Her Father's Daughter Part 19

"Great hat!" exclaimed Donald. "If you wanted soap why didn't you bring some?"

"For all you know," laughed Linda, "I may be going to education you up a little. Dare you to tell me how many kinds of soap I can find today that the Indians used, and where I can find it."

"Couldn't tell you one to save my life," said Donald.

"And born and reared within a few miles of the desert!" scoffed Linda.

"Nice Indian you'd make. We take our choice today between finding deer-brush and digging for amole, because the mock oranges aren't ripe enough to be nice and soapy yet. I've got the deer-brush spotted, and we'll pa.s.s an amole before we go very far. Look for a wavy blue-green leaf like a wide blade of gra.s.s and coming up like a lily."

So together they went to the deer-brush and gathered a bunch of flowers that Linda bound together with some wiry desert gra.s.s and fastened to her belt. It was not long before Donald spied an amole, and having found one, discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way past thorns and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they reached a huge barrel cactus that she had located with the gla.s.ses. Beside this bristling monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which Donald handed to her. She drew it lightly across the armor protecting the plant.

"Short of Victrola needles?" she inquired. "Because if you are, these make excellent ones. A lot more singing quality to them than the steel needles, not nearly so metallic."

"Well, I am surely going to try that," said Donald. "Never heard of such a thing."

Linda chopped off a section of plant. Then she picked one of the knives from the bucket and handed it to him.

"All right, you get what you want," she said, "while I operate on the barrel."

She set her feet firmly in the sand, swung the axe, and with a couple of deft strokes sliced off the top of the huge plant, and from the heart of it lifted up half a bucketful of the juicy interior, with her dipper.

"If we didn't have drink, here is where we would get it, and mighty good it is," she said, pushing down with the dipper until she formed a small pool in the heart of the plant which rapidly filled. "Have a taste."

"Jove, that is good!" said Donald. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Show you later," laughed Linda. "Think I'll take a sip myself."

Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the car. Once Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an extremely curious little plant spreading over the ground, a tiny reddish vine with quaint round leaves that looked as if a drop of white paint rimmed with maroon had fallen on each of them.

"I never saw that before," said Donald. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite," said Linda. "That is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites you, score each side of the wound with the cleanest, sharpest knife you have and then bruise the plant and bind it on with your handkerchief, and forget it."

"Is that what you do?" inquired Donald.

"Why sure," said Linda, "that is what I would do if a snake were so ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn't seem to be much of the antagonistic element in my nature. I don't go through the desert exhaling the odor of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent or slip away so silently that I never see them."

"Now what on earth do you mean by that?" inquired Donald.

"Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he took me to the mountains and the desert. If you are afraid, your system throws off formic acid, and the animals need only the suspicion of a scent of it to make them ready to fight. Any animal you encounter or even a bee, recognizes it. One of the first things that I remember about Daddy was seeing him sit on the running board of the runabout buckling up his desert boots while he sang to me,

'Let not your heart be troubled Neither let it be afraid,'

as he got ready to take me on his back and go into the desert for our first lesson; he told me that a man was perfectly safe in going to the forest or the desert or anywhere he chose among any kind of animals if he had sufficient self-control that no odor of fear emanated from him.

He said that a man was safe to make his way anywhere he wanted to go, if he started his journey by recognizing a blood brotherhood with anything living he would meet on the way; and I have heard Enos Mills say that when he was snow inspector of Colorado he traveled the crest of the Rockies from one end of the state to the other without a gun or any means of self-defense."

"Now, that is something new to think about," said Donald.

"And it's something that is very true," said Linda. "I have seen it work times without number. Father and I went quietly up the mountains, through the canyons, across the desert, and we would never see a snake of any kind, but repeatedly we would see men with guns and dogs out to kill, to trespa.s.s on the rights of the wild, and they would be hunting for sticks and clubs and firing their guns where we had pa.s.sed never thinking of lurking danger. If you start out in accord, at one with Nature, you're quite as safe as you are at home, sometimes more so. But if you start out to stir up a fight, the occasion is very rare on which you can't succeed."

"And that reminds me," said Donald, with a laugh, "that a week ago I came to start a fight with you. What has become of that fight we were going to have, anyway?"

"You can search me," laughed Linda, throwing out her hands in a graceful gesture. "There's not a sc.r.a.p of fight in my system concerning you, but if Oka Sayye were having a fight with you and I were anywhere around, you'd have one friend who would help you to handle the j.a.p."

Donald looked at Linda thoughtfully.

"By the great hocus-pocus," he said, "you know, I believe you. If two fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I know would quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would stand by and help a fellow if he needed it."

"That I surely would," said Linda; "but don't you say 'most of the girls I know' and then make a statement like that concerning girls, because you prove that you don't know them at all. A few years ago, I very distinctly recall how angry many women were at this line in one of Kipling's poems:

The female of the species is more deadly than the male,

and there was nothing to it save that a great poet was trying to pay womanhood everywhere the finest compliment he knew how. He always has been fundamental in his process of thought. He gets right back to the heart of primal things. When he wrote that line he was not really thinking that there was a nasty poison in the heart of a woman or death in her hands. What he was thinking was that in the jungle the female lion or tiger or jaguar must go and find a particularly secluded cave and bear her young and raise them to be quite active kittens before she leads them out, because there is danger of the bloodthirsty father eating them when they are tiny and helpless. And if perchance a male finds the cave of his mate and her tiny young and enters it to do mischief, then there is no recorded instance I know of in which the female, fighting in defense of her young, has not been 'more deadly than the male.' And that is the origin of the much-discussed line concerning the female of the species, and it holds good fairly well down the line of the wild. It's even true among such tiny things as guinea pigs and canary birds. There is a mother element in the heart of every girl.

Daddy used to say that half the women in the world married the men they did because they wanted to mother them. You can't tell what is in a woman's heart by looking at her. You must bring her face to face with an emergency before you can say what she'll do, but I would be perfectly willing to stake my life on this: There is scarcely a girl you know who would see you getting the worst of a fight, say with Oka Sayye, or someone who meant to kill you or injure you, who would not pick up the first weapon she could lay her hands on, whether it was an axe or a stick or a stone, and go to your defense, and if she had nothing else to fight with, I have heard of women who put up rather a tidy battle with their claws. Sounds primitive, doesn't it?"

"It sounds true," said Donald reflectively. "I see, young lady, where one is going to have to measure his words and think before he talks to you."

"Pretty thought!" said Linda lightly. "We'll have a great time if you must stop to consider every word before you say it."

"Well, anyway," said Donald, "when are we going to have that fight which was the purpose of our coming together?"

"Why, we're not ever going to have it," answered Linda. "I have got nothing in this world to fight with you about since you're doing your level best to beat Oka Sayye. I have watched your head above the remainder of your cla.s.s for three years and wanted to fight with you on that point."

"Now that's a queer thing," said Donald, "because I have watched you for three years and wanted to fight with you about your drygoods, and now since I've known you only such a short while, I don't care two whoops what you wear. It's a matter of perfect indifference to me. You can wear French heels or baby pumps, or go barefoot. You would still be you."

"Is it a truce?" asked Linda. I

"No, ma'am," said Donald, "it's not a truce. That implies war and we haven't fought. It's not armed neutrality; it's not even watchful waiting. It's my friend, Linda Strong. Me for her and her for me, if you say so."

He reached out his hand. Linda laid hers in it, and looking into his eyes, she said: "That is a compact. We'll test this friendship business and see what there is to it. Now come on; let's run for the canyon."

It was only a short time until the Bear Cat followed its trail of the previous Sat.u.r.day, and, rushing across the stream, stopped at its former resting place, while Linda and Donald sat looking at the sheer-walled little room before them.

"I can see," said Linda, "a stronger tinge in the green. There are more flowers in the carpet. There is more melody in the birds' song. We are going to have a better time than we had last Sat.u.r.day. First let's fix up our old furnace, because we must have a fire today."

So they left the car, and under Linda's direction they reconstructed the old fireplace at which the girl and her father had cooked when botanizing in Multiflores. In a corner secluded from wind, using the wall of the canyon for a back wall, big boulders the right distance apart on each side, and small stones for c.h.i.n.king, Linda superintended the rebuilding of the fireplace.

She unpacked the lunch box, set the table, and when she had everything in readiness she covered the table, and taking a package, she carried it on a couple of aluminium pie pans to where her fire was burning crisply.

With a small field axe she chopped a couple of small green branches, pointed them to her liking, and peeled them. Then she made a poker from one of the saplings they had used to move the rocks, and beat down her fire until she had a bright bed of deep coals. When these were arranged exactly to her satisfaction, she pulled some sprays of deer weed bloom from her bundle and, going down to the creek, made a lather and carefully washed her hands, tucking the towel she used in drying them through her belt. Then she came back to the fire and, sitting down beside it, opened the package and began her operations. On the long, slender sticks she strung a piece of tenderloin beef, about three inches in circ.u.mference and one fourth of an inch in thickness, then half a slice of bacon, and then a slice of onion. This she repeated until her skewer would bear no more weight. Then she laid it across the rocks walling her fire, occasionally turning it while she filled the second skewer. Then she brought from the car the bucket of pulp she had taken from the barrel cactus, transferred it to a piece of cheesecloth and deftly extracted the juice. To this she added the contents of a thermos bottle containing a pint of sugar that had been brought to the boiling point with a pint of water and poured over some chopped spearmint to which had been added the juice of half a dozen lemons and three or four oranges. From a small, metal-lined compartment, Linda took a chunk of ice and dropped it into this mixture.

She was sitting on the ground, one foot doubled under her, the other extended. She had taken off her hat; the wind and the bushes had roughened her hair. Exercise had brought deep red to her cheeks and her lips. Happiness had brought a mellow glow to her dark eyes. She had turned back her sleeves, and her slender hands were fascinatingly graceful in their deft handling of everything she touched. They were a second edition of the hands with which Alexander Strong had felt out defective nerve systems and made delicate muscular adjustments. She was wholly absorbed in what she was doing. Sitting on the blanket across from her Donald Whiting was wholly absorbed in her and he was thinking.

He was planning how he could please her, how he could earn her friendship. He was admitting to himself that he had very little, if anything, to show for hours of time that he had spent in dancing, at card games, beach picnics, and races. All these things had been amusing.

But he had nothing to show for the time he had spent or the money he had wasted. Nothing had happened that in any way equipped him for his battle with Oka Sayye. Conversely, this girl, whom he had resented, whom he had criticized, who had claimed his notice only by her radical difference from the other girls, had managed, during the few minutes he had first talked with her in the hall, to wound his pride, to spur his ambition, to start him on a course that must end in lasting and material benefit to him even if he failed in making a higher record of scholarship than Oka Sayye. It was very certain that the exercise he was giving his brain must be beneficial. He had learned many things that were intensely interesting to him and he had not even touched the surface of what he could see that she had been taught by her father or had learned through experience and personal investigation. She had been coming to the mountains and the canyons alone, for four years doing by herself what she would have done under her father's supervision had he lived. That argued for steadfastness and strength of character. She would not utter one word of flattery. She would say nothing she did not mean. Watching her intently, Donald Whiting thought of all these things. He thought of what she had said about fighting for him, and he wondered if it really was true that any girl he knew would fight for him. He hardly believed it when he remembered some of his friends, so entirely devoted to personal adornment and personal gratification. But Linda had said that all women were alike in their hearts. She knew about other things. She must know about this. Maybe all women would fight for their young or for their men, but he knew of no other girl who could drive a Bear Cat with the precision and skill with which Linda drove. He knew no other girl who was master of the secrets of the desert and the canyons and the mountains. Certainly he knew no other girl who would tug at great boulders and build a fireplace and risk burning her fingers and scorching her face to prepare a meal for him. So he watched Linda and so he thought.

At first he thought she was the finest pal a boy ever had, and then he thought how he meant to work to earn and keep her friendship; and then, as the fire reddened Linda's cheeks and she made running comments while she deftly turned her skewers of brigand beefsteak, food that half the Boy Scouts in the country had been eating for four years, there came an idea with which he dallied until it grew into a luring vision.

"Linda," he asked suddenly, "do you know that one of these days you're going to be a beautiful woman?"

Linda turned her skewers with intense absorption. At first he almost thought she had not heard him, but at last she said quietly: "Do you really think that is possible, Donald?"