A Man and a Woman Part 18

She looked up at him, and smiled.

The loving face of her was all he saw--the face of the one woman.

He spoke to her. He tried to tell her what she was to him, and failed.

She answered gently and in few words. They understood.

He entered the tent and sat upon the couch beside her as she was lying there, and took her small hand in his, but said no more. From the wood about them--for it was into the night now--came many sounds, known of old, and wonderfully sweet to him, but all new and strange to her.

"Ah-rr-oomp, ah-rr-oomp, ba-rr-oomp," came from the edge of the water the deep cry of the bullfrog; from the further end of the lake came the strange gobble, gurgle and gulp of the s.h.i.tepoke, the small green heron which is the flitting ghost of shaded creeks and haunting thing of marshy courses everywhere. Night-hawks, far above, cried with a pleasant monotony, then swooped downward with a zip and boom. It was not so late in the season that the call of the whippoorwill might not be heard, and there were odd notes of tree-toads and katydids from the branches. There came suddenly the noise of a squall and scuffle from the marshy edge of the lake, where 'c.o.o.ns were wrangling, and the weird cry of the loon re-echoed up and down. The air was full of the perfumes of the wood. The setter just outside the tent became uneasy, and dashed into a thicket near, and there was a snort and the measured, swift thud of feet flying in the distance. A deer had been attracted by the fire-light. An owl hooted from a dead tree near by. There was the hum of many insects of the night, and the soft sighing of the wind through boughs. It was simply night in the northern woods.

The man rose and went outside, and stood with one hand upon the tent-pole at the front. He seemed to himself to be in a dream. He looked up at the moon and stars, and then at the glittering greenery deepening further out into blackness about him. He looked down toward the gra.s.s at his feet, and there appeared near him a flash of gold.

What Harlson saw was but a dandelion. That most home-like and steadfast flower blooms in early springtime and later in the season, with no regard to the chronology of the year. It was one of the vagrant late gladdeners of the earth that his eye chanced to light upon.

It held him, somehow. It was wide open--so wide that there was a white spot in its yellow center--and close above it drooped, a beech-tree's branch, so close that one long green leaf hung just above the petals.

And upon this green leaf the dew was gathering.

The man looked at the flower.

"Is all the world golden?" he said to himself. And he straightened and moved and went from the tent to where the open was. He stood in the glade in the moonlight, and wondered at it all.

Here he was--he could not comprehend it--here, all alone, save for her, in the forest, miles away from any other human being! He had wholly loved but two things all his life--her and nature--and the three of them--she, nature and he--were here together! It was wonderful!

And there in that preposterous covering of canvas, half hid in the forest's edge, was Jean Cor--no, Jean Harlson, belonging to him--all his--away from all the world, just part of him, in this solitude!

He wondered why he had deserved it. He wondered how he had won it. He looked up at the pure sky, with the moon defined so clearly, and all the stars, and was grateful, and reached out his hands and asked the Being of it to tell him, if it might be, how to do something as an offset.

The night pa.s.sed, and the sun rose clearly over the forest. The chestnut setter roused himself from behind the tent, and came in front of it, and barked joyously at a yellow-hammer which had chosen a great ba.s.swood tree with deadened s.p.a.ces for an early morning experiment toward a breakfast.

There issued from the white tent a man, who looked upward toward all the greenness and all the glory, and was glad.

He looked downward at the sward, and there was the little flower. And the dew had run its course, and had gathered in a jewel at the leaf's tip, and there, fallen in the midst of the disk of yellow, was the product from the skies. There, in the flower's heart, was the perfect gem--a diamond in a setting of fine gold!

CHAPTER XXVI.

ADVENTURES MANIFOLD.

"I've et hearty," said the woman, saucily, as the breakfast, for which the birds furnished the music, was done. And then he initiated her into the brief art of washing tin things in the gravel at the water's edge. Then he informed her that target practice was about to begin, and brought out four guns from their cases.

Two of the pieces were rifles, and of each kind one was a light and dainty piece. He said they would practice with the rifles; that when she became an expert rifle-shot the rest would all be easy, and then upon the boll of a tree at one side of the opening he pinned a red sc.r.a.p of paper, and shot at it.

With the report half the sc.r.a.p was torn away, and then he taught her how to hold the piece and how to aim.

She expressed, at last, a desire to shoot, and he gave her the little rifle loaded. She aimed swiftly and desperately, and pressed the trigger, and the echoes had not died away when she let fall the gun upon the gra.s.s.

"I'm hurt," she said.

He sprang to her side, pale-faced, as she raised her hand to her shoulder, but he brightened a moment later. He opened the dress at her neck, and turned it down on one side, and there, on the round, white shoulder, was a slight ruddy bruise. He kissed it, and laughed.

"It'll be all right in no time. Now, do as I tell you."

He put a cartridge in the piece again.

"Try it once more," he said; "aim more deliberately and hold the stock of the gun very tightly against your shoulder as you fire."

"But it will hurt me."

"No, it won't. Do as I tell you."

She would have obeyed him had he told her to leap into the lake, and the lake was deep.

She set her lips firmly, held the gun hard against her shoulder, aimed carefully and fired.

The red spot flew from the gray trunk of the oak. She looked up amazed.

"Why, it didn't hurt me a bit!"

"Of course not. There is a law of impact, and you are learning it.

The strongest man in the world could not hurt you pushing you against nothing. He could kill you with a blow. With the first shot your gun gave you a blow. In the second it could only push you. Listen to the wisdom of your consort!"

She made a mouth at him, and he told her she'd had her "baptism of fire," and soon they sallied into the forest, hunting.

She was very pretty and piquant in her kilted dress and shooting jacket and high boots. It was a formidable army of two.

There were myriads of bees in the openings, and the fall flowers were yielding up the honey to be stored, in the hearts of great trees, and at noon-time they sat down in one of the openings for luncheon.

He had shot only a couple of ruffed grouse, for it was a ramble rather than a real hunt, this first mid-wood excursion of the pair, and she had shot at various things, a grouse or two and squirrels, and missed with regularity, and was piqued over it, but he had noted her increasing courage and confidence and resolution with each successive shot, and knew that he had with him, for the future, a "little sportsman," as he called her.

They built a fire, just for the fun of it, and a grouse was plucked and broiled with much ado, and never was greater feast. And, the meal over, he produced a cigar and--which was not really good form for the woods--lay on the gra.s.s and smoked it, looking at her and talking nonsense.

She sat upon a log and delighted in the fragrance and the light, and the droning sounds and bird-cries, and the new world of it to her. All at once, her gaze became fixed upon some object a little distance away.

She reached out her hand to him appealingly.

"What is that?"

He rose and looked where she pointed.

Years of decay had made of the trunk of a fallen tree but a long ridge of crumbling, brown chips, and, upon this ridge, where the sun streamed down hotly, lay something coiled in a black ma.s.s, and there was a flat, hideous head resting upon it all with beady eyes which seemed, to leer.

Harlson looked at it carelessly.

"Big one, isn't it?" he said.

"What is it?" she gasped.

"What is it, you small ignoramus! It's a blacksnake and a monster. It is one of the dreads of the small life of the wood, and it was one of the dreads of my youth, and its days are numbered."