Quick Action Part 29

"Oh, I forgot," he muttered--"but, somehow, you _look_ as though you had been born to several."

"I am the daughter of a very poor professor."

He fidgetted with his sweet-bay twig, considering the aromatic leaves with a troubled and concentrated scowl.

"You know," he said, "this wretched island is celebrated for its unpleasant fauna. Scorpions and wood-ticks are numerous. The sting of the one is horribly painful, and might be dangerous; the villainous habits of the other might throw you into a fever."

"But what can I do?" she inquired calmly.

"There are other kinds of snakes, too," he went on with increasing solicitude for this girl for whom, suddenly, he began to consider himself responsible. "There's a vicious snake called a moccasin; and he won't get out of your way or warn you. And there's a wicked little serpent with rings of black, scarlet, and yellow around his body. He pretends to be harmless, but if he gets your finger into his mouth he'll chew it full of a venom which is precisely the same sort of venom as that of the deadly East Indian cobra."

"But--what can I do?" she repeated pitifully. "If I go to St. Augustine and leave you here in possession, it might invalidate my claim."

He was silent, knowing no more about the law than did she, and afraid to deny her tentative a.s.sertion.

"If it lay with me," he said, "I'd call a truce until you could go to St. Augustine and return again with the proper people to look out for you."

"Even if you were kind enough to do that, I could not afford even a servant under present--and unexpected--conditions."

"Why?"

"Because it has suddenly developed that I shall be obliged to engage a lawyer. And I had not expected that."

He reddened to his hair but said nothing. After a while the girl looked over her shoulder. The puppy slept, this time with both eyes closed.

When she turned again to Gray, he nodded his comprehension and rose to his feet cautiously.

"I'm going to take a walk on the beach and think this thing all out," he whispered, taking the slim, half-offered hand in adieu. "Don't go out in the scrub after sun-down. Rattlers move then. Don't go near any swamp; moccasins are the colour of sun-baked mud, and you can't see them. Don't touch any pretty little snake marked scarlet, black, and yellow----"

"How absurd!" she whispered. "As though I were likely to fondle snakes!"

"I'm terribly worried about you," he insisted, retaining her hand.

"Please don't be."

"How can I help it--what with these bungalows full of scorpions and----"

"Yours is, too," she said anxiously. "You will be very careful, won't you?"

"Yes, of course.... I'm--I'm uncertain about you. That's what is troubling me----"

"Please don't bother about me. I've had to look out for myself for years."

"Have you?" he said, almost tenderly. Then he drew a quick, determined breath.

"You'll be careful, won't you?"

"Yes."

"Are you armed?"

"I have a shot-gun inside."

"That's all right. Don't open your door to any stranger.... You know I simply hate to leave you alone this way----"

"But I have the dog," she reminded him, with a pretty flush of grat.i.tude.

He had retained her hand longer than the easiest convention required or permitted. So he released it, hesitated, then with a visible effort he turned on his heel and strode away westward across the scrub.

The sun hung low behind the tall, parti-coloured shaft of the Light House, towering smooth and round high above the forest.

He looked up at Ibis Light, at the circling buzzards above it, then walked on, scarcely knowing where he was going, until he walked into the door of his own bungalow, and several large spiders scattered into flight across the floor.

"There's no use," he said aloud to an audience of lizards clinging to the silvery bark of the log-room. "I can't take that quarry. I can't do it--whether it belongs to me or not. _How_ can a big, strong, lumbering young man do a thing like that? No. No. _No!_"

He picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper:

"Oh, Lord! I really do need the money, but I can't do it."

And he wrote:

DEAR MISS LESLIE:

You arrived on the scene before I did. I am now convinced of this. I shall not dispute the ownership of the quarry. It is yours. This statement over my signature is your guarantee that I shall never interfere with your t.i.tle to the coquina quarry on Ibis Island.

So now I've got to return to New York and go to work. I'm going across to Augustine in a few moments; and while I'm there I'll engage a white woman as companion for you, and a white servant, and have them drive over at once so they will reach your bungalow before evening. With undisputed t.i.tle to the quarry, you can easily afford their wages.

Good-bye. I wish you every happiness and success. Please give my love to the dog.

Yours very truly, JOHNSON GRAY.

"It's the only way out of it," he muttered. "I'll leave it with her and bolt before she reads it. There is nothing else to do, absolutely nothing."

As he came out of his cabin, the sun hung low and red above the palm forest, and a few bats were already flying like tiny black devils above the scrub.

There was a strip of beach near his cabin, and he went down to it and began to tramp up and down with a vague idea of composing himself so that he might accomplish what he had to do gracefully, gaily, and with no suspicion of striking an att.i.tude for G.o.ds and men to admire his moral resignation and his heroic renunciation.

No; he'd do the thing lightly, smilingly, determined that she should not think that it was a sacrifice. No; she must believe that a sense of fairness alone moved him to an honest recognition of her claims. He must make it plain to her that he really believed she had arrived at the quarry before he had.

And so he meant to leave her the letter, say good-bye, and go.

When this was all settled in his mind he looked at the ocean very soberly, then turned his back on the Atlantic and walked back to his cabin to gather up his effects.

As he approached the closed door a desolate howl from the interior greeted him: he sprang to the door and flung it open; and the puppy rushed into his arms.

Then, pinned to the scorpion-infested wall, he saw a sheet of writing, and he read:

DEAR MR. GRAY: