Meg of Mystery Mountain Part 17

Then she knew why he was coming, and for the first time in her lonely, isolated life, there was a sudden warmth in her heart. She had a real friend, she knew that instinctively, and his name was Dan Abbott.

CHAPTER XXII.

MEG'S CONFIDENCE

As soon as Dan was near enough to see Meg's face, he knew that all was well. Leaping from the back of the dusty gray horse, he went forward with both hands outheld. "Miss Heger," he cried, and his voice was tense with emotion, "how can I, how are we ever going to thank you for what you have done for us today?"

The girl's radiant smile flashed up at him. "Be my friend," she said simply, and, as the lad stood there looking deep into those wonderful dark eyes, he seemed to feel that no greater privilege could be accorded him than to be permitted to be the friend of this courageous, rarely beautiful mountain girl.

But she did not give him the opportunity to voice his feeling, for at once she said in a matter-of-fact tone: "Wasn't I lucky to reach the county court-house at five minutes to five? Pal and I have been congratulating each other all the way home."

"Poor Pal!" Dan stroked the drooping head of the faithful little animal which had raced down the rough mountain road as he had never raced before. Then, quite irrelevantly, the youth asked: "Would you mind if I call you Margaret? It fits you better than Meg." Instantly Dan was sorry he had made the request, for he saw the sudden clouding of the girl's brow. The joyousness of the moment before was gone and when she spoke there was a note of sorrow in her voice. "Mr. Abbott," she began with sweet seriousness, "I forgot when I said that your friendship would be the reward I would ask, yours and Julie's and Gerald's--I forgot who I am, or rather that I do not know who my parents were. My real name is not Meg. Mammy Heger called me that after a little sister of hers who had died when a baby. Mammy loved that other Meg and so it meant a great deal to her to call me by that name." Then, sighing wistfully: "I wish I knew my real name," she concluded.

Dan took her hand in a firm, friendly clasp as he said earnestly: "Meg Heger, I don't care what your name is, I don't care who your parents were. I care only to be your friend, your very best. Of course I would not wish to call you Margaret since it would be displeasing to you."

The girl withdrew her hand, replying: "Call me Meg. I'm used to that and hearing it won't make me think. Oh, I've thought about it all so long and so much!"

Then as they started walking side by side, leading their horses, the girl confided: "Next month, when I am eighteen, Teacher Bellows, Pa Heger and I are going to start on a long, hard trip. We're going to find, if we can, the tribe that was living in the deserted mining town on Crazy Creek the year that I was brought to the Heger cabin." How her dark face brightened, and Dan realized that he had never dreamed that anyone could be so beautiful. "If we find them, then I shall know," she concluded. For a few moments they walked on in silence. "If they tell me I am the daughter of----" The girl hesitated as though dreading to utter the name of Slinking Coyote, then began again, "If I am a member of their tribe, I shall live near them and help them. I shall be a teacher to their children. It will be my duty. But if, as Pa Heger and Teacher Bellows think, my parents were of a foreign race, my future will be different."

Dan, knowing how deeply humiliating the conversation must be for the girl and wishing to change the subject, exclaimed: "How stupid of me! I brought Bag-o'-Bones down for you to ride. You must be very tired after your wild race to Scarsburg."

The girl smiled gratefully. "I believe I am very, very tired," she confessed, "which happens but seldom. I had thought that I was tireless."

They soon reached the road in front of the Abbotts' cabin and Meg bade Dan take from the pony's saddle bags the papers and receipts. Although he pleaded to be permitted to accompany her to her home, she shook her head.

"You haven't had your supper and it is very late." Then impulsively she reached down her brown hand as she said with an almost tremulous smile: "Good-night, my friend."

It was early dusk when Jane, still sitting on the porch of their cabin intently listening, heard voices and the clattering of slow-moving horses along the mountain road below the bend. She leaped to her feet, her breath came with nervous quickness, she pressed her hand to her heart.

Oh, what if Meg had been too late. Before she could decide what she ought to do, she heard Dan's voice calling to the mountain girl, who was evidently not stopping. Jane ran to the top of the stone stairway. How ungrateful it must have seemed for her not to have been there to thank Meg for the effort she had made, whether or not it was successful. But Dan was leaping up the steps, two at a time, his face radiant.

Jane thought that all of his joyousness was caused by the message he was shouting to her: "Sister, that wonderful girl reached there on time! Our cabin is saved for us! How can we ever thank her?"

Jane, who had never been so upset by anything before in her protected life, clung to her brother almost hysterically. "Oh, Dan, Dan, I am so thankful! Do you think Meg Heger will ever forgive me? I was so rude to her when she first came."

The lad was serious at once. "I do not know that she will," he replied as he recalled that the mountain girl had said the reward she requested was the friendship of all the Abbotts except Jane.

It was hard not to rebuke his sister for her foolish pride, but she was trembling as she clung to him, and so he encircled her with his arm as he said hopefully: "Meg is too fine a girl to hold a grudge when she finds out that your heart has changed."

Jane said nothing, but she suddenly wondered if, in reality, her heart had changed. Now that the taxes were paid and the hours of anxiety were over, she was not sure that she cared to begin an intimate friendship with a "halfbreed," merely to show her grat.i.tude, but even as she was conscious of this shrinking, the voice of her soul told her that she was despicable.

The children, who had been on the kitchen porch, hearing Dan's voice, rushed out, but Jane delayed him long enough to whisper: "They know nothing of what has happened. Please do not tell them."

Gerald was the first to reach them, and he cried, rebukingly: "Dan, why did you go horseback riding without taking me. I saw you go by an hour ago. I'm just wild to learn to ride that Bag-o'-Bones. Do you think Mr.

Heger will let me?"

Dan realized that the younger members of their family thought he had merely been for a horseback ride, and so he made no further explanation, replying gayly: "Indeed I do! But I think you would better take your first lesson on the level. Wait until we go down to the Packard ranch.

You remember that good friend of ours told us that he had forty horses and many of them were broken to the saddle."

Julie clapped her hands as she hopped up and down gleefully. "Me, too!"

she cried ungrammatically. "Mr. Packard said he had a little spotted horse, just the right size for me. When are we going down there, Dan?"

The older lad glanced at his sister. "Did you say that we are to go next Sunday?" The girl nodded, but the boy looked perplexed. "But how?" he queried. "If we went to Redfords by the stage, how are we to get to the Packard ranch? And we couldn't possibly return on the same day."

Jane thought for a moment, then she looked up brightly. "I recall now.

Jean Sawyer said that we would hear from Mr. Packard during the week."

Then she smilingly confessed: "I was so pleased to find the foreman different--I mean--one of our own cla.s.s--that----"

Gerald, noting the blushes, pointed a chubby finger at his sister as he sing-songed: "Jane likes Jean Sawyer extra-special."

It was Julie, knowing that her sister did not like to be teased, who came to the rescue by saying emphatically: "So do I like Jean Sawyer extra-special; and I know what girl you like best, Gerald Abbott. It's Meg Heger; so now."

The small boy grinned his agreement. "Bet you I do," he confessed.

Dan said nothing, but by the warm glow in his heart at the mention of the mountain girl's name, he knew that he also liked Meg Heger extra-special.

CHAPTER XXIII.

JANE HUMILIATED

The next morning Jane arose early with the determination to walk up the mountain road and meet Meg Heger on her way to the Redfords school. And so, directly after breakfast, she started away alone. She asked Dan to detain the children in the kitchen that they might not see her go and perhaps wish to accompany her.

The older lad, recalling the incident of the mountain lion, wondered if he ought to permit her to go alone, but the trapper had a.s.sured him that the occurrence had been a most unusual one, that the lions, and other wild creatures usually remained far from the haunts of man, and that in the ten years that Meg had ridden up and down that mountain road to the Redfords school, she had never encountered a dangerous animal of any kind.

The sun, even at that early hour, was so warm Jane was glad that most of the mile she was to climb was in the shadow. She found herself scanning the roadside with great interest, stopping to watch a scaly lizard that was lying on a rock gazing at her intently with small back eyes, believing himself to be unseen because his coat was the color of his surroundings. He had not stirred, even when she started away.

It was a still morning and out of many a cool green covert a bird-song pealed. Again and again Jane paused to listen to some clear rising cadence. She wondered why she had never before heard the singing of birds. Of course, she must have heard them many, many times. They had often awakened her in her home, and at Highacres, but she had felt disturbed rather than pleased. She never before had listened to a single song, like the one which some hidden bird was singing. It would be interesting to know what kind of a bird it was. She would ask Meg Heger.

Surely the mountain girl would know. Jane Abbott had not been in so susceptible a mood, at least not since her long ago childhood, and it was with a sense of eager antic.i.p.ation that she at last drew to one side of the road to await the coming of the small horse and rider that she could hear approaching.

Meg Heger was indeed surprised to see the sister of Dan Abbott in the road so evidently awaiting her, but she experienced no pleasure from the meeting. She well knew that the city girl, who had snubbed her on the day before, would again do so, if it were not that she considered it her duty to express grat.i.tude for what Meg had done.

She drew rein, merely because Jane Abbott had stepped forward and had held up her hand. The expression in the dusky eyes of the mountain girl was at that moment as proud and cold as had been the expression in the eyes of Jane on the day previous. Before the girl in the road could speak, Meg said: "Miss Abbott, I know that you have come to thank me for having ridden to Scarsburg, but let me a.s.sure you at once that I did not do it for your sake. I did it for Julie and Gerald, chiefly, because they are my friends. You owe me nothing. Good morning!"

The pony, feeling the urging of his mistress' heel, started away so suddenly that Jane found herself standing in a whirl of dust. Her face grew crimson as her anger rose. She, Jane Abbott, had actually been snubbed by a halfbreed. It had been only natural that she, a city girl of family and culture, should have snubbed Meg Heger. But she had supposed that the mountain girl would be pleased, indeed, when she condescended to be friendly. As she walked slowly back toward their cabin, she did not hear the song of the birds, nor see the beauty that lay all about her.

She was wrathfully deciding that she would pack at once and leave a place where it was possible for her to be snubbed by a halfbreed Indian.

Then that persistent voice, deep within her, asked: "Didn't you deserve it, Jane? Would you admire a girl who would fall upon your neck after you had been rude to her?"

And Jane had to acknowledge that the soul-voice was right.

But, though Jane had seemed to have a change of heart toward Meg Heger, she still felt most irritable toward Julie. Nothing that small girl could do pleased her. She had at once retired to her room, wishing to be alone.

True, she had decided to try to win the friendship of the mountain girl, but after the first few hours she found herself questioning if she really wanted it. Of course she did not. She wanted only friends of her own kind. She flung herself down on her bed and in her heart was a growing anger at herself and at everyone. Dan had gone for the daily climb which he believed would aid the recovery of his strength, as indeed everything seemed to be doing in a most miraculous manner. Julie and Gerald were cleaning house and were dragging the heavy pieces of furniture about in the living-room with shouts and laughter. Jane sprang up and threw open her door.

"I do wish you children would try to keep quiet," she blazed at them.

Gerald faced her defiantly. "Come and do the cleaning yourself if you want it done different. There's no reason why we should do it at all, only Julie said, being as it hadn't been done right since we came, we'd ought to get at it."