Openings in the Old Trail Part 13

"You don't suppose I was trespa.s.sing on your wretched patch again, do you?" she said in a voice she was trying to keep from breaking. "It was that brute--who bolted."

"I don't suppose you were bullying ME this time," he said, "but you were YOUR HORSE--or it wouldn't have happened. Are you hurt?"

She tried to move; he offered her his hand, but she shied from it and struggled to her feet. She took a step forward--but limped.

"If you don't want my arm, let me call a Chinaman," he suggested.

She glared at him. "If you do I'll scream!" she said in a low voice, and he knew she would. But at the same moment her face whitened, at which he slipped his arm under hers in a dexterous, business-like way, so as to support her weight. Then her hat got askew, and down came a long braid over his shoulder. He remembered it of old, only it was darker than then and two or three feet longer.

"If you could manage to limp as far as the gate and sit down on the bank, I'd get your horse for you," he said. "I hitched it to a sapling."

"I saw you did--before you even offered to help me," she said scornfully.

"The horse would have got away--YOU couldn't."

"If you only knew how I hated you," she said, with a white face, but a trembling lip.

"I don't see how that would make things any better," he said. "Better wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, and you've been rubbing your nose in my strawberry bed."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed his proffered handkerchief suddenly, applied it to her face, and said: "I suppose it looks dreadful."

"Like a pig's," he returned cheerfully.

She walked a little more firmly after this, until they reached the gate.

He seated her on the bank, and went back for the mustang. That beautiful brute, astounded and sore from its contact with the top rail and brambles, was cowed and subdued as he led it back.

She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly disentangling two stinging tears from her long lashes, before she threw back his handkerchief. Her sprained ankle obliged him to lift her into the saddle and adjust her little shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it was still smaller. "You used to ride astride," he said, a flood of recollection coming over him, "and it's much safer with your temper and that brute."

"And you," she said in a lower voice, "used to be"--But the rest of her sentence was lost in the switch of the whip and the jump of her horse, but he thought the word was "kinder."

Perhaps this was why, after he watched her canter away, he went back to the garden, and from the bruised and trampled strawberry bed gathered a small basket of the finest fruit, covered them with leaves, added a paper with the highly ingenious witticism, "Picked up with you," and sent them to her by one of the Chinamen. Her forcible entry moved Li Sing, his foreman, also chief laundryman to the settlement, to reminiscences:

"Me heap knew Missy Wells and ole man, who go dead. Ole man allee time make chin music to Missy. Allee time jaw jaw--allee time make lows--allee time cuttee up Missy! Plenty time lockee up Missy topside house; no can walkee--no can talkee--no hab got--how can get?--must washee washee allee same Chinaman. Ole man go dead--Missy all lightee now. Plenty fun. Plenty stay in Blown's big house, top-side hill; Blown first-chop man."

Had he inquired he might have found this pagan testimony, for once, corroborated by the Christian neighbors.

But another incident drove all this from his mind. The little stream--the life blood of his garden--ran dry! Inquiry showed that it had been diverted two miles away into Brown's ditch! Wells's indignant protest elicited a formal reply from Brown, stating that he owned the adjacent mining claims, and reminding him that mining rights to water took precedence of the agricultural claim, but offering, by way of compensation, to purchase the land thus made useless and sterile.

Jackson suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end, had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land, equally useless--as his uncle had proved--for mining purposes? Could it be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused, rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right!

He was a trespa.s.ser on his cousin's heritage--there was no luck in it--he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding gracefully as he might, he must back down now, and she would never know his first real feelings. Even now he would make over the property to her as a free gift. But his partners had advanced him money from their scanty means to plant and work it. He believed that an appeal to their feelings would persuade them to forego even that, but he shrank even more from confessing his defeat to THEM than to her.

He had little heart in his labors that day, and dismissed the Chinamen early. He again examined his uncle's old mining claim on the top of the slope, but was satisfied that it had been a hopeless enterprise and wisely abandoned. It was sunset when he stood under the buckeyes, gloomily looking at the glow fade out of the west, as it had out of his boyish hopes. He had grown to like the place. It was the hour, too, when the few flowers he had cultivated gave back their pleasant odors, as if grateful for his care. And then he heard his name called.

It was his cousin, standing a few yards from him in evident hesitation.

She was quite pale, and for a moment he thought she was still suffering from her fall, until he saw in her nervous, half-embarra.s.sed manner that it had no physical cause. Her old audacity and anger seemed gone, yet there was a queer determination in her pretty brows.

"Good-evening," he said.

She did not return his greeting, but pulling uneasily at her glove, said hesitatingly: "Uncle has asked you to sell him this land?"

"Yes."

"Well--don't!" she burst out abruptly.

He stared at her.

"Oh, I'm not trying to keep you here," she went on, flashing back into her old temper; "so you needn't stare like that. I say, 'Don't,' because it ain't right, it ain't fair."

"Why, he's left me no alternative," he said.

"That's just it--that's why it's mean and low. I don't care if he is our uncle."

Jackson was bewildered and shocked.

"I know it's horrid to say it," she said, with a white face; "but it's horrider to keep it in! Oh, Jack! when we were little, and used to fight and quarrel, I never was mean--was I? I never was underhanded--was I?

I never lied--did I? And I can't lie now. Jack," she looked hurriedly around her, "HE wants to get hold of the land--HE thinks there's gold in the slope and bank by the stream. He says dad was a fool to have located his claim so high up. Jack! did you ever prospect the bank?"

A dawning of intelligence came upon Jackson. "No," he said; "but," he added bitterly, "what's the use? He owns the water now,--I couldn't work it."

"But, Jack, IF you found the color, this would be a MINING claim! You could claim the water right; and, as it's your land, your claim would be first!"

Jackson was startled. "Yes, IF I found the color."

"You WOULD find it."

"WOULD?"

"Yes! I DID--on the sly! Yesterday morning on your slope by the stream, when no one was up! I washed a panful and got that." She took a piece of tissue paper from her pocket, opened it, and shook into her little palm three tiny pin points of gold.

"And that was your own idea, Jossy?"

"Yes!"

"Your very own?"

"Honest Injin!"

"Wish you may die?"

"True, O King!"

He opened his arms, and they mutually embraced. Then they separated, taking hold of each other's hands solemnly, and falling back until they were at arm's length. Then they slowly extended their arms sideways at full length, until this action naturally brought their faces and lips together. They did this with the utmost gravity three times, and then embraced again, rocking on pivoted feet like a metronome. Alas! it was no momentary inspiration. The most casual and indifferent observer could see that it was the result of long previous practice and shameless experience. And as such--it was a revelation and an explanation.

"I always suspected that Jackson was playin' us about that red-haired cousin," said Rice two weeks later; "but I can't swallow that purp stuff about her puttin' him up to that dodge about a new gold discovery on a fresh claim, just to knock out Brown. No, sir. He found that gold in openin' these irrigatin' trenches,--the usual n.i.g.g.e.r luck, findin' what you're not lookin' arter."

"Well, we can't complain, for he's offered to work it on shares with us," said Briggs.