exclaimed the Girl in great joy. Nevertheless, it was not without several ouches and moans that, finally, she stood upon her feet. “Say, Wowkle, how do you think he’ll like ’em? How do they look? They feel awful!” she rattled on with a pained look on her face.
But whatever would have been the Indian woman’s observation on the subject of tight shoes in general and those of her mistress in particular, she was not permitted to make it, for the Girl, now hobbling over towards the bureau, went on to announce with sudden determination:
“Say, Wowkle, I’m a-goin’ the whole hog! Yes, I’m a-goin’ the whole hog,” she repeated a moment later, as she drew forth various bits of finery from a chest of drawers, with which she proceeded to adorn herself before the mirror. Taking out first a lace shawl of bold design, she drew it over her shoulders with the grace and ease of one who makes it an everyday affair rather than an occasional undertaking; then she took from a sweetgrass basket a vividly-embroidered handkerchief and saturated it with cologne, impregnating the whole room with its strong odour; finally she brought forth a pair of long, white gloves and began to stretchthem on. “Does it look like an effort, Wowkle?” she asked, trying to get her hands into them.
“Ugh!” was the Indian woman’s comment at the very moment that a knock came upon the door. “Two plates,” she added with a groan, and started for the cupboard.
Meanwhile the Girl continued with her primping and preening, her hands flying back and forth like an automaton from her waist-line to her stockings. Suddenly another knock, this time more vigorous, more insistent, came upon the rough boards of the cabin door, which, finally, was answered by the Girl herself.
“Hello!” sang out Johnson, genially, as he entered the Girl’s cabin.
At once the Girl’s audacity and spirit deserted her, and hanging her head she answered meekly, bashfully:
“Hello!”
The man’s eyes swept the Girl’s figure; he looked puzzled, and asked:
“Are you—you going out?”
The Girl was plainly embarrassed; she stammered in reply:
“Yes—no—I don’t know—Oh, come on in!”
“Thank you,” said Johnson in his best manner, and put down his lantern on the table. Turning now with a look of admiration in his eyes, at the same time trying to embrace her, he went on: “Oh, Girl, I’m so glad you let me come....”
His glance, his tone, his familiarity sent the colour flying to the Girl’s cheeks; she flared up instantly, her blue eyes snapping with resentment:
“You stop where you are, Mr. Johnson.”
“Ugh!” came from Wowkle, at that moment closing the door which Johnson had left ajar.
At the sound of the woman’s voice Johnson wheeled round quickly. And then, to his great surprise, hesaw that the Girl was not alone as he had expected to find her.
“I beg your pardon; I did not see anyone when I came in,” he said in humble apology, his eyes the while upon Wowkle who, having blown out the candle and removed the lantern from the table to the floor, was directing her footsteps towards the cupboard, into which she presently disappeared, closing the door behind her. “But seeing you standing there,” went on Johnson in explanation, “and looking into your lovely eyes, well, the temptation to take you in my arms was so great that I, well, I took—”
“You must be in the habit o’ takin’ things, Mr. Johnson,” broke in the Girl. “I seen you on the road to Monterey, goin’ an’ comin’, an’ passed a few words with you; I seen you once since, but that don’t give you no excuse to begin this sort o’ game.” The Girl’s tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and for the moment the young man was left with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. Silently, sheepishly, he moved away, while she quietly went over to the fire.
“Besides, you might have prospected a bit first anyway,” presently she went on, watching the tips of her slender white fingers held out transparent towards the fire.
Just at that moment a log dropped, turning up itsglowing underside. Wheeling round with a smile, Johnson said:
“I see how wrong I was.”
And then, seeing that the Girl made no move in his direction, he asked, still smiling:
“May I take off my coat?”
The Girl remained silent, which silence he interpreted as an assent, and went on to make himself at home.
“Thank you,” he said simply. “What a bully little place you have here! It’s awfully snug!” he continued delightedly, as his eyes wandered about the room. “And to think that I’ve found you again when I—Oh, the luck of it!”
He went over to her and held out his hands, a broad, yet kindly smile lighting up his strong features, making him appear handsomer, even, than he really was, to the Girl taking in the olive-coloured skin glowing with healthful pallor.
“Friends?” he asked.
Nevertheless the girl did not give him her hand, but quickly drew it away; she answered his question with a question:
“Are you sorry?”
“No, I’m not sorry.”
To this she made no reply but quietly, disappointedly returned to the fireplace, where she stood incontemplative silence, waiting for his next words.
But he did not speak; he contented himself with gazing at the tender girlishness of her, the blue-black eyes, and flesh that was so bright and pure that he knew it to be soft and firm, making him yearn for her.
Involuntarily she turned towards him, and she saw that in his face which caused her eyes to drop and her breath to come more quickly.
“That damme style just catches a woman!” she ejaculated with a little tremour in her voice.
Then her mood underwent a sudden change in marked contrast to that of the moment before. “Look here, Mr. Johnson,” she said, “down at the saloon to-night you said you always got what you wanted. O’ course I’ve got to admire you for that. I reckon women always do admire men for gettin’ what they want. But if huggin’ me’s included, jest count it out.”
For a breathing space there was a dead silence.
“That was a lovely day, Girl, on the road to Monterey, wasn’t it?” of a sudden Johnson observed dreamily.
The Girl’s eyes opened upon him wonderingly.
“Was it?”
“Well, wasn’t it?”
The Girl thought it was and she laughed.
“Say, take a chair and set down for a while, won’t you?” was her next remark, she herself taking a chair at the table.
“Thanks,” he said, coming slowly towards her while his eyes wandered about the room for a chair.
“Say, look ’ere!” she shot out, scrutinising him closely; “I ben thinkin’ you didn’t come to the saloon to see me to-night. What brought you?”
“It was Fate,” he told her, leaning over the table and looking down upon her admiringly.
She pondered his answer for a moment, then blurted out:
“You’re a bluff! It may have been Fate, but I tho’t you looked kind o’ funny when Rance asked you if you hadn’t missed the trail an’ wa’n’t on the road to see Nina Micheltoreña—she that lives in the greaser settlement an’ has the name o’ shelterin’ thieves.”
At the mention of thieves, Johnson paled frightfully and the knife which he had been toying with dropped to the floor.
“Was it Fate or the back trail?” again queried the Girl.
“It was Fate,” calmly reiterated the man, and looked her fairly in the eye.
The cloud disappeared from the Girl’s face.
“Serve the coffee, Wowkle!” she called almost instantly. And then it was that she saw that no chair had been placed at the table for him. She sprangto her feet, exclaiming: “Oh, Lordy, you ain’t got no chair yet to—”
“Careful, please, careful,” quickly warned Johnson, as she rounded the corner of the table upon which his guns lay.
But fear was not one of the Girl’s emotions. At the display of guns that met her gaze she merely shrugged and inquired placidly:
“Oh, how many guns do you carry?”
Not unnaturally she waited for his answer before starting in quest of a chair for him; but instead Johnson quietly went over to the chair near the door where his coat lay, hung it up on the peg with his hat, and returning now with a chair, he answered:
“Oh, several when travelling through the country.”
“Well, set down,” said the Girl bluntly, and hurried to his side to adjust his chair. But she did not return to her place at the table; instead, she took the barrel rocker near the fireplace and began to rock nervously to and fro. In silence Johnson sat studying her, looking her through and through, as it were.
“It must be strange living all alone way up here in the mountains,” he remarked, breaking the spell of silence. “Isn’t it lonely?”
“Lonely? Mountains lonely?” The Girl’s laugh rang out clearly. “Besides,” she went on, her eyes fairly dancing with excitement, “I got alittle pinto an’ I’m all over the country on ’im. Finest little horse you ever saw! If I want to I can ride right down into the summer at the foothills with miles o’ Injun pinks jest a-laffin’ an’ tiger lilies as mad as blazes. There’s a river there, too—the Injuns call it a water-road—an’ I can git on that an’ drift an’ drift an’ smell the wild syringa on the banks. An if I git tired o’ that I can turn my horse up-grade an’ gallop right into the winter an’ the lonely pines an’ firs a-whisperin’ an’ a-sighin.’ Lonely? Mountains lonely, did you say? Oh, my mountains, my beautiful peaks, my Sierras! God’s in the air here, sure! You can see Him layin’ peaceful hands on the mountain tops. He seems so near you want to let your soul go right on up.”
Johnson was touched at the depth of meaning in her words; he nodded his head in appreciation.
“I see, when you die you won’t have far to go,” he quietly observed.
Minutes passed before either spoke. Then all at once the Girl rose and took the chair facing his, the table between them as at first.
“Wowkle, serve the coffee!” again she called.
Immediately, Wowkle emerged from the cupboard, took the coffee-pot from the fire and filled the cups that had been kept warm on the fireplace base, and after placing a cup beside each plate she squatted down before the fire in watchful silence.
“But when it’s very cold up here, cold, and it snows?” queried Johnson, his admiration for the plucky, quaint little figure before him growing by leaps and bounds.
“Oh, the boys come up an’ digs me out o’ my front door like—like—” She paused, her sunny laugh rippling out at the recollection of it all, and Johnson noted the two delightful dimples in her rounded cheeks. Indeed, she had never appeared prettier to him than when displaying her two rows of perfect, dazzling teeth, which was the case every time that she laughed.
“—like a little rabbit, eh?” he supplemented, joining in the laugh.
She nodded eagerly.
“I get digged out near every day when the mine’s shet down an’ Academy opens,” went on the Girl in the same happy strain, her big blue eyes dancing with merriment.
Johnson looked at her wonderingly; he questioned.
“Academy? Here? Why, who teaches in your Academy?”
“Me—I’m her—I’m teacher,” she told him with not a little show of pride.
With difficulty Johnson suppressed a smile; nevertheless he observed soberly:
“Oh, so you’re the teacher?”
“Yep—I learn m’self an’ the boys at the sametime,” she hastened to explain, and dropped a heaping teaspoon of coarse brown sugar into his cup. “But o’ course Academy’s suspended when ther’s a blizzard on ’cause no girl could git down the mountain then.”
“Is it so very severe here when there’s a blizzard on?” Johnson was saying, when there came to his ears a strange sound—the sound of the wind rising in the canyon below.
The Girl looked at him in blank astonishment—a look that might easily have been interpreted as saying, “Where do you hail from?” She answered:
“Is it...? Oh, Lordy, they come in a minute! All of a sudden you don’t know where you are—it’s awful!”
“Not many women—” digressed the man, glancing apprehensively towards the door, but she cut him short swiftly with the ejaculation:
“Bosh!” And picking up a plate she raised it high in the air the better to show off its contents. “Charlotte rusks an’ lemming turnover!” she announced, searching his face for some sign of joy, her own face lighting up perceptibly.
“Well, this is a treat!” cried out Johnson between sips of coffee.
“Have one?”
“You bet!” he returned with unmistakable pleasure in his voice.
The Girl served him with one of each, and when he thanked her she beamed with happiness.
“Let me send you some little souvenir of to-night”—he said, a little while later, his admiring eyes settled on her hair of burnished gold which glistened when the light fell upon it—“something that you’d just love to read in your course of teaching at the Academy.” He paused to search his mind for something suitable to suggest to her; at length he questioned: “Now, what have you been reading lately?”
The Girl’s face broke into smiles as she answered:
“Oh, it’s an awful funny book about a kepple. He was a classic an’ his name was Dent.”
Johnson knitted his brows and thought a moment.
“He was a classic, you say, and his name was—Oh, yes, I know—Dante,” he declared, with difficulty controlling the laughter that well-nigh convulsed him. “And you found Dante funny, did you?”
“Funny? I roared!” acknowledged the Girl with a frankness that was so genuine that Johnson could not help but admire her all the more. “You see, he loved a lady—” resumed the Girl, toying idly with her spoon.
“—Beatrice,” supplemented Johnson, pronouncing the name with the Italian accent which, by the way, was not lost on the Girl.
“How?” she asked quickly, with eyes wide open.
Johnson ignored the question. Anxious to hear her interpretation of the story, he requested her to continue.
“He loved a lady—” began the Girl, and broke off short. And going over to the book-shelf she took down a volume and began to finger the leaves absently. Presently she came back, and fixing her eyes upon him, she went on: “It made me think of it, what you said down to the saloon to-night about livin’ so you didn’t care what come after. Well, he made up his min’, this Dent—Dantes—that one hour o’ happiness with her was worth the whole da—” She checked the word on her tongue, and concluded: “outfit that come after. He was willin’ to sell out his chances for sixty minutes with ’er. Well, I jest put the book down an’ hollered.” And once more she broke into a hearty laugh.
“Of course you did,” agreed Johnson, joining in the laugh. “All the same,” he presently added, “you knew he was right.”
“I didn’t!” she contradicted with spirit, and slowly went back to the book-shelf with the book.
“You did.”
“Didn’t!”
“You did.”
“Didn’t! Didn’t!”
“I don’t—”
“You do, you do,” insisted the Girl, plumping down into the chair which she had vacated at the table.
“Do you mean to say—” Johnson got no further, for the Girl, with a naïveté that made her positively bewitching to the man before her, went on as if there had been no interruption:
“That a feller could so wind h’ms’lf up as to say, ‘Jest give me one hour o’ your sassiety; time ain’t nothin’, nothin’ ain’t nothin’ only to be a da—darn fool over you!’ Ain’t it funny to feel like that?” And then, before Johnson could frame an answer: “Yet, I s’pose there are people that love into the grave an’ into death an’ after.” The Girl’s voice lowered, stopped. Then, looking straight ahead of her, her eyes glistening, she broke out with: “Golly, it jest lifts you right up by your bootstraps to think of it, don’t it?”
Johnson was not smiling now, but sat gazing intently at her through half-veiled lids.
“It does have that effect,” he answered, the wonder of it all creeping into his voice.
“Yet, p’r’aps he was ahead o’ the game. P’r’aps—” She did not finish the sentence, but broke out with fresh enthusiasm: “Oh, say, I jest love this conversation with you! I love to hear you talk! You give me idees!”
Johnson’s heart was too full for utterance; hecould only think of his own happiness. The next instant the Girl called to Wowkle to bring the candle, while she, still eager and animated, her eyes bright, her lips curving in a smile, took up a cigar and handed it to him, saying:
“One o’ your real Havanas!”
“But I”—began Johnson, protestingly.
Nevertheless the Girl lit a match for him from the candle which Wowkle held up to her, and, while the latter returned the candle to the mantel, Johnson lighted his cigar from the burning match between her fingers.
“Oh, Girl, how I’d love to know you!” he suddenly cried with the fire of love in his eyes.
“But you do know me,” was her answer, as she watched the smoke from his cigar curl upwards toward the ceiling.
“Not well enough,” he sighed.
For a brief second only she was silent. Whether she read his thoughts it would be difficult to say; but there came a moment soon when she could not mistake them.
“What’s your drift, anyway?” she asked, looking him full in the face.
“To know you as Dante knew the lady—‘One hour for me, one hour worth the world,’”he told her, all the while watching and loving her beauty.
At the thought she trembled a little, though she answered with characteristic bluntness:
“He didn’t git it, Mr. Johnson.”
“All the same there are women we could die for,” insisted Johnson, dreamily.
The Girl was in the act of carrying her cup to her mouth but put it down on the table. Leaning forward, she inquired somewhat sneeringly:
“Mr. Johnson, how many times have you died?”
Johnson did not have to think twice before answering. With wide, truthful eyes he said:
“That day on the road to Monterey I said just that one woman for me. I wanted to kiss you then,” he added, taking her hand in his. And, strange to say, she was not angry, not unwilling, but sweetly tender and modest as she let it lay there.
“But, Mr. Johnson, some men think so much o’ kisses that they don’t want a second kiss from the same girl,” spoke up the Girl after a moment’s reflection.
“Doesn’t that depend on whether they love her or not? Now all loves are not alike,” reasoned the man in all truthfulness.
“No, but they all have the same aim—to git ’er if they can,” contended the Girl, gently withdrawing her hand.
Silence filled the room.
“Ah, I see you don’t know what love is,” at length sighed Johnson, watching the colour come and go from her face.
The Girl hesitated, then answered in a confused, uneven voice:
“Nope. Mother used to say, ‘It’s a tickling sensation at the heart that you can’t scratch,’ an’ we’ll let it go at that.”
“Oh, Girl, you’re bully!” laughed the man, rising, and making an attempt to embrace her. But all of a sudden he stopped and stood with a bewildered look upon his face: a fierce gale was sweeping the mountain. It filtered in through the crevices of the walls and doors; the lights flickered; the curtains swayed; and the cabin itself rocked uncertainly until it seemed as if it would be uprooted. It was all over in a minute. In fact, the wind had died away almost simultaneously with the Girl’s loud cry of “Wowkle, hist the winder!”
It is not to be wondered at, however, that Johnson looked apprehensively about him with every fresh impulse of the gale. The Girl’s description of the storms on the mountain was fresh in his mind, and there was also good and sufficient reason why he should not be caught in a blizzard on the top of Cloudy Mountain! Nevertheless, as before, the calm look which he saw on the Girl’s face reassured him. Advancing once more towards her,he stretched out his arms as if to gather her in them.
“Look out, you’ll muss my roses!” she cried, waving him back and dodging Wowkle who, having cleared the table, was now making her last trip to the cupboard.
“Well, hadn’t you better take them off then?” suggested Johnson, still following her up.
“Give a man an inch an’ he’ll be at Sank Hosey before you know it!” she flung at him over her shoulder, and made straightway for the bureau.
But although Johnson desisted, he kept his eyes upon her as she took the roses from her hair, losing none of the picture that she made with the light beating and playing upon her glimmering eyes, her rosy cheeks and her parted lips.
“Is there—is there anyone else?” he inquired falteringly, half-fearful lest there was.
“A man always says, ‘who was the first one?’ but the girl says, ‘who’ll be the next one?’”she returned, as she carefully laid the roses in her bureau drawer.
“But the time comes when there never will be a next one.”
“No?”
“No.”
“I’d hate to stake my pile on that,” observed the Girl, drily. She blew up each glove as it came offand likewise carefully laid them away in the bureau drawer.
By this time Wowkle’s soft tread had ceased, her duties for the night were over, and she stood at the table waiting to be dismissed.
“Wowkle, git to your wigwam!” suddenly ordered her mistress, watching her until she disappeared into the cupboard; but she did not see the Indian woman’s lips draw back in a half-grin as she closed the door behind her.
“Oh, you’re sending her away! Must I go, too?” asked Johnson, dismally.
“No—not jest yet; you can stay a—a hour or two longer,” the Girl informed him with a smile; and turning once more to the bureau she busied herself there for a few minutes longer.
Johnson’s joy knew no bounds; he burst out delightedly:
“Why, I’m like Dante! I want the world in that hour, because, you see, I’m afraid the door of this little paradise might be shut to me after—Let’s say this is my one hour—the hour that gave me—that kiss I want.”
“Go long! You go to grass!” returned the Girl with a nervous little laugh.
Johnson made one more effort and won out; that is, he succeeded, at last, in getting her in his grasp.
“Listen,” said the determined lover, pleading for a kiss as he would have pleaded for his very life.
It was at this juncture that Wowkle, silently, stealthily, emerged from the cupboard and made her way over to the door. Her feet were heavily moccasined and she was blanketed in a stout blanket of gay colouring.
“Ugh—some snow!” she muttered, as a gust of wind beat against her face and drove great snowflakes into the room, fairly taking her breath away. But her words fell on deaf ears. For, oblivious to the storm that was now raging outside, the youthful pair of lovers continued to concentrate their thoughts upon the storm that was raging within their own breasts, the Girl keeping up the struggle with herself, while the man urged her on as only he knew how.
“Why, if I let you take one you’d take two,” denied the Girl, half-yielding by her very words, if she but knew it.
“No, I wouldn’t—I swear I wouldn’t,” promised the man with great earnestness.
“Ugh—very bad!” was the Indian woman’s muffled ejaculation as she peered out into the night. But she had promised her lover to come to him when supper was over, and she would not break faith with him even if it were at the peril of her life. Thenext moment she went out, as did the red light in the Girl’s lantern hanging on a peg of the outer door.
“Oh, please, please,” said the Girl, half-protestingly, half-willingly.
But the man was no longer to be denied; he kept on urging:
“One kiss, only one.”
Here was an appeal which could no longer be resisted, and though half-frightened by the tone of his voice and the look in his eye, the Girl let herself be taken into his arms as she murmured:
“’Tain’t no use, I lay down my hands to you.”
And so it was that, unconscious of the great havoc that was being wrought by the storm, unconscious of the danger that momentarily threatened their lives, they remained locked in each other’s arms. The Girl made no attempt to silence him now or withdraw her hands from his. Why should she? Had he not come to Cloudy Mountain to woo her? Was she not awaiting his coming? To her it seemed but natural that the conventions should be as nothing in the face of love. His voice, low and musical, charged with passion, thrilled through her.
“I love you,” said the man, with a note of possession that frightened her while it filled her with strange, sweet joy. For months she had dreamed of him and loved him; no wonder that she looked uponhim as her hero and yielded herself entirely to her fate.
She lifted her eyes and he saw the love in them. She freed her hands from his grasp, and then gave them back to him in a little gesture of surrender.
“Yes, you’re mine, an’ I’m yours,” she said with trembling lips.
“I have lived but for this from the moment that I first saw you,” he told her, softly.
“Me, too—seein’ that I’ve prayed for it day an’ night,” she acknowledged, her eyes seeking his.
“Our destinies have brought us together; whatever happens now I am content,” he said, pressing his lips once more to hers. A little while later he added: “My darkest hour will be lightened by the memory of you, to-night.”
Theclock, striking the hour of two, filled in a lull that might otherwise have seemed to require conversation. For some minutes, Johnson, raised to a higher level of exaltation, even, than was the Girl, had been secretly rejoicing in the Fate that had brought them together.
“It’s wonderful that I should have found her at last and won her love,” he soliloquised. “We must be Fortune’s children—she and I.”
The minutes ticked away and still they were silent. Then, of a sudden, with infinite tenderness in his voice, Johnson asked:
“What is your name, Girl—your real name?”
“Min—Minnie; my father’s name was Smith,” she told him, her eyes cast down under delicately tremulous lids.
“Oh, Minnie Sm—”
“But ’twa’n’t his right name,” quickly corrected the Girl, and unconsciously both rose to their feet. “His right name was Falconer.”
“Minnie Falconer—well, that is a pretty name,” commented Johnson; and raising her hand to his lips he pressed them against it.
“I ain’t sure that’s what he said it was—I ain’t sure o’ anythin’ only jest you,” she said coyly, burying her face in his neck.
“You may well be sure of me since I’ve loved—” Johnson’s sentence was cut short, a wave of remorse sweeping over him. “Turn your head away, Girl, and don’t listen to me,” he went on, gently putting her away from him. “I’m not worthy of you. Don’t listen but just say no, no, no, no.”
The Girl, puzzled, was even more so when Johnson began to pace the floor.
“Oh, I know—I ain’t good enough for you!” she cried with a little tremour in her voice. “But I’ll try hard, hard.... If you see anythin’ better in me, why don’t you bring it out, ’cause I’ve loved you ever since I saw you first, ’cause I knowed that you—that you were the right man.”
“The right man,” repeated Johnson, dismally, for his conscience was beginning to smite him hard.
“Don’t laugh!”
“I’m not laughing,” as indeed he was not.
“O’ course every girl kind o’ looks ahead,” went on the Girl in explanation.
“Yes, I suppose,” he observed seriously.
“An’ figgers about bein’—well, Oh, you know—about bein’ settled. An’ when the right man comes, why, she knows ’im, you bet! Jest as we both knowed each other standin’ on the road toMonterey. I said that day, he’s good, he’s gran’ an’ he can have me.”
“I could have you,” murmured Johnson, meditatively.
The Girl nodded eagerly.
There was a long silence in which Johnson was trying to make up his mind to tear himself away from her,—the one woman whom he loved in the world,—for it had been slowly borne in upon him that he was not a fit mate for this pure young girl. Nor was his unhappiness lessened when he recalled how she had struggled against yielding to him. At last, difficult though it was, he took his courage in both hands, and said:
“Girl, I have looked into your heart and my own and now I realise what this means for us both—for you, Girl—and knowing that, it seems hard to say good-bye as I should, must and will....”
At those clear words spoken by lips which failed so utterly to hide his misery, the Girl’s face turned pale.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Johnson coloured, hesitated, and finally with a swift glance at the clock, he briefly explained:
“I mean it’s hard to go and leave you here. The clock reminded me that long before this I should have been on my way. I shouldn’t have come up here at all. God bless you, dear,” and here their eyes came together and seemed unable to part,—“I love you as I never thought I could....”
But at Johnson’s queer look she hastened to inquire:
“But it ain’t for long you’re goin’?”
For long! Then she had not understood that he meant to go for all time. How tell her the truth? While he pondered over the situation there came to him with great suddenness the thought that, perhaps, after all, Life never intended that she should be given to him only to be taken away almost as suddenly; and seized with a desire to hold on to her at any cost, he sprang forward as if to take her in his arms, but before he reached her, he stopped short.
“Such happiness is not for me,” he muttered under his breath; and then aloud he added: “No, no, I’ve got to go now while I have the courage, I mean.” He broke off as suddenly as he had begun, and taking her face in his hands he kissed her good-bye.
Now, accustomed as was the Girl to the strange comings and goings of the men at the camp, it did not occur to her to question him further when he told her that he should have been away before now. Moreover, she trusted and loved him. And so it was without the slightest feeling of misgiving thatshe watched her lover quickly take down his coat and hat from the peg on the wall and start for the door. On the other hand, it must have required not a little courage on the man’s part to have torn himself away from this lovely, if unconventional, creature, just as he was beginning to love truly and appreciate her. But, then, Johnson was a man of no mean determination!
Not daring to trust himself to words, Johnson paused to look back over his shoulder at the Girl before plunging forth into the night. But on opening the door all the multitudinous wild noises of the forests reached his ears: Sounds of whispering and rocking storm-tossed pines, sounds of the wind making the rounds of the deep canyon below them, sounds that would have made the blood run cold of a man more daring, even, than himself. Like one petrified he stood blinded, almost, by the great drifts of snow that were being driven into the room, while the cabin rocked and shook and the roof cracked and snapped, the lights flickered, smoked, or sent their tongues of fire upward towards the ceiling, the curtains swayed like pendants in the air, and while baskets, boxes, and other small furnishings of the cabin were blown in every direction.
But it was the Girl’s quick presence of mind that saved them from being buried, literally, under the snow. In an instant she had rushed past him andclosed both the outer and inner doors of the cabin; then, going over to the window, she tried to look through the heavily frosted panes; but the falling of the sleet and snow, striking the window like fine shot, made it impossible for her to see more than a few inches away.
“Why, it’s the first time I knew that it—” She cut her sentence short and ended with: “That’s the way we git it up here! Look! Look!”
Whereupon, Johnson went over to the window and put his face close to hers on the frosted panes; a great sea of white snow met his gaze!
“This means—” he said, turning away from the window and meeting her glance—“surely it doesn’t mean that I can’t leave Cloudy to-night?”
“It means you can’t get off the mountain to-night,” calmly answered the Girl.
“Good Lord!” fell from the man’s lips.
“You can’t leave this room to-night,” went on the Girl, decidedly. “Why, you couldn’t find your way three feet from this door—you a stranger! You don’t know the trail anyway unless you can see it.”
“But I can’t stay here?” incredulously.
“Why not? Why, that’s all right! The boys’ll come up an’ dig us out to-morrow or day after. There’s plenty o’ wood an’ you can have my bed.” And with no more ado than that, the Girlwent over to the bed to remove the covers and make it ready for his occupancy.
“I wouldn’t think of taking that,” protested the man, stoutly, while his face clouded over.
The Girl felt a thrill at the note of regard in his voice and hastened to explain:
“I never use it cold nights; I always roll up in my rug in front of the fire.” All of a sudden she broke out into a merry little laugh. “Jest think of it stormin’ all this time an’ we didn’t know it!”
But Johnson was not in a laughing mood. Indeed, he looked very grave and serious when presently he said:
“But people coming up here and finding me might—”
The Girl looked up at him in blank amazement.
“Might what?” And then, while she waited for his answer, two shots in close succession rang out in the night with great distinctness.
There was no mistaking the nearness of the sound. Instantly scenting trouble and alert at the possibility of danger, Johnson inquired:
“What’s that? What’s that?”
“Wait! Wait!” came back from the Girl, unconsciously in the same tone, while she strained her ears for other sounds. She did not have long to wait, however, before other shots followed, the lastones coming from further away, so it seemed, and at greater intervals.
“They’ve got a road agent—it’s the posse—p’r’aps they’ve got Ramerrez or one o’ his band!” suddenly declared the Girl, at the same time rushing over to the window for some verification of her words. But, as before, the wind was beating with great force against the frosted panes, and only a vast stretch of snow met her gaze. Turning away from the window she now came towards him with: “You see, whoever it is, they’re snowed in—they can’t get away.”
Johnson knitted his brows and muttered something under his breath which the Girl did not catch.
Again a shot was fired.
“Another thief crep’ into camp,” coldly observed the Girl almost simultaneously with the report.
Johnson winced.
“Poor devil!” he muttered. “But of course, as you say, he’s only a thief.”
In reply to which the Girl uttered words to the effect that she was glad he had been caught.
“Well, you’re right,” said Johnson, thoughtfully, after a short silence; then determinedly and in short jerky sentences, he went on: “I’ve been thinking that I must go—tear myself away. I have very important business at dawn—imperative business....”
The Girl, who now stood by the table folding up the white cloth cover, watched him out of the corner of her eye, take down his coat from the peg on the wall.
“Ever sample one o’ our mountain blizzards?” she asked as he slipped on his coat. “In five minutes you wouldn’t know where you was. Your important business would land you at the bottom of a canyon ’bout twenty feet from here.”
Johnson cleared his throat as if to speak but said nothing; whereupon the Girl continued:
“You say you believe in Fate. Well, Fate has caught up with you—you got to stay here.”
Johnson was strangely silent. He was wondering how his coming there to-night had really come about. But he could find no solution to the problem unless it was in response to that perverse instinct which prompts us all at times to do the very thing which in our hearts we know to be wrong. The Girl, meanwhile, after a final creasing of the neatly-folded cover, started for the cupboard, stopping on the way to pick up various articles which the wind had strewn about the room. Flinging them quickly into the cupboard she now went over to the window and once more attempted to peer out into the night. But as before, it was of no avail. With a shrug she straightened the curtains at the windows and started for the door. Her action seemed to quicken his decision, for, presently, with a gesture of resignation, he threw down his hat and coat on the table and said as if speaking to himself:
“Well, it is Fate—my Fate that has always made the thing I shouldn’t do so easy.” And then, turning to the Girl, he added: “Come, Girl, as you say, if I can’t go, I can’t. But I know as I stand here that I’ll never give you up.”
The Girl looked puzzled.
“Why, what do you mean?”
“I mean,” began Johnson, pacing the floor slowly. Now he stopped by a chair and pointed as though to the falling snow. “Suppose we say that’s an omen—that the old trail is blotted out and there is a fresh road. Would you take it with me a stranger, who says: From this day I mean to be all you’d have me. Would you take it with me far away from here and forever?”
It did not take the Girl long to frame an answer. Taking Johnson’s hand she said with great feeling:
“Well, show me the girl that would want to go to Heaven alone! I’ll sell out the saloon—I’ll go anywhere with you, you bet!”
Johnson bent low over her hand and kissed it. The Girl’s straightforward answer had filled his heart to overflowing with joy.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” a moment later he asked.
Sudden joy leapt to her blue eyes.
“Oh, yes,” she told him with a world of understanding in her voice. There was a silence; then she went on reminiscently: “There’s a little Spanish Mission church—I pass it ’most every day. I can look in an’ see the light burnin’ before the Virgin an’ see the saints standin’ round with glassy eyes an’ faded satin slippers. An’ I often tho’t what they’d think if I was to walk right in to be made—well, some man’s wife. It makes your blood like pin-points thinkin’ about it. There’s somethin’ kind o’ holy about love, ain’t they?”
Johnson nodded. He had never regarded love in that light before, much less known it. For many moments he stood motionless, a new problem of right and wrong throbbing in his bosom.
At last, it being settled that Johnson was to pass the night in the Girl’s cabin, she went over to the bed and, once more, began to make it ready for his occupancy. Meanwhile, Johnson, seated in the barrel rocker before the fire, watched her with a new interest. The Girl had not gone very far with her duties, however, when she suddenly came over to him, plumping herself down on the floor at his feet.
“Say, did you ever ask any other woman to marry you?” she asked as she leaned far back in his arms.
“No,” was the man’s truthful answer.
“Oh, how glad I am! Take me—ah, take meI don’t care where as long as it is with you!” cried the Girl in an ecstasy of delight.
“So help me, God, I’m going to...!” promised Johnson, his voice strained, tense. “You’re worth something better than me, Girl,” he added, a moment later, “but they say love works miracles every hour, that it weakens the strong and strengthens the weak. With all my soul I love you, with all my soul I—” The man let his voice die out, leaving his sentence unfinished. Suddenly he called: “Why, Min-Minnie!”